Yahoo!: The digital dinosaur has a lot of life left in it

8/29/23 7:00PM

A dotcom dinosaur reborn

‍Yahoo, an early internet trailblazer, yesterday announced its acquisition of venture capital-focused media startup StrictlyVC to bolster its tech news site, TechCrunch. The deal adds to Yahoo's recent shopping spree, following its acquisitions of the social investing platform CommonStock earlier this month, sports betting app Wagr in April, and “unbiased news platform”, TheFactual, last year.

Yahoo was big tech before big tech was the size of countries. In 1994, the company's founders launched "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" — the first version of a directory and web portal that, as Yahoo, would go on to offer search, email, shopping, news and more, propelling the company’s valuation to $125bn during the peak of the dotcom bubble.

Of course, Yahoo stumbled soon after, as fierce competition — particularly from Google and nascent social media sites — ate into at its user base. As the wave of “web 2.0” washed over the world, Yahoo was increasingly left behind. In 2013, the company acquired Tumblr for $1.1bn — which didn’t work out — and eventually, Yahoo itself was bought by Verizon for $4.5bn.

‍Under new management

‍Since then, Yahoo has changed hands again, and today is owned by private equity giant Apollo after a deal in 2021. Now, the company wants to reinvent itself. Management are looking to get competitive again in the world of search, leveraging the core profitability of its legacy businesses, and the 4 billion (!) visits that Yahoo.com still reportedly receives every month.

Rani Molla43m

Tesla’s EU sales fell nearly 40% in the first 11 months of 2025

From January through November this year, Tesla sales fell 39% to 129,000 in the European Union compared with the first 11 months of 2024, according to new data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, known as ACEA. In that same time, sales of Chinese competitor BYD grew 240% to 110,000. BYD first outsold Tesla there this spring, but Tesla is still outpacing BYD for the year.

Overall, sales of battery electric vehicles in the EU rose 28%.

Tesla has struggled throughout this year in Europe, its third-biggest market — something CEO Elon Musk has blamed on Europe’s lack of regulatory approval for its Full Self-Driving tech, though the decline likely has more to do with competition from China.

Jon Keegan17h

Pentagon adds xAI’s Grok to its AI platform

Grok is going to war.

Today the Pentagon announced that xAI’s controversial Grok chatbot will be added to GenAI.mil, the Department of Defense’s “bespoke AI platform.”

Launched earlier this month, GenAI.mil joins Google’s Gemini on the platform, which the Pentagon says will usher in an “AI-driven culture change” at the agency.

Federal workers have had access to Grok since the White House ordered the chatbot added to the GSA’s approved AI vendor list in August.

xAI has had some embarrassing episodes as it scrambles to monetize Grok, after spending billions on its Colossus data centers. Just this summer, several examples emerged of Grok responding to user queries with antisemitic tropes, and even praising Hitler.

The War Department to Expand AI Arsenal on GenAI.mil With xAI

Launched earlier this month, GenAI.mil joins Google’s Gemini on the platform, which the Pentagon says will usher in an “AI-driven culture change” at the agency.

Federal workers have had access to Grok since the White House ordered the chatbot added to the GSA’s approved AI vendor list in August.

Jon Keegan22h

Alphabet acquires data center company Intersect for $4.75 billion

Google parent Alphabet announced a deal to acquire data center and energy infrastructure builder Intersect. Alphabet already held a minority stake and a partnership with the company. The acquisition is for $4.75 billion in cash.

According to Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai: “Intersect will help us expand capacity, operate more nimbly in building new power generation in lockstep with new data center load, and reimagine energy solutions to drive US innovation and leadership. We look forward to welcoming Sheldon and the Intersect team.”

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026.

Alphabet Announces Agreement to Acquire Intersect to Advance U.S. Energy Innovation

Alphabet Is ‘Most Valuable Company’ on AI Strength, Moffett Says

Rani Molla23h

Tesla might get to a 1,000 Robotaxis in the Bay Area this year after all

Tesla has registered 1,655 ride-hailing vehicles in California, up from just 28 when it launched the service in August, according to California Public Utilities Commission data cited by Business Insider. That growth suggests Tesla — which currently has about 130 Robotaxis operating with a driver using Full Self-Driving in the Bay Area — could realistically hit CEO Elon Musk’s target of 1,000 vehicles in the region by the end of the year.

Registered vehicles aren’t the same as an active fleet, but the increase signals that Tesla is gearing up for significant expansion.

Google’s Waymo remains in the lead, with nearly 2,000 driverless vehicles registered across its two California markets, including more than 1,000 operating in the Bay Area and 700 in Los Angeles.

It’s less clear whether Tesla can meet Musk’s other goals, including deploying 500 Robotaxis in Austin, where just 32 vehicles are currently operating, or removing safety monitors by year’s end. Only two of those Austin vehicles are currently testing without drivers.

Tesla has registered more than 1,000 new vehicles for its 'Robotaxi' fleet in California in just a few months

Registered vehicles aren’t the same as an active fleet, but the increase signals that Tesla is gearing up for significant expansion.

Google’s Waymo remains in the lead, with nearly 2,000 driverless vehicles registered across its two California markets, including more than 1,000 operating in the Bay Area and 700 in Los Angeles.

Jon Keegan23h

Activists claim to have scraped most of Spotify, planning release

An activist archiving group claims they have scraped a large part of Spotify’s library of music.

Anna’s Archive, a self-described “open source search engine for shadow libraries” announced in a blog post that the pirated Spotify files will be a “preservation archive,” meant to archive the snapshot of music for future generations.

Anna’s Archive says they have scraped 86 million tracks. Spotify says their platform hosts over 100 million tracks. The group has already released a database of metadata from Spotify’s collections, having reportedly scraped 256 million rows’ worth, per Billboard, with plans to release music files later down the line.

Such a large corpus of publicly available music data would be a goldmine to AI companies, looking for fresh data to train their models. Spotify told Billboard that it is actively investigating the incident.