Brian McCullough (0:04)

Welcome to the Techmeme ride home for Thursday, March 6th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, more signs the Tech IPO logjam is breaking another cheap new AI model from China. Would you pay $20,000 a month to use an OpenAI agent? The umpteenth foldable iPhone rumor, though, this time with dates. And let me introduce you to YouTube Premium Lite. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech on the tech IPO watch. Things are starting to shake loose. Case number one Klarna is set to file for a $1 billion plus IPO as soon as next week, quoting Bloomberg. The payments business aims to price the APO in early April, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn't public. Klarna is targeting a valuation of more than $15 billion in the new York Stock Exchange listing, the people said. Klarna is best known for its offering of Buy Now Pay later loans, which typically allow users to make a purchase and split their payments into equal interest free installments. The company has amassed 85 million customers around the world and 600,000 retail partners. Klarna has seen estimates of its valuation fluctuate wildly in recent years. The figure reached a high of $45.6 billion in a funding round in 2021, only to plunge to $6.7 billion in around the following year. Analysts last year gave it an implied valuation of around $14.6 billion, based on shareholder Chrysalis Investment's estimate of the worth of its stake, chief Executive Officer Sebastian Siemiatowski said last month. The firm known for its Buy Now Pay later offerings is exploring an expansion into the cryptocurrency market. He posted I Give up on social media platform X on February 8, saying Klarna will embrace crypto. Klarna was founded 20 years ago in Stockholm, Sweden, but in 2023 it began setting up a new UK holding company as part of its preparatory work for an eventual public offering. The company has since refocused ahead of the planned I shedding businesses, focusing on payment partners and investing in artificial intelligence. In recent months, Klarna agreed to divest its checkout payments business for about $520 million, while it also snapped up Laybi, a provider of Buy Now Pay later services in New Zealand. End quote. And now case number two, the Times says Discord is in early talks with bankers about a potential IPO that could come as soon as later this year. Discord was last valued by investors in 2021 at around $15 billion quote Discord was founded by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevsky, two tech workers who originally came together to build a video games studio. After releasing their first title, the two hit upon the idea of Discord. After realizing they had difficulty communicating with each other online while playing a game. They released the first version of Discord on desktop computers and smartphones in May 2015. Gamers embrace the platform, which allows people to chat over text, voice and video calls inside the app for free. Discord also saw a boom in use during the early days of the pandemic. The company held acquisition with Microsoft in 2021 for a reported $10 billion, though no deal materialized. More than 200 million people use Discord every month, with 93% of them using the app to play games. The company makes money through a freemium model in which people can use the apps for free and pay subscription fees for upgraded features like custom emojis and higher quality voice and video chat. Discord does not rely on traditional advertising to generate revenue. In recent years, Discord has tried to expand its appeal, embracing influencers, musicians and other figures who have created their own Discord Chat for their fans to gather and form online communities. End quote here's another one Alibaba has released qwq 32B, an open source reasoning model on Hugging face and Model scope, claiming performance similar to deep seq R1 with lower compute needs. Quoting VentureBeat QEN team, a division of Chinese e commerce giant Alibaba developing its growing family of open source Qin large language models, has introduced qwq 32B, a new 32 billion parameter reasoning model designed to improve performance on complex problem solving tasks through reinforcement learning or rl. Qwq, short for QEN with Questions, was first introduced by Alibaba in November 2024 as an open source reasoning model aimed at competing with OpenAI's 01 preview. Traditional instruction tuned models often struggle with difficult reasoning tasks, but the QEN team's research suggests that RL can significantly improve a model's ability to solve problems, complex problems. QW Q32B builds on this idea by implementing a multi stage RL training approach to enhance mathematical reasoning, coding proficiency and general problem solving. For example, while Deep Seq R1 operates with 671 billion parameters, with 37 billion activated, QW Q32B achieves comparable performance with a much smaller footprint, typically requiring 24 gigabytes of VRAM on a GPU. Nvidia's H1 hundreds have 80 gigabytes compared to more than 1500 gigabytes of VRAM for running the full Deepsea R1 16 Nvidia A100 GPUs. Highlighting the efficiency of QEN's RL approach for enterprise leaders including CEOs, CTOs, IT leaders, team managers and AI application developers. QW Q32B represents a potential shift in how AI can support business decision making and technical innovation. With its RL driven reasoning capabilities, the model can provide more accurate, structured and context aware insights, making it valuable for use cases such as automated data analysis, analysis, strategic planning, software development and intelligent automation. Companies looking to deploy AI solutions for complex problem solving, coding assistance, financial modeling or customer service Automation may find qwq 32B's efficiency an attractive option. Additionally, its open weight availability allows organizations to fine tune and customize the model for domain specific applications without proprietary restrictions, making it a flexible choice for enterprise AI strategies. The fact that it comes from a Chinese e commerce giant may raise some security and bias concerns for some non Chinese users, especially when using the QEN chat interface. But as with DeepSeek R1, the fact that the model is available on hugging face for download and offline usage and fine tuning or retraining suggests that these can be overcome fairly easily and it is a viable alternative to deepseek R1. End Quote Meanwhile, talk about going up market the information says OpenAI told some investors about plans for new agents that would be serious level in lots of different ways including price quote. OpenAI executives said it plans to sell low end agents at a cost of $2,000 per month to high income knowledge workers, mid tier agents for software development costing possibly $10,000 a month, and high end agents acting as PhD level research agents which could cost $20,000 per month, according to the person who's spoken with executives. In the long run, OpenAI expects 20 to 25% of the company's revenue to come from agent products. Our past reporting has given hints about each of these types of agents. OpenAI recently demonstrated ChatGPT's ability to sort through and rank sales leads, an example of the sort of high income knowledge worker work its models can handle. In January we broke news that OpenAI has been working on a coding assistant product targeting senior software engineers and explained the types of tasks it might do. That sounds like the mid tier agent OpenAI discussed with investors. In November, we reported how researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have been using OpenAI's O1 model to solve questions related to nuclear fusion. Presumably that reflects a PhD level of intelligence or something close to it. How to price AI applications is still a work in progress across the industry. Some Companies are stuffing AI features into app bundles like Workspace and Office 365 and increasing the price, while others are charging for AI features only when they solve a task. Meanwhile, Devon, the coding tool created by startup Cognition, costs around $500 a month for a coding agent similar to what OpenAI hopes to launch. As a reminder, OpenAI's most expensive subscription tier today, ChatGPT Pro, costs 200 doll and was growing nicely as of several weeks ago. But ChatGPT Pro isn't technically an agent the way the PhD level research agent or coding agent would be. Though buying the subscription does give you access to OpenAI's web browsing operator agent, it stands to reason that customers would be willing to pay a lot more for AI that effectively does the work of a $200,000 per year software engineer or to speed up important medical research. Such potential customers are probably getting a great deal with Pro, which could be the reason that tier is still unprofitable. End quot As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24 7, so when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. In 25 years of doing business, I've never needed anything other than LinkedIn to do my hiring. LinkedIn's new feature can even help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote Promoted jobs. Get three times more qualified applicants. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates, and with LinkedIn you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of SMBs using LinkedIn say that LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. To find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today, find your next great hire on LinkedIn post your job for free at LinkedIn.com ride that's LinkedIn.com ride to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere from self driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet. It's coming fast, but AI needs a lot of speed and computing power, so how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or oci OCI is a blazing, fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, plus all of your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking, so you're saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to oci, including Vodafone, Thomson Reuters and Suno AI. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to oci for new US customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this Special offer@oracle.com Techmeme that's oracle.com Techmeme Google is rolling out an experimental AI mode in Google Search designed to let users ask complex multi part questions to Google One AI Premium subscribers right now, quoting TechCrunch, Google is launching a new AI mode experimental feature in search that looks to take on popular services like Perplexity AI and OpenAI's ChatGPT search. The tech gian announced on Wednesday that the new mode is designed to allow users to ask complex multi part questions and follow ups to dig deeper on a topic directly within Google Search. The feature uses a custom version of Gemini 2.0 and is particularly helpful for questions that need further exploration and comparisons thanks to advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities. For instance, you could ask what's the difference in sleep tracking features between a smart ring, smartwatch and tracking mat? AI mode can then give you a detailed comparison of what each product offers, along with links to articles that it's pulling the information from. You could then ask a follow up question such as what happens to your heart rate during deep sleep to continue your search. Google says that in the past it would have taken multiple queries to compare detailed options or explore a new concept through traditional searches. With AI mode, you can access web content but also tap into real time sources like the knowledge graph, info about the real world and shopping data for billions of products. End quote. Now related to that, a new Tollbit analysis of 160 websites on their content licensing platform has found that AI search engines drive 96% less referral traffic to websites than traditional Google search. All right, for the umpteenth time, we've got rumors of a foldable iPhone, but this one is from Ming Chi Kuo and this has an actual timeline associated with it. So we have the opportunity for some actual verifiable claim chatter, as Gruber likes to call it. Quoting MacRumors Apple's first foldable iPhone should arrive around the end of 2026 or early 2027 with a book style design and a premium price tag of over $2,000, according to analyst Ming Chi Kuo. In a report today, Kuo outlines his expectations for the device, noting that it will have an approximately 7.8 inch crease free inner display and a 5 inch outer display matching a rumor from last month. Kuo says that the foldable iPhone will measure between 9 and 9.5 millimeters when folded and around 4.5 to 4.8 millimeters when unfolded. It will feature a titanium alloy casing with a hinge made of stainless steel and titanium alloy, and it will have a dual lens rear camera with a front facing camera for both folded and unfolded states. Notably, Kuo says that the phone will forego face ID authentication instead using a touch ID side button as a means to save precious internal space. It will also be positioned as a true AI driven phone with the larger screen allowing for a better multitasking AI experience. With premium pricing above $2,000 and perhaps even above $2,500, Kuo believes the foldable iPhone will tap into Apple's loyal fan base, some of whom will view it as a must have device if its quality meets expectations. Kuo says Apple is aiming to finalize the specs of its first foldable iPhone during the second quarter of this year and officially kick off the project in the third quarter. Mass production is reportedly for the fourth quarter of 2026, so we could perhaps see a launch late next year or early 2027. A second generation model is said to be in the pipeline for a year later, end quote. And actually Apple folks, I've got some good news for you. Those just announced M4 MacBook Airs support two monitors of up to 6K resolution each plus the built in display simultaneously, thereby addressing a noticeable limit. Previous models Quoting Apple Insider While the previous M3 model featured support for two monitors, it was only possible to use both when the MacBook Air's lid was closed. So while users gained the wider screen real estate of two external monitors, they lost the use of their MacBook Air internal display. Now the M4 MacBook Air supports two monitors of up to 6K resolution each plus the built in 3.6 inch or 15.3 inch screen. That 6K resolution is also an improvement. The previous model did support two external monitors but only one could could be 6K. The other could be driven at up to 5K resolution at 60Hz. Either screen could be run at 4K resolution at 144Hz end quote. Finally today I missed this, but you YouTube heads out there, you've got a new cheaper option that is actually pretty compelling if you spend even a half dozen hours or so a month watching YouTube. Quoting TechCrunch YouTube on Wednesday announced a new premium subscription tier called Premium Lite, which will allow users to watch most videos ad free for $7.99 per month. With YouTube Lite, customers will be able to watch videos across verticals like gaming, fashion, beauty, cooking, news and more ad free, but will be shown ads on music content and music videos as an entry level subscription. The new tier won't offer several benefits of the full YouTube Premium $13.99 per month subscription like downloads, background play or the ability to watch music videos ad free. The expansion serves as a way for YouTube to generate more revenue from subscriptions, which could help fuel creators businesses. The new light tier may make the most sense for younger viewers who have largely replaced TV time with watching online videos on sites like YouTube and TikTok. It will also make watching videos on the big screen in the living room more appealing as there will be fewer interrupting ads. YouTube recently said that the majority of its viewing in the US Is now taking place on televisions, which has surpassed mobile devices and desktops, end quote. Yes, speaking of the subscription play, YouTube says YouTube Music and YouTube Premium now have more than 125 million subscribers globally, quoting music business worldwide. The platform, which also operates the TikTok rival shorts, has surpassed the significant milestone of 125 million paid YouTube music and premium subscribers worldwide, including trials. The Milestone means that YouTube has added more than 25 million subscribers over the past 12 months, which works out to slightly over 2 million subs per month on average since its last subscriber announcement of 100 million in February 2024. A question the entire music business will likely be asking today is how does YouTube's subscriber growth compare to that of the world's largest subscription music streaming platform, Spotify? In the 12 months to the end of December, Spotify added 27 million net paying subscribers to reach 263 million paying users. YouTube's latest subscriber update was revealed by YouTube's global head of music, Lier Cohen, in a letter to the music industry today, March 5, celebrating the subscriber milestone and the platform' 20th anniversary. This year, YouTube celebrates its 20th anniversary. Wrote Cohen from a simple video we've grown into the largest music stage in the world, reaching over 100 countries in 80 languages. We've accomplished so much together over the last 20 years. But if you think we're slowing down, you're dead wrong. In the letter, Cohen said that 125 million paid subscribers is an incredible milestone that many laughed off as impossible when we first launched. He added, this momentum is critical to our goal of becoming the number one contributor of revenue to the industry, and we won't stop until we get there. YouTube last announced in September 2022 that it had paid music rights holders over $6 billion in the 12 months to the end of June 2022. Elsewhere in today's letter, Cohen explained how YouTube is feeding its subscriptions funnel by expanding the platform's premium light pilot to US Users. End quote. I told you last week that I'm making a run at maybe getting off the Kindle ebook bandwagon. The jury is kind of still out on that one. But coincidentally this week I also pulled the trigger on maybe switching my TV service over to YouTube TV, and that I don't think I need to wait too long to pass a verdict on. Two days in I can say, goodbye Spectrum tv. I'll stick with your Internet service because I figure it's best to stick with the people that actually own the pipes coming into my house. But goodbye Spectrum tv if I can get them to actually cancel the service. Of course, I recently tried just to cancel the $20 a month phone line that we've never used, and that was an entire hour long battle. Talk to you tomorrow.