Techmeme
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World Foundation, the nonprofit behind the World protocol, raised $52.5M led by Pantera through a strategic sale of its WLD token with a one-year lockup (Yogita Khatri/The Block)
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Facebook plans to test a full-screen "immersive video" player when users open the app, replacing the newsfeed, in select international markets this year (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)
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Midjourney bought astrology app Co-Star, which uses AI to offer personalized advice, in the spring and is building its first standalone image-generation app (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg)
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In their letter defending open-weight AI, tech companies urge lawmakers to avoid "premature restrictions" that "stifle competition or drive innovation overseas" (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
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Sources: Anduril is in talks with investors for a new funding round that could see it valued at around $100B; the company raised $5B at a $61B valuation in May (Reuters)
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Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft, a16z, and others sign a letter defending open-source AI; Jensen Huang, in his first X post, says open models strengthen cybersecurity (Leo Schwartz/The Information)
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Delhi High Court rules OpenAI's use of ANI content to train ChatGPT wasn't copyright infringement as the news agency didn't show ChatGPT reproduced its reports (Munsif Vengattil/Reuters)
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Meta launches Facebook Verified, a free program it says will verify that users are real humans by analyzing a facial recognition selfie and assigning badges (Mat Smith/Engadget)
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India orders GitHub to remove Bitchat, the offline messaging app built by Jack Dorsey that is used by anti-government protestors amid internet blackouts (Shaurya Malwa/CoinDesk)
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Meta launches Seller, a free standalone app version of Facebook Marketplace; Seller includes AI features that scan photos to fill out listings automatically (Eli Tan/New York Times)
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Poolin, previously regarded as one of the world's largest crypto mining pool providers, files for Chapter 11 and seeks to sell its Texas mining assets for $52M (Brian Danga/The Block)
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Sources: Shanghai-based GPU maker MetaX confidentially filed for a Hong Kong listing, targeting an IPO by the year-end, amid a surge of fundraising from rivals (Zoe SL Chan/South China Morning Post)
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Preliminary findings: the EU Commission says TikTok's accounts for minors violate the DSA, citing features that could expose children to bullying and predators (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)
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The US OCC denies Wise's application to create a national trust bank, citing incompatibility with new Federal Reserve policies; Wise says it plans to reapply (Simone Lobo/Reuters)
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Sources: OpenAI told Hugging Face only this week its models caused the July 11 hack; the models appear to have been active online for days before being stopped (Wall Street Journal)