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Memo: CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz says the company will cut ~500 jobs, or 5% of its global workforce, and expects to incur $36M to $56M in charges (Dean Seal/Wall Street Journal)

Ox Security, which scans for vulnerabilities in both AI- and human-generated code, raised a $60M Series B led by DTCP and says it scans 100M+ lines per day (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

OpenAI unveils OpenAI for Countries, an initiative to help build out AI infrastructure and customize OpenAI's products for specific languages and local needs (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)

Uber reports Q1 revenue up 14% YoY to $11.5B, Gross Bookings up 14% YoY to $42.8B, vs. $43.1B est., trips up 18% YoY to 3B, and $1.8B net income; UBER falls ~5% (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg)

Amsterdam-based neobank Finom raised '92.7M from General Catalyst and says it serves 100K+ SMBs in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy (Mary Ann Azevedo/TechCrunch)

At a Manhattan event, TikTok executives tried to reassure brands and ad clients, saying "we are absolutely confident" in TikTok "and confident in the future" (Sapna Maheshwari/New York Times)

FCC listings show two new Asus ROG Ally 2 handheld models with an Xbox button, AMD chips, 64GB of RAM, larger grips, and two USB-C, likely set for Computex 2025 (VideoCardz.com)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says China's AI market will likely reach ~$50B in the next two to three years, and missing out on it would be a "tremendous loss" (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says the company used AI agents to replace the work of 200+ HR employees and, as a result, hired more programmers and salespeople (Belle Lin/Wall Street Journal)

Amazon unveils Vulcan, a sorting robot with a sense of touch and will be capable of grabbing ~75% of warehouse items, rolling out globally in the next few years (Sarah Butler/The Guardian)

A look at the hype and reality surrounding AI agents, currently used primarily by companies to boost efficiency and cut costs, rather than drive top-line growth (Lucy Colback/Financial Times)

US credit and debit card data: Shein's US sales dropped 23% during the week of April 25 to May 1 compared to the prior seven days, while Temu's sales fell 17% (Bloomberg)

Leaked audio and memos: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi defended increasing the RTO to three days per week at a heated all-hands meeting, saying "it is what it is" (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)

The AI arms race between employers and jobseekers isn't going well for anyone, as applicants turn to GenAI to speed up a process that already feels dehumanized (Sarah O'Connor/Financial Times)

A look at the impact of ChatGPT use on energy consumption, as analysis suggests AI usage is still a rounding error on a person's total electricity footprint (Hannah Ritchie/Sustainability)

Doppel, which provides an AI-powered social engineering detection service for enterprises, raised a $35M Series B led by Bessemer at a $205M valuation (Maria Deutscher/SiliconANGLE)

An in-depth look at the impact of stratospheric pollution from satellite reentries on the ozone layer, as Starlink and others launch more internet satellites (Bloomberg)

Duolingo's "AI-first" announcement highlights the unfolding AI jobs crisis, with attrition in creative fields, hiring cuts, declining freelance incomes, more (Brian Merchant/Blood in the Machine)

Sensor Tower: Temu cut US digital ad spending by an estimated 31% and Shein by 19% in the two week period from March 31 as the de minimis exemption is closed (New York Times)

Inside Japan's Disco Corp, which has a radical HR system where no employee has a boss and manufactures ~75% of the machines used to cut and dice semiconductors (Financial Times)

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs calls crypto an "untested investment" and vetoes a bill that would have allowed the state to invest in bitcoin using seized funds (Francisco Rodrigues/CoinDesk)

Sources: Apple plans to launch iPhone 18 Pro models, a thin iPhone 18, and a foldable iPhone in 2026 fall but the standard iPhone 18 in spring 2027 (Wayne Ma/The Information)

Some international startup founders say they are canceling travel plans or reconsidering moving to the US due to Trump administration's immigration crackdown (Madeline Renbarger/Newcomer)

How Namma Yatri, an open-source ride-hailing app, forced Uber, Ola, and Rapido to adopt its no-commission, subscription model for auto-rickshaw drivers in India (Indulekha Aravind/Rest of World)

Advocacy groups push California's AG to ensure that OpenAI's becoming a for-profit adheres to the law; OpenAI formed an advisory commission in response (Paresh Dave/Wired)

The US DOD transfers its AI-based Open Price Exploration for National Security program to nonprofit Critical Minerals Forum to boost Western supply deals (Ernest Scheyder/Reuters)

Veza, which helps company administrators manage employee access to applications and data, raised a $108M Series D led by NEA at a valuation of just over $800M (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

Eric Schmidt-backed nonprofit FutureHouse, which aims to build an "AI scientist", launches a platform and API with four AI-based tools to assist scientific work (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Singapore-based cross-border B2B payment service Thunes raised a $150M Series D co-led by Apis Partners and Vitruvian Partners to accelerate its US expansion (PYMNTS.com)

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says AI companies are trying too hard to "juice engagement" through follow-up questions, instead of providing useful insights (Charles Rollet/TechCrunch)

TPG agrees to acquire Sabre's hospitality solutions unit, which provides SaaS to hotel brands, for $1.1B in cash, as Sabre focuses on its core airline business (Sean O'Neill/Skift)

US v. Google: Google says its controls for publishers to opt out of AI training only cover work by Google DeepMind, not training by its other units for search (Davey Alba/Bloomberg)

Sources: Decagon, which is building customer service-focused AI agents, is in talks to raise $100M in new funding led by a16z and Accel at a $1.5B valuation (Rashi Shrivastava/Forbes)

At the adtech remedy hearing, Google says it's open to giving competitors access to real-time bidding data from its ad exchange AdX, but it rejects a breakup (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)

Source: Anthropic offers to buy back shares from current and former employees, the first transaction of its kind for Anthropic, valuing the startup at $61.5B (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)

A hacking group called DragonForce takes credit for ransomware attacks targeting British retailers M&S, Harrods, and Co-Op over the past two weeks (Ryan Gallagher/Bloomberg)

The US DOJ tells a judge it will seek to force Google to divest its ad exchange and publisher ad server units and share real-time ad bidding data with rivals (Financial Times)

Temu stops shipping products from China directly to US shoppers and lists only products shipped from US warehouses, as Trump closes the de minimis exemption (Annie Palmer/CNBC)

Google plans to roll out Gemini next week for children under 13 whose parents use Family Link and says it will not use the under-13 users' data to train its AI (Natasha Singer/New York Times)

Sources: Apple is working with Anthropic for a new version of Xcode that will use Claude Sonnet to write, edit, and test code, with plans to roll out internally (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

OpenAI shares details on how an update to GPT-4o inadvertently increased the model's sycophancy, why OpenAI failed to catch it, and the changes it is planning (OpenAI)

Sources: eToro is considering launching its US IPO as soon as next week, after pausing its plans in April amid tariff-related stock volatility (Bloomberg)

Uber partners with Chinese self-driving startup Momenta to launch robotaxi services outside the US and China, starting with Europe in early 2026 (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)

A US judge schedules the US government's remedies trial in the Google antitrust case regarding its advertising tech to begin on September 22 (Hayden Field/CNBC)

Filing: Amazon restructured part of its $8B Anthropic investment from convertible notes into stock in Q1, creating a $3.3B pre-tax gain that boosted its profits (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)

Livestream marketplace Whatnot says it hit $3B+ worth of goods sold through its app last year and viewers spend 80+ minutes per day on average on the app (Ann Gehan/The Information)

An investigation finds 70+ content-farm YouTube channels using AI to produce cartoon content featuring gore and child abuse, featuring characters like minions (Laura Holliday/Wired)

The UK FCA plans to ban retail investors from borrowing money to buy cryptocurrencies, as it aims to bring much of the crypto market under its regulatory remit (Martin Arnold/Financial Times)

The US designates Cambodia's Huione Group as a money-laundering operation, saying it laundered $4B+ since August 2021 for criminals such as North Korean hackers (Selam Gebrekidan/New York Times)

Filing: Jeff Bezos plans to sell up to $4.75B worth of AMZN, or 25M shares, via an orderly trading plan, set up in March, running through the end of May 2026 (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

Sources: Nvidia told ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, and others that it is tweaking its AI chips so they can be sold in China without breaching US export rules (Qianer Liu/The Information)

Twilio reports Q1 revenue up 12% YoY to $1.17B, 335K+ active customer accounts vs. 313K+ in Q1 2024, and Q2 revenue forecast above est.; TWLO jumps 8%+ (Yahoo Finance)

Apple plans to source more than 19B chips from the US this year, including from TSMC's expanding Arizona facilities, as it seeks to lessen its reliance on China (Bloomberg)

Rockstar Games delays the release of Grand Theft Auto VI from fall 2025 to May 26, 2026, says it needs extra time to deliver the expected quality (Tom Warren/The Verge)

Microsoft says new accounts will be "passwordless by default", asking people to use more secure methods like passkeys, push notifications, and security keys (Umar Shakir/The Verge)

Ireland's DPC fines TikTok '530M for illegally sending user data to China, ordering a halt to EU data transfers in six months if protections aren't guaranteed (Sam Schechner/Wall Street Journal)

The Google search antitrust trial is effectively a fight about AI's future, as lawyers and rivals argue Google's monopoly could make it the dominant AI player (David McCabe/New York Times)

Kuwait cracks down on crypto miners for being a "major" cause of blackouts; energy consumption in the Al-Wafrah region fell by 55% after the crackdown (Ahmed Hagagy/Reuters)

A California man pleads guilty to illegally accessing Disney's Slack channels and stealing 1.1TB of data in 2024; he later posed as hacktivist group "NullBulge" (Lawrence Abrams/BleepingComputer)

Sources: Beijing's decision to exempt eight types of US-made chips from tariffs came after auto industry lobbying, exposing China's dependence on US auto chips (Wall Street Journal)

Memo: the US DOD seeks to secure right-to-repair provisions in Army contracts to access tools, software, and technical data without IP constraints (Reuters)

Apple updates its App Store Guidelines to comply with a US judge's April 30 injunction, including allowing app developers to link to external payments in the US (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)

Temu appears to have removed all products in the US version of its online store that ship directly from China to US consumers, confusing suppliers and customers (Zeyi Yang/Wired)

Atlassian reports Q3 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.36B, vs. $1.29B est., and a net loss of $70.8M, vs. a $12.8M net profit a year ago; TEAM drops 16%+ after hours (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)

MoviePass launches Mogul, a daily fantasy sports-inspired, blockchain-based platform for movie buffs, and says over 400K people have signed up for early access (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)

Reddit plans to add Reddit Answers, its AI search tool that was launched in beta in December 2024, to its main search bar and says the tool has 1M weekly users (Karissa Bell/Engadget)

Trump's World Liberty Financial says Abu Dhabi's MGX fund is making a $2B investment in Binance using World Liberty's USD1 stablecoin, raising ethical concerns (David Yaffe-Bellany/New York Times)

Spotify says it submitted an iOS app update letting US customers use other payment options beyond Apple's; Patreon earlier said it would do the same (Jay Peters/The Verge)

Aurora launches its commercial driverless trucking service, making deliveries between Dallas and Houston, and plans to expand to El Paso and Phoenix this year (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)

Apple expects that a majority of iPhones sold in the US in the June quarter will come from India and a majority of its other devices will come from Vietnam (Rolfe Winkler/Wall Street Journal)

Tim Cook says Apple estimates tariffs will add $900M in costs for the June quarter, assuming the current tariff policy remains in place (Benjamin Mayo/9to5Mac)

Block reports Q1 revenue down 3% YoY to $5.77B, vs. $6.2B est., gross profit up 9% to $2.3B, below est., issues weak profit guidance; XYZ drops 18%+ after hours (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)

Instacart reports Q1 revenue up 9% YoY to $897M, gross transaction volume up 10% to $9.1B, forecasts Q2 adjusted EBITDA above est.; CART jumps 4%+ after hours (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg)

Roku reports Q1 revenue up 16% YoY to $1.02B vs. $1.01B est., a net loss of $27.4M, compared to $50.9M a year ago; ROKU drops 5%+ after hours (Todd Spangler/Variety)

Apple reports Q2 revenue from Services, which includes the App Store, Apple TV+, and Apple Music, up 12% YoY to $26.65B, a new record but below $26.7B est. (Todd Spangler/Variety)

Apple Q2: iPhone up 2% YoY to $46.84B, vs. $45.84B est., Mac up 7% to $7.95B, iPad up 15% to $6.4B, and Wearables, Home, and Accessories down 5% to $7.52B (Kif Leswing/CNBC)

Sources: AWS is developing an AI-assisted coding service that offers features similar to Cursor and goes beyond its current coding assistant Amazon Q Developer (Kevin McLaughlin/The Information)

Game developer Scopely says Monopoly Go! crossed $5B in gross bookings in just 24 months, significantly ahead of the previous benchmark of 40 months (Rachel Kaser/VentureBeat)

Data integration company Fivetran acquires Census, which helps companies move data out of databases and into operational tools and was valued at $630M in 2022 (Rebecca Szkutak/TechCrunch)

Redis, the popular in-memory data store, returns its main system to open source license AGPL, after facing criticism in 2024 for moving to a dual-license model (Lindsay Clark/The Register)

Politics Headlines Today
[Sun-18-May-2025]

13,000 teachers undergo test to renew licences - Punch

2027: APC Delta lawmaker hosts PDP defectors, declares Oborevwori sole gov candidate - Punch

Adeleke probes shoddy project - Punch

Amnesty boss urges Niger Delta youths to embrace peace, unity - Punch

Anambra election: INEC releases candidates' details - Punch

Anambra poll: Candidates eye victory as INEC unveils details - Punch

APC will win Osun gov election Ex-PDP rep - Punch

Army widows decry hardship, sexual harassment - Punch

Bandits abduct 20 in Zamfara midnight raid - Punch

Blame internal crises, not Tinubu for defections, APC chieftain tells opposition - Punch

Breaking: Northwest Backs Tinubu as 2027 Sole Candidate - The Authority

Commissioner gifts 50m to 105 individuals, organisations in Enugu community - Punch

Commissioner warns against self-diagnosis of hypertension at Enugu awareness rally - Punch

Delta elder defends shadow cabinet, counters DSS claims - Punch

Enugu LP Reps member dumps party for APC - Punch

FCTA to build bus terminals in two satellite towns - The Authority

FG eyes more oil barrels from Bauchi, Gombe - Punch

FG to unveil African Energy Bank, completes governance frameworks - Punch

FG urges cancellation of satellite campuses - Punch

FG, states repay over N13trn debts in 18 months - Punch

Foreign investors pull out N420bn from NGX - Punch

FX reserves rebound by $364m - Punch

Govs, BoT kick as Saraki panel fuels fresh PDP crisis - Punch

Group Slams Lagos NLC, Says Recruitment of Katsina Youths at Dangote Refinery Not Illegal - The Authority

Hajji: Katsina donates R1,228,200 to pilgrims - Punch

Historic day in Vatican as Pope Leo XIV officially installed - Punch

Ill do anything to bring my son back home Israeli mother - Punch

Imo police detain factional monarch in chieftaincy dispute - Punch

Insecurity: Zulum declares Monday fasting, prayer day - Punch

Iraq pledges $40m to rebuild Gaza as Israeli strike kills 140 - Punch

Israeli airstrikes kill 33 in Gaza Official - Punch

Kano business owners lament poor power supply - Punch

Kano gov suspends aide over comment on alleged Kwankwaso's defection - Punch

Katsina to host national statistics meeting on state GDP - Punch

Kogi traditional healers vow sanctions against members aiding criminals, yahoo-boys - Punch

Kwankwaso disowns viral statement, calls it 'political mischief - Punch

Lagos LG polls: Abure-led LP faction elects 26 chairmanship candidates - Punch

Lagos reaffirms commitment to disability inclusion - Punch

LG autonomy will end insecurity Lawmaker - Punch

Low-sulphur crude production declines again - Punch

LP: Rep member, 1,000 others defect to APC in Enugu - Punch

Muslim group appreciates JAMB Registrar's courage in admitting UTME errors - Punch

My father jailed for opposing my school enrolment Atiku - Punch

Nasarawa APC elders urge ex-deputy gov to join 2027 governorship race - Punch

NDLEA intercepts AK-47 concealed in maize sack, seizes Tramadol in Taraba - Punch

Nigeria risks Sudan-like crisis, retired col warns - Punch

Nigerians demand indigenous networking platforms to replace meta amid exit threat - Punch

NigeriaUK Parliamentary Ties Strengthened Through Strategic Visit - The Authority

NiMet predicts thunderstorms, sunny skies nationwide - Punch

No more deaths from electrocution - Punch

North-West APC okays Tinubu for second term - Punch

NOSTR Gives NCDMB Boss Two Weeks to Resign Over N7.7 Billion Scandal or Face Mass Protest - The Authority

Nothing will prevent Tinubu from winning 2027 election - Yakasai - Punch

NSF: Medal haul begins as Team Lagos win women's weightlifting gold - Punch

NYEMIKE MUSIC Unveils Vibrant New Single GOLIBE Featuring Olawale Alakwa - The Authority

Obi empowers youths at Kaduna SMES HUB programme - The Authority

ODeLAN 2025: Govt urged to boost institutional access to AI tools, ensure student loan for distance learners - The Authority

Okey-Joe Onuakalusi Returns from High-Profile Diplomatic Tour to US, UK - The Authority

Pate hails Ihekweazu's WHO health emergencies appointment - Punch