 Elon Musk is now Twitter's largest shareholder after buying a 9.2% passive stake in the company, according to a recent SEC filing. Based on Friday’s closing price, his stake is valued at $2.89B. More: - Musk purchased the stake on March 14. Analyst Dan Ives told CNBC that the investment may trigger conversations with Twitter that could eventually lead to an active stake and a more aggressive role for Musk.
- The disclosure comes after the Tesla CEO recently criticized Twitter's free speech rules.
- Musk conducted a poll, asking his 80 million+ followers, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”
- Just over 70% of the 2 million respondents said "No." Musk has also expressed interest in building his own social media platform.
- Twitter is now run by CEO Parag Agrawal, who replaced Jack Dorsey after he resigned in November. Dorsey remains CEO of Block, the financial payments company formerly known as Square.
THE NEW YORK TIMES 
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Chipmaker AMD plans to acquire Pensando, a data center optimization startup, for $1.9B in cash. Pensado's platform uses processor optimization to improve data center performance. The deal is expected to improve AMD's competition in the fast-growing data center industry. More: - Pensando offers a programmable packet processor optimized for edge computing and a distributed services platform.
- Its customers include Goldman Sachs, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, and IBM Cloud.
- Acquiring the company will allow AMD to expand its data center offerings and compete with Nvidia and Intel’s data-center chip packages, reports noted.
- The $1.9B deal, which is before working capital and other adjustments, is expected to close in Q2 2022.
- AMD completed its biggest purchase so far — the $50B purchase of semiconductor company Xilinx — in February. Xilinx makes computer chips known as FPGAs, which are flexible for use in data centers and other industries.
VENTUREBEAT
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 Hertz announced plans to buy up to 65,000 EVs from the premium brand Polestar over the next five years. The car-rental company is seeking to electrify its global fleet after previously announcing plans to buy 100,000 electric vehicles from Tesla. More: - The Swedish carmaker, known for the Polestar 1 and Polestar 2 sedans, is a sub-brand of Volvo and its Chinese owner, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co.
- Initial orders will be for the Polestar 2 fully electric sedan. Hertz intends to make the EVs part of its fleet in Europe this spring and in North America and Australia by this fall.
- Hertz and Polestar didn’t share the financial terms of the deal. The starting price of the Polestar 2 sedan is $45,900, which would equate to more than $3B for Polestar at full price.
- In October, Hertz said it would purchase 100,000 electric cars from Tesla, mostly the Model 3. It added the Model Y SUV to its rental fleet in March.
- Meanwhile, Polestar plans to release the Polestar 3 SUV in 2022 and the Polestar 4 compact SUV in 2023. The company plans to merge with the SPAC Gores Guggenheim later this year.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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The heads of technology and product development have resigned from Truth Social, the social-media venture founded by former U.S. President Donald Trump. The app has faced technical difficulties since it first launched on Feb. 20, with many users still on a waitlist. More: - Those who resigned include Josh Adams, Truth Social's chief of technology, and Billy Boozer, head of product development, Reuters reported.
- Both played key roles in the app's development, with Adams being called the “brains” behind its technology.
- Described as a "Twitter clone," the app was developed by Trump's new media company, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG).
- The iOS-only app is still not fully operational, with direct messaging and some other features not available yet.
- Meanwhile, an SPAC that agreed to take Truth Social public is facing a federal investigation for allegedly holding talks with Trump before going public in 2021.
- The venture marks Trump's return to social media after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter for his role in inciting the U.S. Capitol riot based on false claims of electoral fraud.
REUTERS
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 Wing, the drone delivery company run by Alphabet, said it will launch its first U.S. commercial service on April 7 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Residential customers in the towns of Frisco and Little Elm will be able to order items from Walgreens, Blue Bell Creameries, Easyvet, and Texas Health. More: - The companies will receive the orders online and place items in a package attached to a Wing drone.
- The drones will be deployed from small shipping containers that act as hangars next to stores.
- Wing's operations team will fly the drones remotely to homes.
- The deliveries will start with health and wellness products at Walgreens and then expand to other businesses.
- Wing has been testing the service in the Dallas suburbs since last year. It recently completed its 200,000th delivery worldwide after launching pilots in Christiansburg, Virginia, Helsinki, Finland, and Canberra and Logan, Australia.
TECHCRUNCH
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Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's space agency, has threatened to end the country's cooperation with NASA and other partners at the International Space Station (ISS) unless Western sanctions are lifted. In a tweet over the weekend, Rogozin said "normal relations" between ISS partners are only possible with the "full and unconditional removal of illegal sanctions." More: - Rogozin said he sent a letter to NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) asking that they lift sanctions targeting Russia's rocket and space industry.
- Rogozin said Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, will choose a date on which to end Russia’s involvement with the ISS.
- The ISS requires both Russia and U.S. participation to function properly. The current agreement between ISS participants runs through 2024, and the U.S. wants to extend that to 2030.
- Last week, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov returned to Earth from the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Vande Hei set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut.
SPACE.COM
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QUICK HITS: - The U.K. plans to mint and issue its own NFT by this summer as it works to become a world leader in crypto.
- Despite a "difficult quarter," Tesla delivered 310,048 vehicles in Q1 2022, up 68% YoY.
- Epic Games has reintroduced its signature building feature that now co-exists with the new Zero Build mode.
- RoboBurger, a New Jersey robotics startup, debuted an autonomous burger vending machine at a Jersey City mall.
- A Stanford-developed AI algorithm was able to determine if patients have autism by analyzing scans of brain activity. The system could also predict the severity of symptoms for each patient.
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 |  | Beth is a writer and analyst at Inside.com covering artificial intelligence and daily tech news. Since starting work at Inside, she has covered various topics including virtual reality, drones, and e-commerce. Prior to that she was a public policy and investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic, where she won a Pulitzer Prize nomination and First Amendment Award for reporting on the rising costs of pensions. Reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com. |   | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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