Mike Butcher / TechCrunch:
Praktika, which lets users create personalized AI-powered avatars to make learning a language feel more natural, raised a $35.5M Series A led by Blossom Capital — Most apps that help you learn languages feature a user experience that has you selecting options or swiping away wrong answer cards …
Steve Kramer, the political consultant who admitted to commissioning the deepfake robocall of Biden, has been indicted in New Hampshire and faces five counts (Alex Seitz-Wald/NBC News)
Alex Seitz-Wald / NBC News:
Steve Kramer, the political consultant who admitted to commissioning the deepfake robocall of Biden, has been indicted in New Hampshire and faces five counts — Steve Kramer, the Democratic consultant whom NBC News first linked to the robocall impersonating the president, is facing five counts in New Hampshire.
Documents and sources: OpenAI hired an actress to create ChatGPT’s Sky voice months before Sam Altman contacted Scarlett Johansson (Nitasha Tiku/Washington Post)
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
Documents and sources: OpenAI hired an actress to create ChatGPT’s Sky voice months before Sam Altman contacted Scarlett Johansson — A different actress was hired to provide the voice for ChatGPT’s ‘Sky,’ according to documents and recordings shared with the Washington Post.
Leaked OpenAI docs show aggressive tactics toward ex-employees and contradict leadership’s comments about being unaware of provisions about equity cancellation (Kelsey Piper/Vox)
Kelsey Piper / Vox:
Leaked OpenAI docs show aggressive tactics toward ex-employees and contradict leadership’s comments about being unaware of provisions about equity cancellation — On Friday, Vox reported that employees at tech giant OpenAI who wanted to leave the company were confronted with expansive and highly restrictive exit documents.
Portland-based Hydrolix, a data lake service that offers a repository for log data, raised a $35M Series B led by S3 Ventures, bringing its total raised to $68M (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Portland-based Hydrolix, a data lake service that offers a repository for log data, raised a $35M Series B led by S3 Ventures, bringing its total raised to $68M — In 2008, Marty Kagan, who’d previously worked at Cisco and Akamai, co-founded Cedexis, a (now-Cisco-owned) firm developing observability tech for content delivery networks.
The US House passes the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21, which would create a regulatory framework for digital assets (André Beganski/Decrypt)
André Beganski / Decrypt:
The US House passes the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21, which would create a regulatory framework for digital assets — Dubbed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21, the measure was approved by the House of Representatives with a 279-136 vote.
Nvidia reports Q1 revenue up 262% YoY to $26.04B, vs. $24.65B est., forecasts Q2 revenue above estimates, and announces a 10-for-1 stock split (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Nvidia reports Q1 revenue up 262% YoY to $26.04B, vs. $24.65B est., forecasts Q2 revenue above estimates, and announces a 10-for-1 stock split — Nvidia reported first fiscal-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat expectations for sales and earnings, and provided a strong forecast for the current quarter.
News Corp and OpenAI announce a multiyear agreement to bring News Corp’s news content to OpenAI; sources: the deal could be worth $250M over five years (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal:
News Corp and OpenAI announce a multiyear agreement to bring News Corp’s news content to OpenAI; sources: the deal could be worth $250M over five years — Agreement could generate over $250 million over five years for News Corp in cash and credits — Wall Street Journal owner News Corp struck …
Bluesky now lets users send DMs and says it’s working on adding support for messages with images and end-to-end encryption (Emma Roth/The Verge)
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Bluesky now lets users send DMs and says it’s working on adding support for messages with images and end-to-end encryption — Bluesky will now let you send a direct message to other users. For now, you can only send messages containing text, but Bluesky is working on adding support for images and videos.
Snowflake reports Q1 revenue up 33% YoY to $828.7M, product revenue up 34% YoY to $789.6M, vs. $749M est., and projects Q2 product revenue above estimates (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Snowflake reports Q1 revenue up 33% YoY to $828.7M, product revenue up 34% YoY to $789.6M, vs. $749M est., and projects Q2 product revenue above estimates — – Data software company raises annual product revenue outlook — Quarterly report is the first under new CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy
