Global tech correspondent @FT tim.bradshaw@ft.com Signal: tim.11 (no PR pitches please)
London, England
- Tweets 424
- Following 10,126
- Followers 85,003
- Likes 12,897
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In these uncertain times for Twitter verification, here's the official @FinancialTimes list of @FinancialTimes journalists nitter.app/i/lists/57082219
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I’m now heading out on paternity leave - feeling very fortunate that @FT staff benefits and UK shared parental leave mean I can take three months off to be with this little one. @CristinaCriddle is covering my patch in London in the meantime. See you in 2022! 🐣✊
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First look at @Nothing Phone (1) in the @FT. I spoke to @getpeid about how his startup can succeed where the likes of Andy Rubin’s Essential failed on.ft.com/3Hpr8Tq
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Spotify founder Daniel Ek is leading a €600m funding in German defence tech startup Helsing, valuing the four-year-old co at €12bn.
A biz making battlefield AI, drones, submarines & robo-fighter pilots is now one of Europe’s most valuable startups
on.ft.com/4n5mYEH
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Sign of insane AI bubble or brilliant example of how European startups are getting more ambitious?
Four-week-old Mistral AI has raised €105m in Europe’s biggest ever seed round - tip @Techmeme ft.com/content/cf939ea4-d96c…
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Scoop: Getir's Gorillas deal is done.
- Gorillas valued at $1.2bn, mostly in equity with $40mn cash
- Getir valuation taking a cut at the same time, down 25% since March to $8.8bn
- $10bn valuation on combined group
ft.com/content/aba36d58-f1d5…
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Wow thank you @UKtech_awards! There’s never been a more fascinating time to cover the UK tech industry.
👏 to my fellow nominees @mikebutcher @sabahmeddings @JamieNimmo63 @jamestitcomb @i_woodford
And 🙌 team @fttechnews London @MalcolmMoore @ifwross @madhumita29 @ChrisNuttall
We are delighted to reveal the winner of the tech journalist of the year award, sponsored by @LutherPendragon is… @tim at @FT. Congratulations to Tim on this very well deserved win! #winner #uktech21 @PwC_UK @SVB_Financial
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"If ChatGPT is the iPhone, we’re seeing a lot of calculator apps," Bain Capital's @ChristinaPhili5 tells @GeorgeNHammond of the current crop of AI startups. "We’re looking for Uber."
Many VCs question whether generative AI startups, currently attracting huge valuations, will make enough money, fearing a repeat of the crypto investment hype (@georgenhammond / Financial Times)
on.ft.com/3Zungca
techmeme.com/230307/p8#a2303…
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Improbable is raising £100m in new funding at a £3bn+ valuation, fuelling its latest pivot into building metaverses for Bored Apes et al. UK accounts show it lost £152m in 2021 but it says revenues will triple this year to $100m+ - tip @Techmeme ft.com/content/e0e7cf90-0c5e…
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UK gov concedes it will not use Online Safety bill powers to scan encrypted messaging apps for harmful content until it is “technically feasible” to do so (ie maybe never), thus avoiding WhatsApp shutdown - FT SCOOP by @CristinaCriddle & @AnnaSophieGross ft.com/content/770e58b1-a299…
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Great @micsolana piece on the internet's growing tendency to erase itself (how can we understand past cultures if the platforms that hosted them no longer exist?) and the coming flood of vapid AI-generated mush that nobody will ever read piratewires.com/p/encycloped…
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Nice @grimes_ce dispatch from the Vanity Fair Oscar afterparty: while Will Smith partied on the dance floor to “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”, Tim Cook was out on the lawn, quietly owning Hollywood ft.com/content/67073d0f-69b8…
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NFTs today 🖼️
loads of 💰
surprisingly few 👥
my latest @FTMag column 🗞️
ft.com/content/e5298295-8e79…
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How hard should it be to run a venture-backed tech startup? 996 hard? 247 hard? call-your-mum-in-tears hard? I spoke to @simonbeckerman @surangac &more about why founder burnout is bad for business. The story is on today's #FTEdit app (free 30 day trial!) ftedit.onelink.me/Ju3k/gofjg…
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feels like a good moment to repost my @FTMag column from last year on why super apps suck ft.com/content/9ab775cc-d596…
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iPhone 13 Pro UK launch price: £949
iPhone 14 Pro UK launch price: £1099
Pricing unchanged in dollars.
Thank you, weak pound.
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SCOOP: Andreessen Horowitz is among the "launch partners" for the new Bored Ape token ApeCoin, putting it among the beneficiaries of yesterday's multibillion-dollar $APE debut. w/@MilesKruppa ft.com/content/86aed0ff-ba60…
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Just Eat Takeaway CEO @jitsegroen in 2021: "The gig economy comes at the expense of society and workers themselves."
ft.com/content/d39a8f7b-30e5…
Just Eat in 2023: we're laying off all 1700 couriers we hired in the UK and going back to a gig model
ft.com/content/34caa990-6ec1…
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NEW: UK home sec Priti Patel wants internet companies to proactively monitor for “legal but harmful” content, pitching an update to Online Safety bill that the industry fears would threaten their liability protections - FT scoop w/@pmdfoster @JasmineCC_95
ft.com/content/2422acc5-e618…
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The Twitter advertisers most concerned about @elonmusk's buyout are car makers, sources say. Auto folks don't like the idea of supporting a Tesla-affiliated platform. Some worry their campaign plans will leak to Tesla. One exec already deleted his account
ft.com/content/8b39d137-0d40…
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Great column by @RichardWaters asking THE big question in web3/crypto. Does the fact that so much money and talent is flowing into blockchain necessarily mean that something *actually useful* will come out the other side?
ft.com/content/16eaf1b9-08fb…
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Elon apparently booed onstage in SF at a Dave Chappelle gig last night. “It sounds like some of them people you fired are in the audience,” says Chappelle. Haha?
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Great column by @johnthornhillft on Meta's "first mover disadvantage" in the metaverse ft.com/content/d39db54e-e1a6…
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"European venture capital is failing to go after the hardest problems. Democracy won’t defend itself with the next grocery-delivery app." @nathanbenaich oped in @FT calls for Europe to embrace AI defence tech
ft.com/content/2bb42436-c85f…
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Why a prolific investor in AI is now having second thoughts about the dangers of creating a super-intelligence: "God-like AI could be a force beyond our control or understanding, and one that could usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the human race."
I wrote an essay for the FT - We must slow down the race to God-like AI: bit.ly/3mwP950
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$NVDA opens at $405.96: Nvidia officially joins the trillion dollar club ft.com/content/fd317e1b-0440…
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"A country of geniuses in a data centre" or "just vibes and snake oil"? @Melissahei asks all the right questions about AGI in today's @FT big read on.ft.com/4kYZXla
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Lovely quote from Skype cofounder Niklas Zennström as Microsoft shutters the internet-calling pioneer:
"Skype was a revolutionary product of its time and I will always be proud and grateful for the early team members and investors who took a chance on us. Now other firms are innovating in this space to offer new services for a whole new generation, many of whom will have no idea of how expensive it used to be to call Australia."
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We were promised Ready Player One but we got Minecraft… my latest @FTMag column on the metaverse
ft.com/content/030f55f4-0b95…
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why is @MistralAI the hottest deal in European tech right now? we spoke to CEO @arthurmensch & investors @piadiri @antoine_moyroud @lafamigliaVC to find out ft.com/content/387eeeab-1f95…
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Can becoming a ‘prompt engineer’ save your job from being consumed by AI? my latest column for @FTMag
ft.com/content/0deda1e7-4fbf…
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NEW: OpenAI & Jony Ive's LoveFrom are in talks with SoftBank to raise $1bn+ to fund their new AI device venture, which they want to set up as a new standalone company. Call it the Sam/Jony/Masa supergroup. SCOOP w @MattGarrahan @madhumita29 @KanaInagaki ft.com/content/4c64ffc1-f57b…
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“Impressive enough to wonder if Ticketmaster was about to get disrupted” but notable that Apple’s vision for “spatial computing” doesn’t mention the metaverse or social media
Hands on with Apple’s Vision Pro: bringing the metaverse to life via @FT
My all in one review and analysis with other perspectives: enterprise-sharing.ft.com/re…
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The "how the hell did they do that" @deepseek_ai explainer for the rest of us that you've been waiting for, from the @FT's new AI reporter @Melissahei enterprise-sharing.ft.com/re…
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E-scooter whiplash: Bird, once the fastest startup ever to reach unicorn status, is warning it could run out of cash within a year. $BRDS now worth $75m.
“We don’t believe that selling $2 for $1 is a viable business strategy,” says the new CEO. 🧠🧠🧠 ft.com/content/9617a3dd-a2fb…
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(the other Grimes)
Former Wall Street rainmaker leads purge of US chips subsidies agency via by @MActon93
“Everyone is very cagey about what Grimes is up to,” they said. “This is not a psychologically healthy place to work.”
on.ft.com/43qvZAP
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Jony Ive went on Desert Island Discs @BBCSounds today:
- likes: U2, The Police, Bananarama, working late at night.
- dislikes: tech for its own sake, lentils.
- would probably still be at Apple if Steve Jobs was still alive.
- feels responsible for iPhone’s “not so positive” effects, which is a “contributor to decisions I’ve made since”.
- “unusually optimistic” about AI but worries about rate of change.
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Marshall, the storied British supplier of amps and other music kit to everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Jay-Z, is leaving family ownership for the first time in 60+ years as it is sold to its longtime Bluetooth speaker partner Zound Industries. @FT exclusive🤘 on.ft.com/40nUvhA
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What kind of stake in OpenAI does $13bn buy you? 0%, it turns out - at least in traditional equity.
We had a go at explaining the unusual alliance of OpenAI & Microsoft, as antitrust regulators loom
w/@madhumita29 @GeorgeNHammond @CamillaHodgson
ft.com/content/458b162d-c97a…
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SCOOP @FT: Apple has launched a legal challenge to the British government’s order to create a back door in iCloud.
Its complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal is believed to be the first time that UK powers to break encryption have been tested before the court.
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After years in stealth, Sergey Brin’s airship start-up LTA is scaling up rapidly as it prepares for its first major test flights of 185m-long Pathfinder 1 later this year on.ft.com/3MmeHZf
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Microsoft has invested in Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens, making it the first US Uber investor known to have backed the controversial entrepreneur again after he was ousted from Uber - scoop by @DaveLeeFT
ft.com/content/5a768a67-1d0c…
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A couple of NFT Discords being hacked in a day is considered “normal”… ⬇️ Today BAYC, Doodles and several others were hit.
This isn’t a security problem with NFTs per se - it’s a problem with Discord and the daisy chain of third party tools that server mods have to rely on
1) Today the following nine #NFT collections got their Discords exploited. A significant increase from the normal 2 to 3 a day
> Freaky Labs
> Kaiju Kingz
> Dreadfulz NFT
> Voyager: Unknown
> Nyoki
> Shamanzs NFT
> Zooverse
> Bored Ape Yacht Club
> Doodles (2nd time)
...
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my latest @FTMag column is about why I am trying to keep photos of my daughter off social media (besides inevitably becoming an embarrassing dad at some point...) ft.com/content/fdc8d763-7931…
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Chinese people are putting social media posts on the blockchain as NFTs to evade censors, @EleanorOlcott & @ruiyanggloriali report.
Discoverability remains a problem - but still, a rare example of decentralised social tech actually being used/useful ft.com/content/3bbb2af3-e934…
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Excited to make my debut on the FT Edit app today with my upcoming @FTMag column.
After eight years of VR & AR headset demos, we are still waiting for a breakout product. Will 2022 finally be the year? ftedit.page.link/WHXfxXxVtvi…
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Call them stupid monkey pictures if you want, hate NFTs if you want. But buying (and hodling) a @BoredApeYC less than a year ago has turned out to be one of the best investment decisions anyone has ever made
If you…
-Minted one BAYC for .08.
-Held your BAKC.
-Mutated your ape with an M1 serum.
Your .08 mint is currently worth about 148 ETH.
$250 to $415k in less than one year. 🤯
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in case there's anyone still here, here's what it's like over there ft.com/content/ae7dd329-990a…
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TikTok is planning to lay off hundreds of "trust and safety" staff in the UK and S/SE Asia, replacing many content moderators with AI, just weeks after new Online Safety Act rules came into force - FT scoop w @AnnaSophieGross
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Great @TimSweeneyEpic interview by @PatrickMcGee_. Instead of apps, "in the future I think you’ll see something more like a metaverse browser that points to the right standard and you can visit any metaverse experience."
ft.com/content/e13ce526-0e33…
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"Stripe processed more than $640B in payments in 2021, up 60% from the prior year." 7000+ staff.
50+ customers process more than $1B.
"We expect that a very large fraction of the important tech companies of the next decade will be built outside of the traditional US tech hubs."
This year, we decided to publish our annual letter to all of Stripe's users stripe.com/annual-updates/20…
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“Europe must unite to defend its thriving technological sector,” says Mistral CEO @arthurmensch as French AI group signs AFP deal on.ft.com/3C8z1ys
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BAYC $APE coin has only been trading 20 minutes. Price already gone from $39 to $13. Either way the four Yuga founders hold coins they/their DAO just conjured into existence that are now worth upwards of $1B.
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This is what you see when you try to buy an iPhone 13 on the Apple online store in Russia: “currently unavailable”
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and extra thanks to @CristinaCriddle for accepting the award for me as I couldn’t be at the event in person tonight!
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GMB is taking Bolt to court hoping to force the mobility app to reclassify its drivers as workers, following unions' victory against Uber in a similar case last year. @FT scoop with @JosephineCumbo
ft.com/content/83b08330-c15b…
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Just published: front page of FT Weekend, international edition, Saturday 19 March on.ft.com/3Js6vGy
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the one-stop "wtf is this metaverse thing anyway" video that you've been looking for all these years
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starting in 10!
How do NFTs become mainstream? We'll be discussing this on Twitter Spaces in 15 minutes with @tim @MsHannahMurphy @CristinaCriddle and @SVR13
To send questions, reply below or DM @financialtimes on.ft.com/3G574mT
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you can now read my story on Sergey Brin's airship start-up LTA on the FT Edit app ftedit.page.link/uxDqHvWE6m5…
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the rumours are true... the smartphone is dead
and coming next year from @Humane, the world’s first device built from the ground up for AI
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This is such a great interview
Life highlight might be Jon Stewart calling my book “jaw dropping” and “phenomenal.”
Massive thanks to everyone @TheDailyShow. Totally surreal to be there.
Book is on sale now.
piped.video/NAj9zB4vaZc?si=M7h3…
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⬇️ Some tech industry feedback for @RishiSunak on today's absence of stock options reform for startup employees, long seen as an area where UK & European companies are unable to be as generous as their Silicon Valley rivals
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The $MSFT story is @DaveLeeFT's second Travis scoop in as many days: yesterday he and @Michael_Pooler revealed that CloudKitchens is behind Pik N’ Pak, a fast-growing food & convenience goods business in Latin America ft.com/content/162460f3-5707…
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ICYMI: our @FT scoop from last month on A16Z talks to invest in BAYC creators Yuga Labs at a valuation of up to $5B ft.com/content/acc635d6-bb05…
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NEW: PlayStation boss Jim Ryan hits out at Microsoft's Phil Spencer over Call of Duty's future on PlayStation: "Microsoft has only offered for CoD to remain on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony ends." ft.com/content/780c0432-554e…
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BAYC, meet KYC
This has been building over the last seven months. @AnimocaBrands will launch the first phase, and there’s more to come. P.S. we don’t like KYCs either, but we think you’re going to want to be a part of this.
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Wow. There’s buying the dip and then there’s…
Some big news to share today: Yuga has acquired the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections from @LarvaLabs, and the first thing we’re doing is giving full commercial rights to the NFT holders. Just like we did for BAYC and MAYC owners.
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or to put it another way
Have you ever won the lottery over and over? Owning an ape sure feels like that. It's been a thrilling and rewarding adventure. Incredibly grateful to be a member of the @BoredApeYC.
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Standing on the shoulders of @Jessicalessin's huge scoop on the trio yesterday theinformation.com/articles/…
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A16Z "assisted with overall DAO governance design", a spokesperson said. It shares an allocation of 140,000,000 ApeCoin (worth c$2B) with NFT investor Animoca Brands, entertainment industry vet Guy Oseary, and blockchain dev Horizen Labs
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Lucky Saint, Brooklyn Special Effects, Infinite Session lager, Brulo IPA, Mikkeller Weird Weather. Also Small Beer is like 2% and all decent. 🍻
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I did that programme during lockdown and it worked a treat. But not run for a year so might have to start again!
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i've seen people post with emojis over their kids' faces...which i think might be even more annoying!
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