Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

ByteDance says it "respects IP rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance" and it plans to "strengthen" safeguards, after Disney's legal threats (Osmond Chia/BBC)

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A look at the US tech industry's effort to influence Californian politics: fighting the 5% billionaire tax, super PACs, and seeking a new tech-friendly governor (Dara Kerr/The Guardian)

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A look at Anti Fund, a small VC firm cofounded by YouTuber Jake Paul that has gained access to hot rounds in startups like OpenAI, Anduril, Polymarket, and Ramp (Jake Angelo/Fortune)

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In a podcast, OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger describes his phone calls with Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman, and says he had been contacted by "every big VC" (Marcus Schuler/Implicator.ai)

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Analysis: sports bets on Kalshi generate an estimated ~$1.3B in annualized revenue, underscoring the threat prediction markets pose to traditional operators (Financial Times)

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Sensor Tower: dating app downloads in Saudi Arabia have risen annually for five years, hitting 3.5M in 2025, as liberalization enables more casual relationships (Omar Abdel-Baqui/Wall Street Journal)

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Credit derivatives trading on specific tech companies continues to rise, amid concerns that they may be borrowing too much to fuel AI development (Bloomberg)

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Vitalik Buterin, who backed Polymarket, says he's "starting to worry" that prediction markets "seem to be over-converging to an unhealthy product market fit" (Zack Abrams/The Block)

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Sensor Tower: TikTok's US DAUs were ~95% of its usership the week of January 19, with metrics showing little sign of a mass exodus since its January 23 takeover (Matthew Chin/CNBC)

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Bengaluru-based C2i Semiconductors, building a "grid-to-GPU" power system for datacenters, raised a $15M Series A led by Peak XV, bringing total funding to $19M (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

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Following Disney, Paramount sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging its AI-generated Seedance videos and Seedream images infringed Paramount's IP (Todd Spangler/Variety)

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Keir Starmer says no platform "should get a free pass", as the UK moves to tighten online safety laws covering AI chatbots and social media, to protect children (Mari Novik/Financial Times)

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India-based AI cloud startup Neysa plans to raise up to $600M in equity led by Blackstone, plus $600M in debt, to deploy 20K+ GPUs in India for AI training (Baiju Kalesh/Bloomberg)

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A look at a new generation of Chinese billionaire AI entrepreneurs who keep a low profile, with fortunes entwined with China's push for tech independence (Bloomberg)

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Researchers outline Iran's digital surveillance capabilities, integrated across communications and internet networks, and recently used to track down protesters (New York Times)

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Sam Altman says Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, is joining OpenAI "to drive the next generation of personal agents"; OpenClaw will remain open source (Sam Altman/@sama)

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OpenAI in Advanced Talks to Hire OpenClaw Founder, Others Connected to Agent Project (The Information)

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Sources: OpenAI is in advanced talks to hire OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger and several team members; Steinberger would likely work on personal agents (Nick Wingfield/The Information)

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Analysis: DRAM and NAND memory prices have jumped 600%+ over the past year for routers and set-top boxes, hitting telcos targeting aggressive broadband rollouts (Counterpoint Research)

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Sam Altman says that India has 100M weekly active ChatGPT users, the app's second-largest userbase after the US, ahead of the AI Impact Summit (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

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