Welcome back to your daily memorandum talking tech, business, AI, markets, and more. 🗞️

In today’s edition, we are tackling the following:

💰 Microsoft plans a $1B investment in Thailand over two years.
🚫 Bluesky's new AI assistant, Attie, becomes the second-most-blocked account.
🎥 YouTube CEO says top creators will always consider the platform home.
📈 Palo Alto shares rise after CEO buys stock for the first time since 2019.
🚘 Uber acquires Berlin's Blacklane to expand its luxury chauffeur service.

TECHNOLOGY

• Microsoft plans a $1B investment in Thailand over two years (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: Economic Times, CNA, Yahoo!}}

  • Microsoft will invest $1B in Thailand over two years, focusing on cloud & AI infrastructure.

  • The investment includes workforce development programs to build digital skills across Thailand.

  • The deal follows growing investment in data centers in Southeast Asia's second-largest economy.

• Airtel raises $1B from Carlyle & PE firms for data center expansion (Tech in Asia)
  ^{_{More: CNBC, Economic Times, Reuters}}

  • Carlyle, Alpha Wave, & Anchorage Capital are backing the $1B raise for Airtel's Nxtra data center unit.

  • Nxtra currently operates 300MW of capacity, with plans to scale to 1GW & capture 25% market share.

  • The funding reflects rising global interest in India's data center sector, driven by demand for AI workloads.

• Bluesky's new AI assistant Attie becomes platform's second most-blocked account (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, Decrypt}}

  • Bluesky launched its AI assistant, Attie, at the ATmosphere conference, enabling users to build custom feeds.

  • Around 125,000 users blocked Attie, making it the second-most-blocked account on Bluesky.

  • Only J.D. Vance's account has more blocks, at roughly 180,000, versus Attie's 125,000.

BUSINESS

• YouTube CEO says top creators will always consider the platform home (NY Times)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!, NewsBytes}}

  • YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said he isn't concerned about Netflix poaching the platform's top creators.

  • Mohan called it 'flattering' that rivals view YouTube as the center of internet culture.

  • He said popular YouTubers always return, telling him they'll "never leave their home."

• Palo Alto shares rise after CEO buys stock for first time since 2019 (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, Investing.com}}

  • CEO Nikesh Arora purchased roughly $10M in Palo Alto Networks shares, his first buy since November 2019.

  • Cybersecurity stocks have faced pressure from AI disruption concerns & new tools from Anthropic.

  • Arora argued that AI labs & cybersecurity firms must collaborate to counter increasingly advanced hacking threats.

• Micron shares sink 10%, down 30% since its blowout earnings report (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: CNBC, MSN}}

  • Micron's stock has fallen 30% since its March 18 earnings report, even though it beat expectations.

  • CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said the company cannot keep up with soaring demand for its AI chips.

  • Broader tech losses followed oil price rises tied to the ongoing Iran war's fifth week.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Uber acquires Berlin's Blacklane to expand its luxury chauffeur service (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, MSN}}

  • Uber is buying Berlin-based Blacklane, a premium black-car chauffeur startup founded in 2011.

  • Blacklane has raised over $100M from backers including Sixt, Mercedes-Benz, & UAE conglomerate ALFAHIM.

  • The deal supports Uber Elite, its new luxury tier launching first in Los Angeles & San Francisco.

• Ukraine hits back at Rheinmetall CEO's 'housewives & Lego' drone remarks (AP)
  ^{_{More: The Independent, MSN, ABC}}

  • Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger dismissed Ukraine's drone tech as 'Lego' built by 'Ukrainian housewives.'

  • Papperger said women use 3D printers in kitchens to make drone parts, calling it "not innovation."

  • President Zelenskyy fired back, saying any drone-building housewife could run Rheinmetall just as well.

• Air Canada CEO retires after backlash over French-language crash response (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: AP, Business Standard, The Independent}}

  • CEO Michael Rousseau will retire by October after failing to address a fatal crash in France.

  • An Air Canada Express jet collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport, killing two pilots.

  • PM Mark Carney welcomed Rousseau's exit, stating his replacement must be bilingual.

FUTURISM

• Mantis Biotech builds human 'digital twins' to solve medical data gaps (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: CryptoRank, MSN}}

  • Mantis Biotech creates synthetic datasets to model human anatomy, physiology, & behavior digitally.

  • AI models struggle with rare diseases due to scarce data, a gap Mantis aims to fill.

  • Digital twins could train surgical robots, test procedures, & predict individual injury risks.

• Starcloud raises $170M Series A to build orbital data centers (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Business Wire}}

  • Starcloud's $170M Series A, led by Benchmark & EQT Ventures, values the company at $1.1B.

  • The startup has launched one satellite with an Nvidia H100 GPU, with more planned this year.

  • Space data centers remain cost-prohibitive until next-gen rockets like Starship begin regular commercial launches.

• 15% of Americans say they'd accept having an AI program as boss (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, Tech Buzz}}

  • A Quinnipiac poll of 1,397 adults found that 15% would accept an AI directly assigning tasks.

  • Most respondents still prefer human managers, though AI supervisory roles are growing in popularity.

  • Companies like Workday, Amazon, & Uber are already deploying AI to handle key management functions.

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CONTENT

• Dr. Matthew Jones explains how to repair a broken co-founder relationship (The Startup Podcast)

  • Unresolved co-founder conflict erodes team culture, spikes employee turnover, & can trigger full organizational crises.

  • Jones introduces a Three Languages Framework to diagnose where co-founder communication breaks down.

  • Investing even a small amount of time in the co-founder relationship yields the highest ROI for startups.

• William MacAskill discusses AI risks, effective altruism, & humanity's future (Sam Harris)

  • Sam Harris & Oxford philosopher William MacAskill explore AI risks, global health, & the limits of quantifiable ethics.

  • They discuss the effective altruism movement's recovery following the FTX collapse & its ongoing challenges.

  • MacAskill co-founded 80,000 Hours & the Centre for Effective Altruism, helping launch the EA movement.

• Mentalist Oz Pearlman shares how to read people & close deals (My First Million)

  • Sam Parr interviews world-ranked mentalist Oz Pearlman on reading people & handling performance pressure.

  • Pearlman discusses overcoming rejection, a felony charge, & learning the 13 Steps of Mentalism.

  • The conversation covers persuasion tactics, human lie detection, & performing for high-powered audiences.

EXTRAS

• Rebellions raises $400M in pre-IPO round at $2.3B valuation (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Tech Buzz}}

  • South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions raised $400M, led by Mirae Asset & Korea National Growth Fund.

  • The company has now raised $850M in total, with $650M in the last six months alone.

  • Rebellions designs inference chips & is expanding into the U.S., Middle East, Japan, & Taiwan.

• Google's Pixel 10a ditches the camera bump for a fully flat design (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: MSN, Tech Times}}

  • The Pixel 10a is Google's first budget phone to lie completely flat, with no camera bump.

  • The 6.3-inch display is brighter at 3,000 nits & supports 120Hz, though it ships at 60Hz.

  • Color options include plain black, Lavender, Berry, & Fog, with no major design changes otherwise.

• Meta begins testing Instagram Plus, a new premium subscription service (CNET)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, TOI, Engadget}}

  • Instagram Plus lets subscribers view Stories anonymously & see how many times their own were rewatched.

  • Subscribers can create unlimited audience lists, extend Stories by 24 hours, & spotlight them weekly.

  • The test follows Meta's announcement two months ago of planned subscriptions across Instagram, Facebook, & WhatsApp.

AND MORE

• OpenAI shut down Sora after six months due to low usage & high costs.

• Steve Jobs and the greatest product run in tech history.

• Popular AI gateway startup LiteLLM ditches controversial startup Delve.

• Explore all the tools and more here to outperform the competition.*

• Apple will hide your email address from apps and websites, but not cops.

• Qodo raises $70M for code verification as AI coding scales.

• As more Americans adopt AI tools, fewer say they can trust the results.