Rumble plans to roll out a bitcoin tipping feature, developed in partnership with Tether, to its 51M creators in December; Tether has invested $775M in Rumble  —  The feature is developed with Tether and was announced at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Switzerland.

French online carpooling marketplace BlaBlaCar says India now accounts for ~33% of its carpool passengers and expects to reach ~150M passengers globally in 2025  —  Every few weekends, 21-year-old student Lavanya Jain opens the BlaBlaCar app to find a lift from Noida on the outskirts …

The US AI data center boom is consuming capital, power, and people that the rest of the economy needs, and is crowding out Trump's manufacturing revival plans  —  Spending on factory construction is down 2.5% so far this year, while that for data centers is up almost 18%.

Microsoft says its Gaming Copilot feature, which recently hit Windows 11 as a public beta, uses screenshots to understand in-game events, not to train AI models  —  Microsoft says it isn't using your data to train its AI. … However, one user complained on ResetEra forums …

Sources: OpenAI is developing AI tools to generate music from text and audio prompts, including capabilities such as adding guitar accompaniment to vocal tracks  —  OpenAI recently made a splash with artificial intelligence that generates short videos from text prompts—say, a scene from …

Kyrgyzstan launches a national stablecoin and a CBDC in partnership with Binance; CZ says a national cryptocurrency reserve includes Binance's BNB token  —  Kyrgyzstan has launched a national stablecoin and a central bank digital currency in partnership with cryptocurrency exchange Binance, President Sadyr Japarov said on Saturday.

A profile of Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who left in 2002 and whose claims that Wikipedia has a liberal bias are fueling the right's campaign against it  —  Larry Sanger's long-standing claims of liberal bias and mismanagement at the world's dominant online encyclopedia are being enthusiastically embraced on the right.

Austin-based Roller, a provider of venue management software, raised $50M led by Insight Partners, taking its total funding to over $100M  —  Roller, a venue management platform developer, raised a $50 million round led by Insight Partners, co-founder and CEO Luke Finn tells Axios Pro.

Sources: AI chip startup SambaNova is exploring a sale after it struggled to complete a fundraising round; SambaNova was last valued at $5B in 2021  —  Artificial intelligence chip startup SambaNova Systems is exploring a sale, after it struggled to complete a fundraising round, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Seneca, which is developing autonomous firefighting drones, raised $60M in seed and Series A rounds led by Caffeinated Capital and Convective Capital  —  Climate change is no longer a remote future threat.  Rising temperatures, more extreme weather, and worsening fire seasons …

Defakto, which lets enterprises secure automated interactions between internal systems and AI agents or other non-human actors, raised a $30.75M Series B

Singapore-based wealth management platform Endowus raised $70M+, bringing its total funding to $130M+, and says the new capital will boost its AI advisory tools  —  Singapore-based wealth management platform Endowus has raised over $70 million in fresh funding to finance expansion and AI-driven capabilities …

Glasgow-based Chemify, which combines AI with robotics and chemistry to rapidly make novel molecules for pharmaceutical companies, raised a $50M+ Series B  —  Scottish firm will use the cash to advance its AI platform and robotics system to rapidly make novel molecules

Pave Bank, which lets businesses manage both fiat and digital assets in real time, raised a $39M Series A led by Accel, with Tether and others participating  —  - Pave Bank raised $39 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel, with participation from Tether Investments, Wintermute, and others.

How Changpeng Zhao's pardon frees him to refocus on reclaiming ground in the US market, where Binance.US only has a 0.75% share of bitcoin trading volume  —  Hours after receiving a pardon from President Donald Trump, Binance Holdings Ltd.'s billionaire co-founder Changpeng Zhao issued a thank …