Smaller AI companies seek acquihires to spur growth

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Tech Across the Globe

AI slop: YouTube CEO Neal Mohan pledged to combat low-quality artificial intelligence-generated content on his platform over the coming year.

Sony earbuds: Sony is the latest consumer audio brand to offer clip-on earbuds, a design that tends to prioritize situational awareness over sound quality and noise cancellation.

Trouble at Ubisoft: The French video-game developer behind Assassin’s Creed cut its fiscal-year earnings guidance and said it would shut down studios and cancel six projects as part of a restructuring effort.

FCC crackdown: The US Federal Communications Commission told broadcasters that talk shows and late-night programs hosting political candidates must offer their opponents equal time.

Revalued

Upscale AI, a startup developing networking equipment optimized for artificial intelligence workflows, raised $200 million in a funding round that values the company at more than $1 billion. Though Cisco, Broadcom and Arista Networks are also seeking to help customers manage a deluge of AI data, Upscale looks to gain an edge by building a new networking system designed for AI — rather than adapting older technology.

Must Read

Acquihires — nabbing talent instead of an entire company — are on the rise among small and mid-sized AI companies in an atmosphere of acquire or be acquired, Yazhou Sun writes in today’s Tech In Depth.

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This Week in Cyber Bulletin

The protests and the ensuing crackdown in Iran have unfolded behind a wall of secrecy and distortion, making it nearly impossible to accurately gauge the violence, Patrick Howell O’Neill reports in this week’s Cyber Bulletin. But one signal of how threatened the regime felt is visible to the outside world: Iran’s nearly two week-long internet and communications shutdown is the largest in the country’s history, according to experts who track the issue, he writes.

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