- Why Meta is well positioned to be AI's main beneficiary in the short, medium, and long term: generative AI, ads, infinite content, XR, "generative UI", and more (Ben Thompson/Stratechery)
- Sources: in a first, Apple is using an Indian factory to do the early manufacturing work for the base iPhone 17; the primary iPhone 17 Pro sites remain in China (Wayne Ma/The Information)
- Barcelona-based brain-computer interface startup Inbrain, which plans to work with graphene, raised $50M led by Imec.xpand and plans a trial of 10 patients (Sarah McBride/Bloomberg)
- Amazon plans to shut down its Kindle Vella serialized story platform in February 2025; users won't lose access to unlocked stories after the program closes (Mariella Moon/Engadget)
- An analysis of the top US congressional X accounts: Republicans had nearly all of the posts with 20M+ views and saw bigger gains in followers since July 2023 (Washington Post)
- Shopify says it has lured hundreds of Salesforce clients, including Mattel and Casper; analysts say Shopify overtook Salesforce's e-commerce business in 2021 (Bloomberg)
- Sources: TSMC has suspended shipments of 7nm chips to at least two chip developers over suspicions they were trying to circumvent US export controls on Huawei (Cheng Ting-Fang/Nikkei Asia)
- Sources: in digital euro negotiations, Germany, France, and others say the European Central Bank has gained too much power over how much users' wallets can hold (Politico)
- Hurun China Rich List: ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, who stepped down as CEO in 2021, is China's richest person at $49.3B, as ByteDance's global revenue jumps (Casey Hall/Reuters)
- Nigeria-based Moniepoint, which offers bank accounts, loans, and POS terminals, raised $110M led by DPI, sources say at a $1B+ valuation, after raising $55M (Aanu Adeoye/Financial Times)
- An interview with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney on the path to the open metaverse, the growth of user-generated content on Fortnite, Epic's 3D assets store Fab, and more (Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat)
- A look at the rise of ransomware attacks on schools; a study says the number of ransomware attacks on K-12 increased by 393% from 14 in 2016 to 69 in 2022 (K-12 Dive)
- Q&A with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on "founder mode" and why it's not about micromanagement, obsessing over company structure, Airbnb's Co-Host Network, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge)
- Gartner: AI agents are "one of the most hyped topics in gen AI today"; survey: 75% of CEOs say AI will impact their industry, up from 21% in 2023 (Taryn Plumb/VentureBeat)
- Sources: Apple's iPhone exports from India reached ~$6B in the six months through September 2024, up 33% YoY, on track to pass $10B by the end of fiscal 2024 (Sankalp Phartiyal/Bloomberg)