Category: Consumer Assistance
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Sources: TSMC could face a $1B+ penalty to settle a US export control investigation over a chip it made that ended up inside Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip (Karen Freifeld/Reuters)
Karen Freifeld / Reuters: Sources: TSMC could face a $1B+ penalty to settle a US export control investigation over a chip it made that ended up inside Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (2330.TW) could face a penalty of $1 billion or more to settle a U.S. export control investigation …
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Rain, which offers an employer-integrated personal finance and earned wage access app, raised a $75M Series B led by Prosus at a $340M post-money valuation (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Rain, which offers an employer-integrated personal finance and earned wage access app, raised a $75M Series B led by Prosus at a $340M post-money valuation — Rain, a startup offering employer-integrated earned wage access (EWA) app coupled with financial-wellness features like overdraft alerts …
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Emergency response drone maker Brinc announced $75M in funding led by Index Ventures, bringing total raised to $157.2M; Motorola will become Brinc’s distributor (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)
Todd Bishop / GeekWire: Emergency response drone maker Brinc announced $75M in funding led by Index Ventures, bringing total raised to $157.2M; Motorola will become Brinc’s distributor — Seattle-based Brinc announced $75 million in new funding and a strategic alliance with Motorola Solutions …
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Sources: hackers intercepted ~100 bank regulators’ emails, 150K+ in total, for over a year at the US Treasury’s OCC, which disclosed a breach on February 26 (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg: Sources: hackers intercepted ~100 bank regulators’ emails, 150K+ in total, for over a year at the US Treasury’s OCC, which disclosed a breach on February 26 — – Attackers lurked within OCC email accounts since 2023 — Chinese state hackers previously targeted Treasury files
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Transcarent, an app-based medical concierge service for businesses, completes its $621M acquisition of digital health company Accolade, taking it private (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
Ashley Capoot / CNBC: Transcarent, an app-based medical concierge service for businesses, completes its $621M acquisition of digital health company Accolade, taking it private — Digital health startup Transcarent on Tuesday announced it completed its acquisition of Accolade in a deal valued at roughly $621 million.
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Sources: a16z seeks to raise a $20B megafund for growth-stage investments in AI companies; global LPs see it as a way to invest in US firms without restrictions (Reuters)
Reuters: Sources: a16z seeks to raise a $20B megafund for growth-stage investments in AI companies; global LPs see it as a way to invest in US firms without restrictions — Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is seeking to raise about $20 billion in what will be the largest fund in its history …
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Amazon launches Nova Sonic, an AI voice model to generate natural-sounding speech that it says is “the most cost-efficient” model on the market, via Bedrock (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: Amazon launches Nova Sonic, an AI voice model to generate natural-sounding speech that it says is “the most cost-efficient” model on the market, via Bedrock — On Tuesday, Amazon debuted a new generative AI model, Nova Sonic, capable of natively processing voice and generating natural-sounding speech.
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Blackbird Labs, which makes a blockchain-based payment loyalty app for restaurants, raised $50M led by Spark Capital, taking its total funding to $85M (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Blackbird Labs, which makes a blockchain-based payment loyalty app for restaurants, raised $50M led by Spark Capital, taking its total funding to $85M — A founder who has carved out a name for himself building products to help restaurants connect better with would-be diners has raised $50 million …
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Qualtrics founder and Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith launches a $1B fund aimed at connecting tech startups with sports and entertainment across 20 to 25 investments (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media)
Alex Konrad / Upstarts Media: Qualtrics founder and Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith launches a $1B fund aimed at connecting tech startups with sports and entertainment across 20 to 25 investments — Utah Jazz owner and Qualtrics cofounder Ryan Smith is teaming up with Accel pal Ryan Sweeney to launch HXCO …
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Internal memo: the DOJ has disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Unit, established by Biden in 2021, as the DOJ is “not a digital assets regulator” (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
Ben Weiss / Fortune: Internal memo: the DOJ has disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Unit, established by Biden in 2021, as the DOJ is “not a digital assets regulator” — The U.S. Department of Justice notified staff on Monday evening that the agency was disbanding a unit dedicated to crypto-related investigations.
