Tootfinder

Report: Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone buy out other investors in Assent for $400M, valuing the Ottawa-based supply chain software company at $1.3B (Alex Riehl/BetaKit)
https://betakit.com/vista-ups-stake-in-assent/

US private equity firm Vista ups stake in Assent at reported $1.3-billion USD valuation
Company spokesperson denied that Assent had been acquired, but declined to break down post-deal ownership structure.

A profile of Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, whose ties to influential people in the AI industry and the GOP could give Meta leverage over its competitors (Ellen Huet/Bloomberg)

Canadian crypto companies are encountering regulatory challenges in introducing a local stablecoin, as the US advances stablecoin legislation (Monique Mulima/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-…

Tesla's robotaxi service will launch in Austin with just ~10 cars that are geofenced to avoid complex intersections and monitored by backup teleoperators (Richard Waters/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/2ad302c6-febe-448f-9980-17d116d9695a…

Tesla’s robotaxi ambitions face a reality check after launch
Autonomous ride-hailing service to make tentative debut in Austin, Texas, with only about 10 cars

In a letter to CEO Aravind Srinivas, the BBC says it has evidence Perplexity's default model used its content and seeks "a proposal for financial compensation" (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/b743d401-dc5d-44b8-9987-825a4ffcf4ca

BBC threatens legal action against AI start-up Perplexity over content scraping
British broadcaster makes first move to clamp down on alleged infringement of copyright by tech groups

Microsoft suspending an ICC judge's email account raised alarms across EU about how dependent its governments, businesses, and citizens are on US tech companies (New York Times)
https://www.nyt…

Europe’s Growing Fear: How Trump Might Use U.S. Tech Dominance Against It
To comply with a Trump executive order, Microsoft recently helped suspend the email account of an International Criminal Court prosecutor in the Netherlands who was investigating Israel for war crimes.

Sources: Apple executives have held discussions about bidding for, or partnering with, Perplexity, seeking to address the need for more AI talent and tech (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Huawei unveils a beta version of HarmonyOS 6, making it available to developers, and announces the HarmonyOS Agent Framework to help developers create AI agents (Coco Feng/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/…

Huawei opens HarmonyOS 6 to developers, prepares AI features for public launch
The tech giant did not give a public launch date for the latest version of the operating system, but said it will be more intelligent and open.

How JD.com is taking on China's food-delivery duopoly with viral stunts, low commissions, and deep discounts, prompting Meituan and Alibaba's Ele.me to respond (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

A look at seven UX issues in the Fediverse web experience, including complex onboarding, the lack of a dedicated DM UI wrapper, and fragmented user discovery (Tim Chambers)
https://www.timothychambers.net/2025/06/18/113327.html

The Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse Web Experience (To Fix)
So, confession time: I was recently helping a new client get set up on the Fediverse—guiding them through their first steps into our glorious decentralized galaxy. And seeing it all again through fresh eyes? Reader, it was brutal. So much of what should be table stakes for any social media UX in the year of our Lord 2025 still is missing or deeply broken still. I know progress has been made and a good fight, fought.