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| Here's a look at today's Tech briefing: - Binance CEO agrees to plead guilty and pay $50M fine.
- Nearly all OpenAI employees threaten to quit.
- Broadcom plans to close its $61B acquisition of VMWare this week.
- X/Twitter sues nonprofit group after report on antisemitic posts.
Beth
p/beth-duckett | |
| 1 | | Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, founder and CEO of Binance, is set to step down and plead guilty as part of a settlement deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will keep the cryptocurrency giant running. Zhao pleaded guilty Tuesday to anti-money laundering violations and has agreed to pay a fine of up to $50M. More: - The settlement is with both the DOJ and Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
- In the plea agreement, Zhao, who founded Binance in 2017, will be barred from involvement with the exchange for three years.
- He can maintain his majority ownership of Binance but cannot hold an executive position in the company.
- Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange, is also set to plead guilty to anti-money-laundering and sanctions crimes and is set to pay a $4.3B fine.
- The agreement is expected to involve a $3.4B fine coming from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and another $968M from the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Zoom out: - The deal marks the end of the DOJ's three-year investigation into Binance.
- In June, the SEC sued Binance and Zhao, accusing the exchange of commingling customer funds, misleading investors, and engaging in manipulative trading.
- The SEC's wide-ranging suit accuses Binance of blatantly disregarding federal securities laws.
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| 2 | | Nearly all of OpenAI's 700-plus employees have threatened to resign in an open letter if the company's board members do not step down and restore ousted CEO Sam Altman. On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Altman, OpenAI's interim CEO, and at least one board member — Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo — are in talks about possibly reinstating him as CEO. More: - OpenAI's board ended Altman's employment on Friday following a "breakdown of communications."
- Board members accused the CEO of not being "consistently candid in his communications," though none has publicly explained the reasoning.
- On Monday, Microsoft hired Altman to help lead a new advanced AI research team. Most of OpenAI's employees have threatened to quit and potentially join Altman at Microsoft unless he returns to OpenAI.
- Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott has since offered to match compensation for the OpenAI employees.
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| 3 | Broadcom plans to close its $61B acquisition of cloud and virtualization tech developer VMWare this Wednesday, concluding one of the tech industry's largest takeover deals. 
Details: The deal received approval from Chinese regulators on Tuesday, subject to a set of conditions, marking the final hurdle for the companies. It had previously received the green light from the EU, U.K., South Korea, and Japan. China's conditions relate to how the companies sell their products in the local market, including ensuring that VMware's server software works with Broadcom's competitors' hardware. Zoom out: VMWare's virtualization software is compatible with hardware components, including adapters supplied by Broadcom. The deal has faced scrutiny over concerns that Broadcom could limit competition in those hardware markets. Specifically, antitrust regulators were worried about restrictions on interoperability between VMWare's software and Broadcom's hardware rivals, like Marvell. | | | |
| 4 | | Elon Musk's social-media company X sued Media Matters for America on Monday, accusing the left-leaning nonprofit of trying to drive away advertisers by reporting that ads appeared near antisemitic and pro-Nazi content on the platform. A recent Media Matters report showed that ads for IBM, Apple, Oracle, and others ran alongside X posts promoting Hitler and his Nazi Party. More: - In its lawsuit, X argued that the majority of its users would not have seen the ads placed next to the content flagged by Media Matters.
- X accused the media watchdog group of actively seeking out the ads by following advertisers' accounts and those with "extreme, fringe content" and scrolling to find the ads.
- X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that no genuine X users saw IBM's, Comcast's, or Oracle's ads next to the content in Media Matters' article.
- Only two users saw Apple's ad in that context, at least one of which was Media Matters, she said.
Response: - Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, affirmed the organization's support for its reporting, describing the suit as a "frivolous" attempt to intimidate X's critics into silence.
- Separately, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) announced on Monday that his office is launching an investigation into Media Matters for "potential fraudulent activity" related to its X report.
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| 5 | Ford is downsizing plans for its $3.5B Michigan battery plant due to slower-than-expected EV demand, increased labor costs, and cost-cutting requirements. Ford is reducing the plant's capacity to 20 gigawatt hours and cutting jobs to 1,700, down from the original plan of 35 gigawatt hours and 2,500 jobs. More: - After a two-month pause in construction, Ford has announced that it will resume work on the plant near Marshall, but with scaled-back plans.
- The facility, announced in February, stirred political controversy because of its licensing agreement with China-based battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL).
- While the plant is wholly owned by Ford, the U.S. automaker is licensing CATL's technology to manufacture LFP batteries for electric vehicles.
- Its link to CATL has faced criticism from some U.S. lawmakers, who object to American EV subsidies going to a Chinese entity.
- The automaker still aims to produce low-cost lithium-iron batteries by 2026 using the CATL-licensed technology.
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| 6 | | Amazon is launching free AI courses for both beginners and experienced users. The company announced "AI Ready," its program to train at least two million people on AI skills by 2025. More: - The program includes eight free courses on topics like generative AI.
- The courses, open to non-Amazon employees, are available on Amazon's learning website.
- Three of the courses are tailored for business and non-technical users, while the remaining five are specifically for developer and technical audiences.
- A few of the courses highlight Amazon's own AI products, including the CodeWhisperer code generator, AWS machine learning, and Amazon's Bedrock AI for building GenAI applications.
Zoom out: - Amazon said it aims to democratize generative AI education and help tackle the AI talent shortage facing employers.
- A new Access Partnership/Amazon Web Services (AWS) survey revealed that 73% of employers prioritize hiring AI-skilled talent, but 75% of them struggle to meet their AI talent needs.
- Amazon also plans to grant $12M in scholarships to over 50,000 high school and college students for generative AI courses on Udacity.
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Term of the Day Cryptocurrency: A cryptocurrency is a decentralized virtual currency built using a blockchain. Cryptocurrency tokens can be traded or used to make purchases. Question of the Week What perks would convince you to return to the office? Join the conversation |
 | AI and technology writer | | Beth is an editor and writer of Inside's AI and Tech newsletters, with a career spanning journalism since 2007. She has written for publications including The Arizona Republic and USA Today and authored a book on the solar industry in 2016. Reach her at Beth.Duckett@yahoo.com. | | This newsletter was edited by Eduardo Garcia | |
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