Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
London-based Vertice, which offers an AI-powered SaaS spend platform, raised a $50M Series C led by Lakestar, taking its total funding to ~$100M  —  Vertice has made a name for itself over the years in the crowded world of expenditure management by focusing on applying AI to optimize an area …

Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Google unveils classroom and accessibility ChromeOS features, including rolling out a tool to let users control a device with their head and facial expressions  —  Google is announcing a variety of classroom and accessibility-focused ChromeOS features today, and one of the standouts is being able …

Financial Times:
Memo: ByteDance asks Chinese staff in Singapore to pay tax to China or risk losing their ability to cash out on stock options, as China steps up tax enforcement  —  ByteDance's missive comes as China steps up enforcement of global tax collection  —  TikTok parent ByteDance is asking Chinese employees …

Omkar Godbole / CoinDesk:
Crypto exchange Deribit reports total trading volume, including options, futures, and more, rose 95% YoY to $1.19T in 2024; options volume rose 99% YoY to $743B  —  Need evidence of the crypto market's maturation?  Look no further than Deribit, the crypto exchange that registered record trading volumes in 2024.

Danny Park / The Block:
A Texas District Court rules against the sanctions on Tornado Cash, ordering a previous decision to be reversed; the US sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022  —  - A U.S. District Court has ordered the sanctions on Tornado Cash to be reversed.  — The price of TORN jumped over 140% following the news.

Financial Times:
UK CMA Chair Marcus Bokkerink plans to leave the antitrust agency, after pressure from UK ministers; the CMA appoints ex-Amazon exec Doug Gurr as interim chair  —  Marcus Bokkerink replaced at CMA with government saying it wants pro-business decisions to drive prosperity and growth

The Cloudflare Blog:
In 2024, Cloudflare's autonomous DDoS defense systems blocked ~21.3M DDoS attacks, up 53% YoY, and 420+ DDoS attacks in Q4 2024 exceeded 1Tbps, up 1,885% QoQ  —  This post is also available in .體中文, Deutsch, 한국어, Español (Espaňa) and Français.

Rest of World:
Eager to attract investments, politicians in Brazil, India, and other non-Western nations with nascent AI regulations have warmly welcomed major AI companies  —  Big AI companies have come out hard against comprehensive regulatory efforts in the West — but are receiving a warm welcome from leaders in many other countries.

Louise Matsakis / Wired:
Days before TikTok briefly went dark, Meta made Instagram and Facebook design tweaks, added new features, and ran ads promoting its apps as TikTok alternatives  —  In the days before TikTok went dark, Instagram and Facebook released a flurry of new features and ran advertisements promoting its platforms as a comparable alternative.

Bloomberg:
Quant trading firm XTX, managing $250B+ in daily trades, plans to invest €1B+ on five data centers in Finland to support its growing use of machine learning  —  - Billionaire's quant firm plans five data centers in Finland  — The move bucks trend of relying on third-party infrastructure

Financial Times:
Some crypto executives fear investor backlash over $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins; CoinMarketCap reports most $TRUMP trading is concentrated on Asian exchanges  —  Industry trying to rebuild its reputation frets over potential conflicts of interest and investor losses

TechCrunch:
Truecaller rolls out real-time caller ID to its ~750K iOS subscribers, who account for 40% of its revenue; Truecaller has 2.6M+ paying subscribers in total  —  Popular caller ID app Truecaller has long left iPhone users at a disadvantage by not offering the caller information in real-time …

Kenza Bryan / Financial Times:
Microsoft plans to buy 3.5M carbon credits, estimated to be worth ~$200M, from Re.green over 25 years to restore parts of Brazil's Amazon and Atlantic forests  —  Tech giant acquires carbon credits worth around $200mn, as energy usage surges due to generative artificial intelligence

Becky Bracken / Dark Reading:
The Trump administration fires all advisory committee members within the DHS, including those in the CISA's CSRB, which was investigating Salt Typhoon hackers  —  In a letter sent today, the acting DHS secretary terminated membership to all advisory boards, including the Cyber Safety Review Board …

Financial Times:
Sources: Google is investing $1B+ more in Anthropic, which is also nearing a further $2B round from Silicon Valley VCs led by Lightspeed at a ~$60B valuation  —  Artificial intelligence group closes in on $60bn valuation  —  Google is making a fresh investment of more than $1bn into OpenAI rival Anthropic …