ASML, based in the Netherlands, is Europe’s most valuable company and the only maker in the world of the sophisticated lithography machines that are used to make cutting-edge AI chips.
“It’s exceptional that I’m coming here to broadly outline our concerns to Congress,” Sjoerdsma told Bloomberg after the meetings. “The stakes for the Netherlands may be very high.”
China accounts for 19% of ASML’s net system sales. The MATCH Act would go further than existing controls, extending curbs to ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion machines on top of the long-standing ban on its most advanced extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, tools reaching China.
As ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet told TechCrunch in May, what China can currently buy are older-generation deep ultraviolet tools — gear first shipped about a decade ago — the same machines the MATCH Act would now relegate as off-limits.
The bill, introduced in April, hasn’t yet faced a full House or Senate vote; Bloomberg notes it would likely need to be folded into a larger package to pass.
ASML, based in the Netherlands, is Europe’s most valuable company and the only maker in the world of the sophisticated lithography machines that are used to make cutting-edge AI chips.
“It’s exceptional that I’m coming here to broadly outline our concerns to Congress,” Sjoerdsma told Bloomberg after the meetings. “The stakes for the Netherlands may be very high.”
China accounts for 19% of ASML’s net system sales. The MATCH Act would go further than existing controls, extending curbs to ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion machines on top of the long-standing ban on its most advanced extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, tools reaching China.
As ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet told TechCrunch in May, what China can currently buy are older-generation deep ultraviolet tools — gear first shipped about a decade ago — the same machines the MATCH Act would now relegate as off-limits.
The bill, introduced in April, hasn’t yet faced a full House or Senate vote; Bloomberg notes it would likely need to be folded into a larger package to pass.
#Europe #pushing #Washingtons #chip #war #TechCrunchAI chips,ASML,In Brief">Europe is pushing back on Washington’s chip war | TechCrunch
Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma visited Washington this week to meet with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and members of Congress to oppose the MATCH Act, a bill that would bar Chinese chipmakers from accessing Western semiconductor equipment, and one that would hit ASML especially hard.
ASML, based in the Netherlands, is Europe’s most valuable company and the only maker in the world of the sophisticated lithography machines that are used to make cutting-edge AI chips.
“It’s exceptional that I’m coming here to broadly outline our concerns to Congress,” Sjoerdsma told Bloomberg after the meetings. “The stakes for the Netherlands may be very high.”
China accounts for 19% of ASML’s net system sales. The MATCH Act would go further than existing controls, extending curbs to ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion machines on top of the long-standing ban on its most advanced extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, tools reaching China.
As ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet told TechCrunch in May, what China can currently buy are older-generation deep ultraviolet tools — gear first shipped about a decade ago — the same machines the MATCH Act would now relegate as off-limits.
The bill, introduced in April, hasn’t yet faced a full House or Senate vote; Bloomberg notes it would likely need to be folded into a larger package to pass.
Hoffman was on Microsoft’s board when it invested its first $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019. Hoffman was one of OpenAI’s original investors and served on the model maker’s board until he stepped down in 2023, citing too many potential conflicts of interest to continue. He was also on Microsoft’s board when the tech giant entered into one of those non-acquisition, acqui-hire deals for $650 million with his AI startup Inflection AI. Microsoft hired Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman through that deal.
Hoffman said on a recent episode of his “Possible” podcast, while talking with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that he’s ready to go “founder mode” with his latest AI startup, Manus. Manus is a drug discovery company that raised over $50 million through a couple of seed rounds last year. Hoffman is an investor, as is General Catalyst.
Hoffman is cited as a co-founder of Manus and chairman of the board, not the CEO, though. That job belongs to Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a physician, biologist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the 2011 book “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.”
Still, Hoffman said he’s excited to give Manus more attention.
“One of the things I realized over the last month was that, we’re seeing such progress with Manus. I need to get back to founder mode,” he said. He believes the startup is making progress on “Move 37” AI, meaning AI that supersedes human creativity in chemistry, especially to combat various cancers, he added.
Hoffman was on Microsoft’s board when it invested its first $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019. Hoffman was one of OpenAI’s original investors and served on the model maker’s board until he stepped down in 2023, citing too many potential conflicts of interest to continue. He was also on Microsoft’s board when the tech giant entered into one of those non-acquisition, acqui-hire deals for $650 million with his AI startup Inflection AI. Microsoft hired Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman through that deal.
Hoffman said on a recent episode of his “Possible” podcast, while talking with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that he’s ready to go “founder mode” with his latest AI startup, Manus. Manus is a drug discovery company that raised over $50 million through a couple of seed rounds last year. Hoffman is an investor, as is General Catalyst.
Hoffman is cited as a co-founder of Manus and chairman of the board, not the CEO, though. That job belongs to Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a physician, biologist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the 2011 book “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.”
Still, Hoffman said he’s excited to give Manus more attention.
“One of the things I realized over the last month was that, we’re seeing such progress with Manus. I need to get back to founder mode,” he said. He believes the startup is making progress on “Move 37” AI, meaning AI that supersedes human creativity in chemistry, especially to combat various cancers, he added.
#Reid #Hoffman #leaving #Microsofts #board #founder #mode #startup #Manus #TechCrunchIn Brief,Manus AI,Microsoft,Reid Hoffman">Reid Hoffman is leaving Microsoft’s board to go ‘founder mode’ with startup Manus | TechCrunch
Hoffman was on Microsoft’s board when it invested its first $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019. Hoffman was one of OpenAI’s original investors and served on the model maker’s board until he stepped down in 2023, citing too many potential conflicts of interest to continue. He was also on Microsoft’s board when the tech giant entered into one of those non-acquisition, acqui-hire deals for $650 million with his AI startup Inflection AI. Microsoft hired Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman through that deal.
Hoffman said on a recent episode of his “Possible” podcast, while talking with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that he’s ready to go “founder mode” with his latest AI startup, Manus. Manus is a drug discovery company that raised over $50 million through a couple of seed rounds last year. Hoffman is an investor, as is General Catalyst.
Hoffman is cited as a co-founder of Manus and chairman of the board, not the CEO, though. That job belongs to Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a physician, biologist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the 2011 book “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.”
Still, Hoffman said he’s excited to give Manus more attention.
“One of the things I realized over the last month was that, we’re seeing such progress with Manus. I need to get back to founder mode,” he said. He believes the startup is making progress on “Move 37” AI, meaning AI that supersedes human creativity in chemistry, especially to combat various cancers, he added.
It has launched a venture called Next Frontier to buy up land near large power sources with the goal of turning those parcels into data centers, the Wall Street Journal reports. Sources tell the WSJ that Next Frontier has already signed a joint venture with Fluidstack, a cloud infrastructure startup that penned a $50 billion deal to build data centers for Anthropic. (Coatue did not respond to a request for comment.)
Although the U.S. already has 3,000 data centers, more than 1,500 new ones are in various stages of being built, according to Pew Research, most of them in rural areas. The frenzy is enticing land speculation and data center financing projects from lots of players, ranging from Blackstone to Kevin O’Leary from “Shark Tank.”
It has launched a venture called Next Frontier to buy up land near large power sources with the goal of turning those parcels into data centers, the Wall Street Journal reports. Sources tell the WSJ that Next Frontier has already signed a joint venture with Fluidstack, a cloud infrastructure startup that penned a $50 billion deal to build data centers for Anthropic. (Coatue did not respond to a request for comment.)
Although the U.S. already has 3,000 data centers, more than 1,500 new ones are in various stages of being built, according to Pew Research, most of them in rural areas. The frenzy is enticing land speculation and data center financing projects from lots of players, ranging from Blackstone to Kevin O’Leary from “Shark Tank.”
.
#Coatue #plan #buy #land #data #centers #possibly #Anthropic #TechCrunchAnthropic,coatue,data centers,In Brief">Coatue has a plan to buy up land for data centers, possibly for Anthropic | TechCrunch
Coatue, one of the biggest names in venture capital and hedge funds, has a new plan to generate bigger returns on AI beyond its sizable stakes in Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and data center companies like Singapore’s DayOne and CoreWeave.
It has launched a venture called Next Frontier to buy up land near large power sources with the goal of turning those parcels into data centers, the Wall Street Journal reports. Sources tell the WSJ that Next Frontier has already signed a joint venture with Fluidstack, a cloud infrastructure startup that penned a $50 billion deal to build data centers for Anthropic. (Coatue did not respond to a request for comment.)
Although the U.S. already has 3,000 data centers, more than 1,500 new ones are in various stages of being built, according to Pew Research, most of them in rural areas. The frenzy is enticing land speculation and data center financing projects from lots of players, ranging from Blackstone to Kevin O’Leary from “Shark Tank.”
Coatue, one of the biggest names in venture capital and hedge funds, has a new…
Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised a $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation led by Sequoia. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Spark Capital, and Terrain Capital also participated, the company said.
This raise comes just five months after the startup announced its $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation led by Kleiner and Index, and brings the total capital it raised to $230 million.
Parallel offers a suite of web search and research APIs specifically for AI agents and names customers such as Clay, Harvey, Notion, and Opendoor. It says its customers include banks and hedge funds (though it has not named them).
The confidence of investors in Agrawal’s startup has to be particularly gratifying for him after his time at Twitter ended with a subsequent lawsuit. Elon Musk famously fired him and all the top execs after he bought Twitter. Those execs, including Agrawal, sued, alleging that Musk failed to pay the $128 million in severance pay they believe they were owed. In October, Musk settled the case for undisclosed terms.
In addition to some big-name customers, Parallel tells TechCrunch it has over 100,000 developers using its products.
Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised a $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation led by Sequoia. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Spark Capital, and Terrain Capital also participated, the company said.
This raise comes just five months after the startup announced its $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation led by Kleiner and Index, and brings the total capital it raised to $230 million.
Parallel offers a suite of web search and research APIs specifically for AI agents and names customers such as Clay, Harvey, Notion, and Opendoor. It says its customers include banks and hedge funds (though it has not named them).
The confidence of investors in Agrawal’s startup has to be particularly gratifying for him after his time at Twitter ended with a subsequent lawsuit. Elon Musk famously fired him and all the top execs after he bought Twitter. Those execs, including Agrawal, sued, alleging that Musk failed to pay the $128 million in severance pay they believe they were owed. In October, Musk settled the case for undisclosed terms.
In addition to some big-name customers, Parallel tells TechCrunch it has over 100,000 developers using its products.
#Parallel #Web #Systems #hits #valuation #months #big #raise #TechCrunchai agent,In Brief,parag agrawal,Parallel Web Systems">Parallel Web Systems hits $2B valuation five months after its last big raise | TechCrunch
Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised a $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation led by Sequoia. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Spark Capital, and Terrain Capital also participated, the company said.
This raise comes just five months after the startup announced its $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation led by Kleiner and Index, and brings the total capital it raised to $230 million.
Parallel offers a suite of web search and research APIs specifically for AI agents and names customers such as Clay, Harvey, Notion, and Opendoor. It says its customers include banks and hedge funds (though it has not named them).
The confidence of investors in Agrawal’s startup has to be particularly gratifying for him after his time at Twitter ended with a subsequent lawsuit. Elon Musk famously fired him and all the top execs after he bought Twitter. Those execs, including Agrawal, sued, alleging that Musk failed to pay the $128 million in severance pay they believe they were owed. In October, Musk settled the case for undisclosed terms.
In addition to some big-name customers, Parallel tells TechCrunch it has over 100,000 developers using its products.
#Parallel #Web #Systems #hits #valuation #months #big #raise #TechCrunchai agent,In Brief,parag agrawal,Parallel Web Systems
Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has…
After the revised OpenAI/Microsoft agreement was announced on Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted in a tweet that it was a “very interesting announcement.” That agreement solved OpenAI’s problem of allowing AWS to offer its products, an issue that crystalized after it signed an up-to-$50-billion deal with Amazon.
Amazon announced on Tuesday that AWS’s Bedrock service now has OpenAI’s latest models, its code-writing service Codex, and a new product for creating OpenAI-powered AI agents. Bedrock is Amazon’s AI app building and model-choosing service.
Amazon is calling the new agent service Bedrock Managed Agents. It is specifically designed to use OpenAI’s reasoning models, offering features like agent steering and security.
Amazon promises in its blog post that “this is the beginning of a deeper collaboration between AWS and OpenAI.” And it will certainly be interesting to watch.
After the revised OpenAI/Microsoft agreement was announced on Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted in a tweet that it was a “very interesting announcement.” That agreement solved OpenAI’s problem of allowing AWS to offer its products, an issue that crystalized after it signed an up-to-$50-billion deal with Amazon.
Amazon announced on Tuesday that AWS’s Bedrock service now has OpenAI’s latest models, its code-writing service Codex, and a new product for creating OpenAI-powered AI agents. Bedrock is Amazon’s AI app building and model-choosing service.
Amazon is calling the new agent service Bedrock Managed Agents. It is specifically designed to use OpenAI’s reasoning models, offering features like agent steering and security.
Amazon promises in its blog post that “this is the beginning of a deeper collaboration between AWS and OpenAI.” And it will certainly be interesting to watch.
#Amazon #offering #OpenAI #products #AWS #TechCrunchAmazon,AWS,In Brief,OpenAI">Amazon is already offering new OpenAI products on AWS | TechCrunch
Almost as soon as OpenAI announced that its major investor and cloud partner, Microsoft, no longer has exclusive rights to any of its products, Amazon started gloating.
After the revised OpenAI/Microsoft agreement was announced on Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted in a tweet that it was a “very interesting announcement.” That agreement solved OpenAI’s problem of allowing AWS to offer its products, an issue that crystalized after it signed an up-to-$50-billion deal with Amazon.
Amazon announced on Tuesday that AWS’s Bedrock service now has OpenAI’s latest models, its code-writing service Codex, and a new product for creating OpenAI-powered AI agents. Bedrock is Amazon’s AI app building and model-choosing service.
Amazon is calling the new agent service Bedrock Managed Agents. It is specifically designed to use OpenAI’s reasoning models, offering features like agent steering and security.
Amazon promises in its blog post that “this is the beginning of a deeper collaboration between AWS and OpenAI.” And it will certainly be interesting to watch.
Semafor reported Sunday that Canadian holding company Tiny, which owns some 60% of Letterboxd, has been courting various potential buyers, including Versant, the parent company of CNBC and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC). Another potential buyer is The Ankler, a popular Hollywood newsletter, according to Semafor. Tiny bought the platform in 2023, valuing it at over $50 million. It’s unclear whether the company has neared any sort of deal.
Representatives for Letterboxd and Tiny did not immediately provide comment when reached by TechCrunch.
Founded in 2011, Letterboxd saw a jump in users in the past few years, climbing to about 26 million users this year, up from 1.7 million in 2020, according to The New York Times. In recent years, the site has seen interest from movie studios, which see it both as a vehicle for marketing films and a source of information about moviegoer trends, as well as from the Oscars, which teamed up with the social platform in a digital content partnership several years ago.
Semafor reported Sunday that Canadian holding company Tiny, which owns some 60% of Letterboxd, has been courting various potential buyers, including Versant, the parent company of CNBC and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC). Another potential buyer is The Ankler, a popular Hollywood newsletter, according to Semafor. Tiny bought the platform in 2023, valuing it at over $50 million. It’s unclear whether the company has neared any sort of deal.
Representatives for Letterboxd and Tiny did not immediately provide comment when reached by TechCrunch.
Founded in 2011, Letterboxd saw a jump in users in the past few years, climbing to about 26 million users this year, up from 1.7 million in 2020, according to The New York Times. In recent years, the site has seen interest from movie studios, which see it both as a vehicle for marketing films and a source of information about moviegoer trends, as well as from the Oscars, which teamed up with the social platform in a digital content partnership several years ago.
#Letterboxd #social #platform #film #buffs #reportedly #owner #TechCrunchHollywood,In Brief,Letterboxd,media,movies">Letterboxd, the social platform for film buffs, reportedly looking for new owner | TechCrunch
Letterboxd has surged in popularity in recent years. Once a niche site for only the most fervent of film nerds, the site — which allows users to rate, review, and recommend movies to one another — has continued to add accounts by the tens of millions, thanks largely to interest from millennials and Gen Z. Now, the company’s controlling investor has apparently made it known that they are looking to cash out.
Semafor reported Sunday that Canadian holding company Tiny, which owns some 60% of Letterboxd, has been courting various potential buyers, including Versant, the parent company of CNBC and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC). Another potential buyer is The Ankler, a popular Hollywood newsletter, according to Semafor. Tiny bought the platform in 2023, valuing it at over $50 million. It’s unclear whether the company has neared any sort of deal.
Representatives for Letterboxd and Tiny did not immediately provide comment when reached by TechCrunch.
Founded in 2011, Letterboxd saw a jump in users in the past few years, climbing to about 26 million users this year, up from 1.7 million in 2020, according to The New York Times. In recent years, the site has seen interest from movie studios, which see it both as a vehicle for marketing films and a source of information about moviegoer trends, as well as from the Oscars, which teamed up with the social platform in a digital content partnership several years ago.
Factory founder Matan Grinberg told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s key differentiator is its ability to switch between different foundation models, such as Anthropic’s Claude or Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. However, startups like Cursor also don’t rely on a single model to generate code.
Factory’s customers include engineering teams at Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Palo Alto Networks.
The startup was founded in 2023 after Grinberg, then a PhD student at UC Berkeley, cold-emailed Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. The two bonded over mutual academic interest. (Maguire’s PhD from Caltech is in the same area of physics Grinberg was studying.)
Maguire convinced Grinberg to drop out and launch Factory, with Sequoia backing the startup at the seed stage.
Factory founder Matan Grinberg told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s key differentiator is its ability to switch between different foundation models, such as Anthropic’s Claude or Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. However, startups like Cursor also don’t rely on a single model to generate code.
Factory’s customers include engineering teams at Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Palo Alto Networks.
The startup was founded in 2023 after Grinberg, then a PhD student at UC Berkeley, cold-emailed Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. The two bonded over mutual academic interest. (Maguire’s PhD from Caltech is in the same area of physics Grinberg was studying.)
Maguire convinced Grinberg to drop out and launch Factory, with Sequoia backing the startup at the seed stage.
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#Factory #hits #1.5B #valuation #build #coding #enterprises #TechCrunchAI coding tools,In Brief,Khosla Ventures,Sequioa">Factory hits $1.5B valuation to build AI coding for enterprises | TechCrunch
More than three years after the emergence of generative AI, AI-assisted coding remains by far the most popular and lucrative use case for the technology.
Although multiple companies — including Anthropic, maker of Claude Code, as well as Cursor and Cognition — are already vying for dominance, investors believe there is room for at least one more player.
On Wednesday, Factory, a startup developing AI agents for enterprise engineering teams, announced it had raised $150 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Blackstone. Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, joined the startup’s board.
Factory founder Matan Grinberg told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s key differentiator is its ability to switch between different foundation models, such as Anthropic’s Claude or Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. However, startups like Cursor also don’t rely on a single model to generate code.
Factory’s customers include engineering teams at Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Palo Alto Networks.
The startup was founded in 2023 after Grinberg, then a PhD student at UC Berkeley, cold-emailed Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. The two bonded over mutual academic interest. (Maguire’s PhD from Caltech is in the same area of physics Grinberg was studying.)
Maguire convinced Grinberg to drop out and launch Factory, with Sequoia backing the startup at the seed stage.
