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Tech Across the Globe

Airbnb’s World Cup opportunity: Airbnb is joining with the world’s soccer authority, FIFA, to offer celebrity-led activities for soccer fans tied to the FIFA Club World Cup beginning Saturday in the US; the 2026 World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico; and the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil.

AI-designed toys: Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, has signed a deal with OpenAI to use its artificial intelligence tools to design and in some cases power toys and other products based on its brands.

Nominal’s funding round: Sequoia is leading a $75 million funding round for Nominal, a company developing software for the growing crop of companies working on space, energy and defense technology.

Revalued

Samsung and Nvidia are investing in Skild AI, seeking to support the software startup’s work in the emerging consumer robotics industry. Samsung’s $10 million investment and Nvidia’s $25 million backing are part of a funding round that values the company at about $4.5 billion. 

Must Read

Meta Platforms is pursuing a deal that would give it 49% of Scale AI as well as some of the startup’s key employees. The investment is another in a series of “acqui-hires” that Big Tech companies have made of startups working on artificial intelligence, reports Jackie Davalos in today’s Tech In Depth. The strategy, however, is drawing the scrutiny of regulators, who already have contested court cases charging Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Meta with being illegal monopolies in the fields they dominate, she writes.

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This Week in Q&AI

OpenAI’s public release of ChatGPT in late 2022 spurred different reactions from Meta and Apple as they sought a new AI strategy, writes Shirin Ghaffary in this week’s Q&AI. Apple has taken a cautious approach, working mostly in house to develop AI products. Meta, while first launching an open source model called Llama, is now going on an aggressive spending spree, including recruiting top AI researchers, to gain ground, she writes.

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