OpenAI's $80B valuation 💰, China's Tesla rival 🚗, kids in the age of AI 🤖

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Big Tech & Startups

Microsoft-backed OpenAI Valued at Over $80 Billion in Latest Deal (2 minute read)

OpenAI has finalized a deal that values it at more than $80 billion. The deal involves the sale of existing shares through a tender offer headed by venture firm Thrive Capital. It allows employees to liquidate their shares in the company. OpenAI was valued at approximately $29 billion early last year.

Reddit has a new AI training deal to sell user content (2 minute read)

Reddit has signed a deal with an unnamed large AI company for access to its user-generated content platform. The deal is worth about $60 million annually. It is still subject to change as Reddit's plans to go public are still in the works. Companies like OpenAI and Apple are also seeking to make deals with other platforms to use their data to train AI models.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

New FDA-approved drug makes severe food allergies less life-threatening (3 minute read)

The FDA has approved an antibody drug called omalizumab (brand name Xolair) as an injection to lessen allergic reactions to foods in people ages 1 and up. The drug works by binding to a class of antibodies called immunoglobulin E, preventing them from triggering an allergic response. It doesn't eliminate food allergies, but it will help reduce the health impact if accidental exposure occurs. The drug's effects are not universal - in studies, around 17% of the people receiving the drug showed no significant improvement in their sensitivity to allergy-triggering food.

Softbank founder reportedly aims to raise $100 billion to build AI chip company that would rival Nvidia — Project Izanagi might leverage Arm design (2 minute read)

Project Izanagi is a new chip venture from Softbank's founder that aims to compete with Nvidia in the artificial intelligence processor space. The project seeks to complement Softbank's Arm Holdings, which designs processor architectures. It is unclear whether the AI processors designed by Project Izanagi will rely on technologies developed by Arm. The project may affect Arm's plans to create reference chip designs for various workloads. It is separate from any collaboration with OpenAI.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

Magika (GitHub Repo)

Magika is an AI-powered file type detection tool. It uses a custom Keras model that only weighs around 1MB to enable precise file identification within milliseconds when running on a single CPU. Magika achieves over 99% precision and recall. It is used at scale at Google to improve users' safety by routing files to the proper security and content policy scanners.

PWAs won't replace native iOS apps (5 minute read)

Supporting progressive web apps (PWAs) on iOS takes a lot of time and effort. While there is support for push notifications, there are a lot of missing features and other issues. This article discusses issues and bugs discovered when developing a PWA for iOS. Companies building PWAs on iOS should not expect them to come close to a native experience. Apple's choice to restrict PWA use in Europe is concerning.

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Miscellaneous

How China Built BYD, Its Tesla Killer (10 minute read)

BYD, China's leading electric vehicle company, has posted two years of million-car growth in sales. The company was originally a battery manufacturer when it showed off its first model in 2007. It passed Tesla in worldwide sales last year and is currently building assembly lines in Brazil, Hungary, Thailand, and Uzbekistan. This article looks at the company, how it started, and its journey to where it is now.

Interview: Figma’s CEO on life after the company’s failed sale to Adobe (14 minute read)

Figma's CEO Dylan Field offered employees severance if they wanted to leave the company after its blockbuster sale to Adobe was blocked by regulators. 4% of employees took him up on the offer. While Figma appears to be in a stronger position than when it first agreed to sell to Adobe in 2022, Field also lowered the company's internal valuation to $10 billion - the same number it was in 2021. Field wants to use Adobe's $1 billion breakup fee to look at new areas for Figma to expand to.

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Quick Links

Raising children on the eve of AI (8 minute read)

The future is hard to imagine, but we shouldn't be afraid of it.

Meta’s LLM for software testing work is super exciting (3 minute read)

Meta’s TestGen-LLM tool uses large language models to automatically improve existing human-written tests.

I worry our Copilot is leaving some passengers behind (25 minute read)

GitHub Copilot may be making accessibility on the web even worse than it already is.

Muse retrospective (33 minute read)

Muse started as a project that aimed to invent a new computing environment that would better serve people doing important knowledge work like scientists, writers, entrepreneurs, designers, and architects.

Android 15’s first developer preview has arrived (3 minute read)

The first official glimpse of Android 15 includes a lot of under-the-hood tweaks to strengthen communication between hardware and software.

A Brief History of SaaS and What's Next (14 minute read)

What was once high-tech will eventually become background infrastructure - SaaS will eventually become the infrastructure for artificial intelligence, robotics, biotech, and reforming manufacturing and space.

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OpenAI's $80B valuation 💰, China's Tesla rival 🚗, kids in the age of AI 🤖

TLDR 2024-02-19

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Older messages

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