May 2, 2025

The Download: foreign disinformation intel, and gene-edited pork

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. A senior State Department official demanded records of communications with journalists, European officials, and Trump critics A previously unreported document distributed by senior US State Department official Darren Beattie reveals a sweeping effort…

Froda secures $23M Series B for its debt financing platform for SMEs

April 23, 2025
Swedish Fintech startup Froda has secured a $22.7 million (€20m) Series B round led by Incore Invest, also based in Sweden. The move bucks the trend of a slight slowdown in investments into fintech, plus a further confirmation of the long-term trend towards the ’embedded finance’ model.  Largely operating in northern European countries from Finland […]

3 Things Caiwei Chen is into right now

April 23, 2025
A new play about OpenAI I recently saw Doomers, a new play by Matthew Gasda about the aborted 2023 coup at OpenAI, here represented by a fictional company called MindMesh. The action is set almost entirely in a meeting room; the first act follows executives immediately after the firing of company CEO Seth (a stand-in…

Seeing AI as a collaborator, not a creator

April 23, 2025
The reason you are reading this letter from me today is that I was bored 30 years ago.  I was bored and curious about the world and so I wound up spending a lot of time in the university computer lab, screwing around on Usenet and the early World Wide Web, looking for interesting things…

Noxtua raises $92M for its sovereign AI tuned for the German legal system

April 23, 2025
Back in 2020, Xayn was a privacy-based, on-device AI startup designed specifically for smartphones. But that early experience eventually saw the company pivot into developing sovereign AI for the legal sphere. Now Xayn has rebranded as Noxtua and raised a $92.2 million (roughly €81.2 million) Series B round. The round was led by strategic investor […]

Intel reportedly plans to lay off over 21,000 employees

April 23, 2025
Intel is set to cut over 21,000 people, or roughly 20% of its workforce, with an announcement due this week, according to a Bloomberg report.  The news comes ahead of Intel’s Q1 earnings call helmed by recently appointed CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who replaced longtime chief Pat Gelsinger last year.  With the layoffs, Tan aims to […]

Meta’s Oversight Board seeks details on the company’s new hate speech policies

April 23, 2025
Meta’s Oversight Board, the independent group created to help Meta with content moderation decisions, on Tuesday issued its response to the social media company’s new hate speech policies announced in January. The Board says that Meta’s new policies were “announced hastily, in a departure from regular procedure,” and called on the company to provide more […]