In Today’s Edition

• The Most Valuable Tech Companies Still Aren’t Buying Startups

• MakeMyTrip Posts $18.6 Mn Profit In Q1 FY24 As Travel Demand Remains Robust

• SEC Reportedly Asked Coinbase to Halt All Trading—Except for Bitcoin

• Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

• Nintendo’s Switch successor is already in third-party devs’ hands, report claims

• Viral room-temperature superconductor claims spark excitement – and skepticism

🚀Startups Nuts

The Most Valuable Tech Companies Still Aren’t Buying Startups

2023 is on pace to have the smallest number of acquisitions by the Big Five (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia) in years, with these companies making just five known startup acquisitions so far. That paucity of big purchases makes the odds of selling your startup for billions to, say, Google or Microsoft look weak. Zeroing in on the largest tech companies’ acquisitions of startups over the past three calendar years, there’s not a single known deal above $1 billion.

MakeMyTrip Posts $18.6 Mn Profit In Q1 FY24 As Travel Demand Remains Robust

This was MakeMyTrip’s third consecutive profitable quarter after it returned in black in Q3 FY23 by posting a profit of $0.2 Mn. MakeMyTrip generated a revenue of $196.7 Mn Q1 FY24, which rose 37.8% from $142.7 Mn in the year-ago quarter. Rajesh Magow, the group CEO of MakeMyTrip, attributed the strong performance to travel demand staying robust across segments in a seasonally strong quarter for leisure travel.

🏭Business Nuts

SEC Reportedly Asked Coinbase to Halt All Trading—Except for Bitcoin

The SEC’s lawsuit against Coinbase accuses the exchange of trading 13 cryptocurrencies identified as securities and operating as an unregistered securities exchange. It alleges that Coinbase is failing to protect its users with regulatory inspections, required record keeping, and protections against conflicts of interest. The SEC says that Coinbase’s staking program is also an unregistered security. The lawsuit did not include a formal request for companies to delist crypto assets. Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong opted to handle the matter in court as complying would have meant the end of the crypto industry in the US.

Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

Many Tesla drivers have reported getting much less driving range than expected. However, when booking in for a service, Tesla employees would tell them that remote diagnostics indicated their batteries were fine and their bookings were refused. Tesla had deployed a team instructed to thwart customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service as its service centers were inundated with appointments from owners with the same issue. The company had reportedly inflated its in-dash range-meter projections as a lack of range is a primary obstacle for customers looking to purchase an electric vehicle.

📱Tech Nuts

Google Assistant to get an AI makeover

Google plans to overhaul its Assistant to integrate generative AI features. Work has already started on the mobile version of the product. The project will involve team reorganization and some layoffs. A copy of the email employees received regarding the change is available in the article.

Nintendo’s Switch successor is already in third-party devs’ hands, report claims

Nintendo is planning to launch its next console in the second half of 2024. Development hardware for the console is already in some third-party developers' hands. The console will be usable in a portable mode, just like its predecessor, but it will likely go with an LCD screen to keep costs down. There is a need to keep costs down due to other internal upgrades. The device will have a cartridge slot. It is unclear whether the device will feature backward compatibility with Switch games.

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🎁Miscellaneous

Viral room-temperature superconductor claims spark excitement – and skepticism

A claim by a group of South Korean physicists last week may open up a new era for humankind. The team created a purportedly room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor. Such a material could have huge implications for energy generation and transmission, transport, computing, and other technologies. There are now several efforts to replicate the work. This article explains the finding, why it is so significant, the controversies around the studies' publication, and the process that the papers need to go through before the findings are verified.

💡What else are we reading and seeing?

• The Fall of Stack Overflow, Explained

• Amazon achieved its ‘fastest Prime speeds ever

• Selling AI Products Around the World Is Still Too Hard

• AI Can Now Learn from a Simulated Environment

• 5 Effective Ways to Become the Millionaire Next Door

• Generative AI And The Future Of Work

• The AI-Generated Education Issue That No One Detected

😎Fun Fact

A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus, as it takes 243 Earth days for Venus to complete one rotation on its axis but only 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun.

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