Hong Kong-based Babel Finance, which offers crypto asset management tools, raises an $80M Series B at a $2B valuation, bringing its total funding to $120M (Rita Liao/TechCrunch)

Rita Liao / TechCrunch: Hong Kong-based Babel Finance, which offers crypto asset management tools, raises an $80M Series B at a $2B valuation, bringing its total funding to $120M  —  Despite recent swings in cryptocurrency values, many institutional investors appear undeterred.  The growth of Babel Finance …

Speaking at Davos, OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann says the global digital tax will not arrive in 2023 as planned due to slow negotiations (Dan Burns/Reuters)

Dan Burns / Reuters: Speaking at Davos, OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann says the global digital tax will not arrive in 2023 as planned due to slow negotiations  —  The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Tuesday acknowledged for the first time that a global digital tax deal may take a year longer to […]

Andreessen Horowitz announces a $4.5B crypto fund, including $1.5B for seed investments, its fourth and largest such fund (Hannah Murphy/Financial Times)

Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: Andreessen Horowitz announces a $4.5B crypto fund, including $1.5B for seed investments, its fourth and largest such fund  —  Silicon Valley venture capital firm launches its largest fund to date focused on digital assets despite market downturn  —  Andreessen Horowitz has launched …

MIT Simmons Hall as an interactive canvas

It’s known on campus as “The Sponge.” But last month, undergraduate design major Karyn Nakamura transformed the iconic façade of Simmons Hall into a scintillating interactive canvas. “I didn’t know if we would get permission to project onto Simmons,” says Nakamura, who on three successive evenings in April projected dynamic pixelated images onto Simmons’ windowed façade. She […]

Apple says that starting June 30, all App Store apps that offer account creation must also let users delete their account within the app (Filipe Espósito/9to5Mac)

Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac: Apple says that starting June 30, all App Store apps that offer account creation must also let users delete their account within the app  —  Apple last year announced a change in the App Store guidelines that would require all apps that support account creation to offer an in-app option for […]

Internal memo: Lyft plans to slow US hiring, cut some department budgets, and grant new stock options to some employees to make up for its eroding share price (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: Internal memo: Lyft plans to slow US hiring, cut some department budgets, and grant new stock options to some employees to make up for its eroding share price  —  President John Zimmer is expected to announce the measures to staff Tuesday  —  Lyft Inc. LYFT -17.27%▼ will slow hiring …

In a letter, 42 Democratic lawmakers urge Google to stop collecting and keeping unnecessary user data that could be used to identify people seeking abortions (Lauren Feiner/CNBC)

Lauren Feiner / CNBC: In a letter, 42 Democratic lawmakers urge Google to stop collecting and keeping unnecessary user data that could be used to identify people seeking abortions  —  – Democratic lawmakers urged Google CEO Sundar Pichai to stop collecting and keeping unnecessary or non-aggregated location data …

Emery Brown wins a share of 2022 Gruber Neuroscience Prize

The Gruber Foundation announced on May 17 that Emery N. Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT, has won the 2022 Gruber Neuroscience Prize along with neurophysicists Laurence Abbott of Columbia University, Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Haim Sompolinsky of the Hebrew University […]

How Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s $419M donation to US local and state election officials in 2020 has become a target of right-wing conspiracies (Issie Lapowsky/Protocol)

Issie Lapowsky / Protocol: How Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s $419M donation to US local and state election officials in 2020 has become a target of right-wing conspiracies  —  If Mark Zuckerberg could have imagined the worst possible outcome of his decision to insert himself into the 2020 election …

At Andy Jassy’s first Amazon shareholder meeting this Wednesday, filings show the company will oppose all 15 proposals, the most it has faced since 2010 (Financial Times)

Financial Times: At Andy Jassy’s first Amazon shareholder meeting this Wednesday, filings show the company will oppose all 15 proposals, the most it has faced since 2010  —  Proposals at this week’s AGM will be test of leadership for new chief Andy Jassy  —  Amazon shareholders will challenge the company on executive pay …

Google Research details Imagen, an AI-based text-to-image generator to rival OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, and says it won’t release code or a public demo at this time (Devin Coldewey/TechCrunch)

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: Google Research details Imagen, an AI-based text-to-image generator to rival OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, and says it won’t release code or a public demo at this time  —  The AI world is still figuring out how to deal with the amazing show of prowess that is DALL-E 2’s ability to draw/paint/imagine …

President Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson of Iceland visits MIT

Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, the president of Iceland, visited MIT on Friday, engaging in talks with several campus leaders and professors, and touring the Media Lab. Jóhannesson visited the Institute along with a substantial delegation of officials and scholars from Iceland. They met with MIT scholars, who delivered a variety of presentations on research, design, and […]

A voice for change — in Spanish

Jessica Chomik-Morales had a bicultural childhood. She was born in Boca Raton, Florida, where her parents had come seeking a better education for their daughter than she would have access to in Paraguay. But when she wasn’t in school, Chomik-Morales was back in that small, South American country with her family. One of the consequences […]

Spotify is slowly bringing back political ads on podcasts after pausing them in early 2020, and says it has strengthened its advertiser verification system (Issie Lapowsky/Protocol)

Issie Lapowsky / Protocol: Spotify is slowly bringing back political ads on podcasts after pausing them in early 2020, and says it has strengthened its advertiser verification system  —  Spotify stopped hosting political ads on its services in early 2020, citing a lack of “robustness” in its systems …

eBay partners with NFT startup OneOf to launch 13 digital collectibles featuring Wayne Gretzky, and plans more sports NFTs throughout 2022, starting at $10 each (Riley de León/CNBC)

Riley de León / CNBC: eBay partners with NFT startup OneOf to launch 13 digital collectibles featuring Wayne Gretzky, and plans more sports NFTs throughout 2022, starting at $10 each  —  – eBay is getting into NFTs — and hockey legend Wayne Gretzky is featured in the first collection from the e-commerce company.

Snap CEO warns employees the company will miss its Q2 revenue and earnings targets as its growth weakens, and plans to slow hiring; stock drops 29%+ after hours (Kif Leswing/CNBC)

Kif Leswing / CNBC: Snap CEO warns employees the company will miss its Q2 revenue and earnings targets as its growth weakens, and plans to slow hiring; stock drops 29%+ after hours  —  – Snap will miss its own targets for revenue and adjusted earnings in the current quarter, CEO Evan Speigel warned on Monday […]

IT services group Atos sues the UK over its £854M meteorology supercomputer contract, awarded to Microsoft in 2021; a High Court trial expected in June 2022 (Financial Times)

Financial Times: IT services group Atos sues the UK over its £854M meteorology supercomputer contract, awarded to Microsoft in 2021; a High Court trial expected in June 2022  —  Atos claims it was wrongfully excluded from bids for advanced system for predicting weather and climate change

Singapore-based MatchMove, which helps businesses embed financial services, acquires e-commerce startup Shopmatic for $200M; Shopmatic has 1M+ customers (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: Singapore-based MatchMove, which helps businesses embed financial services, acquires e-commerce startup Shopmatic for $200M; Shopmatic has 1M+ customers  —  Singapore-headquartered fintech MatchMove Pay Pte. has acquired fellow e-commerce startup Shopmatic Pte. for $200 million …

StepN, a Solana-based app that rewards users with tokens for walking and running, says it has 2M-3M MAUs and makes $3M-5M/day in net profit from trading fees (Rita Liao/TechCrunch)

Rita Liao / TechCrunch: StepN, a Solana-based app that rewards users with tokens for walking and running, says it has 2M-3M MAUs and makes $3M-5M/day in net profit from trading fees  —  But skeptics question its sustainability and whether it can be called a ‘game’  —  Since its launch in December, StepN …

Paytm, whose share price has dropped 57% so far this year, reports Q4 revenue of ~$200M, up 89% YoY, and a net loss of ~$98M, up 72% YoY due to higher expenses (Reuters)

Reuters: Paytm, whose share price has dropped 57% so far this year, reports Q4 revenue of ~$200M, up 89% YoY, and a net loss of ~$98M, up 72% YoY due to higher expenses  —  India’s One 97 Communications Ltd (PAYT.NS), the parent of fintech firm Paytm, on Friday reported a wider fourth-quarter loss due …

YouTube takes down 70K+ videos and 9K+ channels about the war in Ukraine for violating content guidelines, including videos referring to a “liberation mission” (Dan Milmo/The Guardian)

Dan Milmo / The Guardian: YouTube takes down 70K+ videos and 9K+ channels about the war in Ukraine for violating content guidelines, including videos referring to a “liberation mission”  —  Exclusive: Platform takes ‘unprecedented action’ to address content guideline violations since invasion