Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Appfigures: Anthropic’s Claude now ranks #51 in the top free iPhone Productivity apps in the US, down from rank #5 in this category, which it achieved on May 4 — Consumer demand for mobile AI chatbot apps outside of ChatGPT may be waning. Earlier this month, Anthropic launched …
Waymo says its Waymo One robotaxis now complete over 50K paid trips every week across San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, up from 10K rides in May 2023 (Abubakar Idris/The Information)
Abubakar Idris / The Information:
Waymo says its Waymo One robotaxis now complete over 50K paid trips every week across San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, up from 10K rides in May 2023 — Waymo, Google’s autonomous car unit, said it now completes more than 50,000 driverless rides per week in three cities, up from 10,000 in May last year.
Southeast Asia is drawing more investment from Big Tech than ever, as the CEOs of Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia commit billions of dollars in the region (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg:
Southeast Asia is drawing more investment from Big Tech than ever, as the CEOs of Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia commit billions of dollars in the region — – Long-ignored region is attracting data center, AI investments — Amazon, Microsoft among firms pledging billions of dollars
About 48 government websites associated with different Indian states have allowed scammers to plant ads that can redirect visitors to online betting websites (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
About 48 government websites associated with different Indian states have allowed scammers to plant ads that can redirect visitors to online betting websites — Some Indian government websites have allowed scammers to plant advertisements capable of redirecting visitors to online betting platforms.
Email: criminals target WPP CEO Mark Read in a deepfake scam by using a voice clone and public YouTube footage to set up a video meeting with his executives (Daniel Thomas/Financial Times)
Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
Email: criminals target WPP CEO Mark Read in a deepfake scam by using a voice clone and public YouTube footage to set up a video meeting with his executives — Mark Read says criminals set up Microsoft Teams call with senior executives in unsuccessful attack
Christie’s experienced a “technology security issue” that took its website down and affected some systems, ahead of auctions that are expected to generate $840M (Zachary Small/New York Times)
Zachary Small / New York Times:
Christie’s experienced a “technology security issue” that took its website down and affected some systems, ahead of auctions that are expected to generate $840M — The auctioneer’s website was taken offline on Thursday evening and remained down on Friday, days before its spring auctions were set to begin.
Jim Simons, a mathematician and founder of hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies who pioneered computer-based approaches to quantitative trading, dies at 86 (Gregory Zuckerman/Wall Street Journal)
Gregory Zuckerman / Wall Street Journal:
Jim Simons, a mathematician and founder of hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies who pioneered computer-based approaches to quantitative trading, dies at 86 — A mathematician, he helped usher in a revolution in trading, embracing a computer-oriented, quantitative style in the 1980s
Sources: Apple is finalizing a deal with OpenAI to use ChatGPT features in iOS 18; talks with Google to license Gemini are ongoing, but no deal has been reached (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is finalizing a deal with OpenAI to use ChatGPT features in iOS 18; talks with Google to license Gemini are ongoing, but no deal has been reached — – Move is part of push to add AI features to Apple devices — Company also held talks with Google about using Gemini
Epic v. Apple: Apple says it received just 38 applications to use its outside payments option for the App Store, out of ~65K app devs that offer in-app payments (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg:
Epic v. Apple: Apple says it received just 38 applications to use its outside payments option for the App Store, out of ~65K app devs that offer in-app payments — – Judge rips company for ‘lots of decisions’ made ‘without data’ — iPhone maker says it provided antitrust remedy ordered in 2021
Filings and sources: autonomous vehicle company Motional cut ~550 employees in a restructuring that included delaying a robotaxi service from 2024 to 2026 (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Filings and sources: autonomous vehicle company Motional cut ~550 employees in a restructuring that included delaying a robotaxi service from 2024 to 2026 — Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.
