Reading List

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

Spotify revamps its Discover Weekly playlist after ten years, adding new genre filters for Premium users, and says users streamed 100B+ tracks via the playlist (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)

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Bank of Korea temporarily halts preparations for the second phase of its pilot initiative testing program for a central bank digital currency, scheduled for Q4 (Soo-Hyang Choi/Bloomberg)

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Stockholm-based Tandem Health, which has developed an AI medical copilot for clinicians to record patient consultations, raised a $50M Series A led by Kinnevik (Maya Dharampal-Hornby/Sifted)

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Tel Aviv-based Cato Networks, whose tools help protect remote workforces, raised a $359M Series G at a $4.8B+ valuation, taking its total funding to $1B+ (James Rundle/Wall Street Journal)

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PitchBook: Australian startups raised $3.4B in 2024, down from 2021's $6.5B peak; 39% of early-stage capital in Australia came from overseas vs. 21% in the US (Benicia Tan/Bloomberg)

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The White House announces an AI Education Pledge with commitments from 60+ companies to provide AI education materials to K-12 students over the next four years (Ashley Gold/Axios)

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Kuo: Apple plans a cheaper MacBook powered by iPhone 16 Pro's A18 Pro chip and with a ~13" display, expected to enter mass production in late 2025 or early 2026 (Benjamin Mayo/9to5Mac)

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Jim Chanos, who famously shorted Enron, calls Michael Saylor's bitcoin strategy "financial gibberish", as Saylor inspires several copycats like Trump Media (Peter Whoriskey/Washington Post)

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How India is carving out space for high-end manufacturing, including a $2.5B Foxconn iPhone factory in Devanahalli, near Bengaluru, aiming to create 40K jobs (New York Times)

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Sensor Tower: Temu's US MAU fell 51% to 40.2M from March to June, while Shein's dropped 12% to 41.4M, amid the US' China tariffs and "de minimis" closure (Financial Times)

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GOP Senators agree to change a provision in the tax bill from a 10-year ban on state AI regulation to a 5-year ban with carve outs for issues such as copyrights (Bloomberg)

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Sources: the US DHS, in partnership with DOGE, has built the first-ever searchable national citizenship data system, pulling from SSA and immigration databases (NPR)

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Canada rescinds its Digital Services Tax "in anticipation of" a trade deal with the US, with trade talks resuming; the tax was set to go into effect on Monday (Associated Press)

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A profile of OnlyFans' secretive founder Leo Radvinsky, as the platform's parent company is considering a sale for as much as $8B, according to sources (Wall Street Journal)

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China's tech giants are ramping up M&A and investment deals as the government shifts its stance to support the tech industry, particularly in areas like AI (Bloomberg)

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Spinwheel, which helps fintech companies and banks authenticate users, automate data retrieval, and facilitate payments, raised a $30M Series A led by F-Prime (Ryan Lawler/Axios)

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Kuo expects Apple to mass produce a Vision Pro with M5 in Q3 2025, a Vision Air in Q3 2027, a Vision Pro with a new design and XR glasses in H2 2028, and more (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac)

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Sources: Menlo Ventures targets ~$1.5B for new funds to invest in AI ventures, including $650M for early-stage startups, and $850M for later-stage companies (Yuliya Chernova/Wall Street Journal)

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Winnipeg-based Conquest Planning, which uses AI to help financial advisors and other clients make decisions, raised an $80M Series B led by Goldman Sachs (Jon Fingas/BetaKit)

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Memo: OpenAI's Mark Chen responds to Meta offers, says it feels like "someone has broken into our home and stolen something" and OpenAI is "recalibrating comp" (Zoë Schiffer/Wired)

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