Binance Pauses Withdrawals, Rivian’s R2 Leads, GM Settles Over Driver Data

CRYPTO / WEB3 • YESTERDAY

Binance Freezes Withdrawals After a Record Crypto Hack

Binance suspended withdrawals on several networks Thursday after attackers drained its wallets. Binance puts the damage at about $6.3 billion. Chainalysis says roughly $5.9 billion was stolen. Either figure tops the previous record, Bybit's $1.4 billion loss in 2025.

Tether froze more than $1.57 billion of USDT. Circle froze more than $800 million of USDC. Binance blames a compromised engineer's laptop and says it found no leaked private key. Co-CEO Yi He says Binance will cover all losses. Bitcoin fell below $77,000.

If you keep coins on Binance, you can't withdraw them yet, and Binance hasn't given a restart date. Ignore any message about the hack that comes with a link. Binance says scammers are already sending fakes.

Sources: CoinDesk, TechCrunch, Reuters

STARTUPS / BUSINESS • YESTERDAY

AWS Speeds Up, but Amazon Misses on Earnings

Amazon said Thursday that AWS revenue hit $45.98 billion, up 39%. Analysts expected $45.29 billion. Total sales rose 12% to $201.9 billion. Earnings of $1.89 a share missed the $1.97 forecast.

Amazon still plans about $220 billion in capital spending this year, and that pushed its free cash flow negative. See the stat below. If you own Amazon stock, the cloud is working, but the cash isn't there yet.

Sources: Amazon, TechCrunch

PRODUCTS / LAUNCHES • YESTERDAY

Rivian's R2 Is Already Its Best Seller

Rivian delivered 19,248 vehicles last quarter, about 45% more than a year ago. The R2 SUV is now its best seller, though Rivian gave no unit count.

Rivian raised its full-year delivery floor to 67,000. It lost $913 million on about $2.2 billion in revenue.

The R2 costs just under $60,000 today. A $53,990 trim arrives later this year, and $44,990 versions come in 2027. If you want the cheapest R2, plan on waiting about a year.

Sources: TechCrunch, Electrek

CONSUMER TECH • YESTERDAY

GM Settles With 36 States Over Selling Driving Data

GM will pay $220 million to settle with 36 state attorneys general. They said GM sold driving and location data from its Smart Driver feature to data brokers, who passed it to insurers.

GM now needs your express consent to collect or share that data, and outside reviewers will check its compliance. GM says Smart Driver ended in 2024. Drive a recent GM car? Check the privacy settings in its app this week.

Sources: TechCrunch, Connecticut Attorney General

ENERGY / CLIMATE TECH • YESTERDAY

BYD's Profit Rose, and So Did Its Pile of Unsold Cars

BYD earned 10.02 billion yuan last quarter, up 28.1% but below analysts' forecasts. Exports jumped 137% to 550,704 cars. Sales inside China fell about 12%.

Inventory hit 221.58 billion yuan, up 60% since December. Cash and securities fell 45%. Electrek warns that write-downs could grow if those cars don't sell abroad at decent prices. Expect more BYD discounts overseas.

Sources: BYD, Electrek

AI / MACHINE LEARNING • YESTERDAY

Mistral Puts Its Trillion-Parameter Model Up for Download

Mistral posted the weights for Mistral Large 4 on Hugging Face Thursday. The model has about one trillion parameters, and Mistral pitches it for cyber defense.

Companies can download it and run it on their own servers. Selling it as a hosted service needs a separate license. Mistral claims it uses 47% fewer tokens per task, but The Decoder says it still trails Chinese rivals overall. Plan on a server cluster, not a laptop.

Sources: TechCrunch, AI Weekly, The Decoder

CRYPTO / WEB3 • YESTERDAY

A Blockchain Tracer Says North Korea Hit Binance

CNA interviewed Ari Redbord of TRM Labs about the Binance theft. He says he has high confidence that North Korea's TraderTraitor group did it, based on blockchain tracing.

That's TRM's call, not an official finding. Binance says about $3 billion of the stolen money is frozen. The open question is how Binance covers the rest.

► Watch the video

Sources: CNA, TRM Labs, CoinDesk