Wednesday, January 1, 2025

OpenAI missed its goal to launch Media Manager, an opt-out tool for creators, by 2025; sources: the tool was rarely viewed as an important launch internally (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI missed its goal to launch Media Manager, an opt-out tool for creators, by 2025; sources: the tool was rarely viewed as an important launch internally  —  Back in May, OpenAI said it was developing a tool to let creators specify how they want their works to be included in — or excluded from — its AI training data.



PitchBook: the number of VCs investing in US startups fell from a peak of 8,315 in 2021 to 6,175 in 2024; 9 firms raised 50%+ of the $71B raised by VCs in 2024 (George Hammond/Financial Times)

George Hammond / Financial Times:
PitchBook: the number of VCs investing in US startups fell from a peak of 8,315 in 2021 to 6,175 in 2024; 9 firms raised 50%+ of the $71B raised by VCs in 2024  —  Risk-averse financial institutions concentrate money on biggest Silicon Valley VCs in trend that threatens smaller groups



Alibaba sells Sun Art Retail stake to PE firm DCP for ~$1.6B, after paying ~$3.6B in 2020 to double the stake to 70%+, as it focuses on its core online business (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Alibaba sells Sun Art Retail stake to PE firm DCP for ~$1.6B, after paying ~$3.6B in 2020 to double the stake to 70%+, as it focuses on its core online business  —  - Sun Art had attracted interest from other private equity firms … China's e-commerce pioneer said it could receive gross proceeds …



Link-Busters, an anti-piracy company working for big publishers, passed 2B URL takedown requests sent to Google and is behind 50%+ of Google takedown requests (Ernesto Van der Sar/TorrentFreak)

Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak:
Link-Busters, an anti-piracy company working for big publishers, passed 2B URL takedown requests sent to Google and is behind 50%+ of Google takedown requests  —  Link-Busters is the unofficial DMCA takedown champion of 2024.  The anti-piracy outfit works for many of the world's largest publishing companies …



The US NLRB rules that Amazon must negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union, which represents ~5K workers at its Staten Island warehouse; Amazon plans to appeal (Greg Bensinger/Reuters)

Greg Bensinger / Reuters : The US NLRB rules that Amazon must negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union, which represents ~5K workers at its ...