Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: Crypto bros. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is among the executives who will be at the White House today for a Digital Assets Summit. It shows how much fortunes have turned for the crypto industry since Donald Trump was elected.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Tech bros. The US president told his cabinet to “go first” on decisions about firings at their agencies, instead of waiting for Elon Musk’s DOGE. It’s one of the first signs of the White House reining in the entrepreneur after tensions have mounted with government officials.

You may not need AI to tell you that the McDonald’s ice cream machine is broken, but there are plenty of other applications that help the fast food chain run more smoothly. McDonald’s is updating 43,000 locations with new technology, including AI-supported drive-throughs and sensors that predict when kitchen equipment will break down, The Wall Street Journal reported. The restaurant chain is also looking into computer vision, or AI that can identify faces and match the customer to the correct order.

McDonald’s has already tried its hand at AI-powered drive-throughs in partnership with IBM, but ended the experiment after some issues with accents and dialects affected order accuracy, CNBC reported. The new drive-through experience will be powered by Google Cloud, which competitor Wendy’s is also using to train an order-taking chatbot.

“Our restaurants, frankly, can be very stressful,” McDonald’s chief information officer Brian Rice told the Journal. “We have customers at the counter, we have customers at our drive-through, couriers coming in for delivery, delivery at curbside. That’s a lot to deal with for our crew.” He added: “Technology solutions will alleviate the stress.”

Tech, GOP scuffle ensues over H-1B visa program

THE SCENE

Key figures in the US tech industry have softened their support for the H-1B program that brings up to 85,000 skilled workers to the US every year after a revolt from President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration MAGA political base.

Now, calls for reform of the program include tech titans like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen, as well as their Democratic ally Rep. Ro Khanna of California, and a broad coalition that includes Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The shift began in December, when the Trump administration hired an Indian American venture capitalist, Sriram Krishnan, to a key AI policy position, drawing a vitriolic and sometimes racist backlash on Musk’s X. Former Trump aide Steve Bannon called the program “a total and complete scam to destroy the American worker” and demanded “reparations for tech workers.”

A wave of tech industry figures immediately showed support for immigrant employees in the sector, many of whom have founded or now run the industry’s most successful companies.

But after saying he’d go to war for the H-1B program, Musk tweeted, “I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform.”

Andreessen, whose iconoclastic views are often a leading indicator of Silicon Valley thinking, said on the Lex Fridman podcast last month that the social media controversy prompted him to think deeply about the issue. The venture capitalist has long expressed unequivocal support for the H-1B program, even visiting Washington to inform lawmakers.

“We have been in a 60-year social engineering experiment to exclude native-born people from the educational slots and jobs that high-skill immigration has been funneling foreigners into,” he concluded.

Andreessen, in a long and multifaceted argument, didn’t advocate getting rid of the H-1B program. Instead, he said the US needs to both bring in highly skilled labor and provide more opportunities to Americans from every background.

But his arguments sound surprisingly like the objections, long dismissed in Silicon Valley, of labor unions and groups representing American-born engineers who believe that a wave of Indian workers has depressed their wages and job opportunities.

The amount the $TRUMP coin generated in token sales and fees in the three weeks after its January launch, the Financial Times reported, signaling potential conflict of interest concerns for the president. The news comes shortly after Trump signed an executive order establishing a government crypto reserve. Trump’s profits in the memecoin, which is trading at a much lower price than its January high, remain unclear.

This week, Mixed Signals goes inside the world of independent creators with a two-part conversation: First, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie on the platform’s appeal for the resistance on the left, their move into video, and why they turned down Elon Musk’s offer to buy them. Then, former Mixed Signals co-host Nayeema Raza joins to talk about her foray into the new media landscape, what she’s learned about the space, and why her new show isn’t on Substack.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday subpoenaed Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, according to documents viewed by Semafor — the latest escalation of Republican attempts to investigate alleged bias in the tech industry, Semafor’s Kadia Goba scooped yesterday.

The subpoena sent by Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, seeks communications from or regarding the executive branch and stems from conservatives’ long-running concerns that the Biden administration “coerced or colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor lawful speech,” the documents say.

Alphabet has a March 28th deadline to respond to the subpoena. “We’ll continue to show the committee how we enforce our policies independently, rooted in our commitment to free expression,” José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement.

One delegate for China’s National People’s Congress proposed a new way of getting around US export controls on chips: keeping illicit purchases discreet, Bloomberg reported.

Currently, some government-backed Chinese firms must publicly disclose foreign chip purchases, making it easier for US regulators to track which suppliers may be violating its export restrictions. Removing the disclosure requirements could help obscure the identity of suppliers and complicates enforcement.

Blacklisted, government-backed entities should be allowed to buy semiconductors out of the public eye to avoid the risk of losing their relationships with suppliers, said delegate Guan Wenhui — who also works for a unit of Naura Technology Group, a US-blacklisted semiconductor equipment manufacturer. The comment came at a breakout meeting of the annual legislative session on Thursday, where nearly 3,000 delegates rubber-stamp decisions made by the Chinese Communist Party.

While Guan’s statement is far from becoming established law, it highlights the difficulties Chinese tech firms have experienced in accessing the necessary equipment to build out AI and the workarounds some are willing to make. Many non-Chinese suppliers have had to cut ties with the country’s tech firms, including Naura, to avoid the hammer of US law.

Those restrictions have forced the country to build out its own chip industry and required companies to operate leaner — which may have contributed to DeepSeek’s game-changing R1 model. Chinese companies are continuing to turn their supply chains inward as the country’s leadership tightens controls on what information enters and leaves the nation. Quieter partnerships with foreign companies could allow the firms to acquire top US tech through neutral third parties, making it difficult for the US to determine who to sanction.

Africa’s creative economy may be small by global standards, but it is thriving, Semafor’s Martin K.N Siele reports.

Netflix invested nearly $200 million in key African markets between 2016 and 2022, the planned takeover of South African broadcaster Multichoice by French TV group Canal+ shows the commercial appeal of viewers in the continent’s most industrialized economy, and African artists have grown in popularity on Spotify.

A growing number of organizations are trying to accelerate that expansion by luring international investors into sectors spanning from sports, music, and entertainment to fashion and film.