Techmeme
January 23, 2025, 12:25 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Microsoft and OpenAI were arguing over Microsoft's ability to fulfill OpenAI's computing needs, in the months leading up to the Stargate announcement  —  The partnership that launched the AI boom has been strained by disagreements over computing resources
The Information:
Sources: Sam Altman told some colleagues that OpenAI and SoftBank will each commit $19B to Stargate, and OpenAI would effectively hold a 40% interest in the JV  —  OpenAI and Japanese conglomerate SoftBank will each commit $19 billion to fund a joint venture to develop data centers …
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Bloomberg:
ByteDance board member Bill Ford says ByteDance is exploring alternatives to selling TikTok US, including a change to local control to comply with the US law  —  - Firm's options with Trump team include change of control  — Bill Ford runs General Atlantic, which owns stake in ByteDance
Justin Sink / Bloomberg:
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Researchers detail Subaru's now-fixed web vulnerabilities that would've let them unlock and start millions of Subarus via Starlink in the US, Canada, and Japan  —  Now-fixed web bugs allowed hackers to remotely unlock and start millions of Subarus.  More disturbingly, they could also access …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
The UK CMA opens investigations into Apple's and Google's mobile ecosystems, including OSes, app stores, and browsers, to see the impact on users and businesses  —  LONDON — Britain's competition regulator on Thursday launched an investigation into Apple and Google's huge mobile ecosystems …
Benoit Berthelot / Bloomberg:
France says David Balland, a co-founder of French crypto wallet startup Ledger, was kidnapped on January 21 and freed on January 22 after a police operation  —  A co-founder of French crypto wallet startup Ledger SAS who was kidnapped in central France has been released, the Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement.
David DiMolfetta / Defense One:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Reuters:
ByteDance debuts Doubao-1.5-pro, claiming its latest flagship AI model outperforms OpenAI's o1 in AIME benchmarks, joining DeepSeek in China's AI reasoning push  —  TikTok owner ByteDance on Wednesday released an update to its flagship AI model aimed at challenging Microsoft-backed OpenAI's …
New York Times:
How Ross Ulbricht's allies, including crypto investors, libertarian politicians, and his mother Lyn Ulbricht, persuaded Trump to pardon the Silk Road founder  —  Libertarian and crypto allies of Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for distributing drugs on his Silk Road website …
Andy Chalk / PC Gamer:
A GDC survey of 3,000+ developers: 80% are currently making PC games, up from 66% in 2024, compared to 38% for the PlayStation 5 and 34% for the Xbox Series X/S  —  Interest in PC game development is higher than ever.  —  It's kind of funny to look back on all the times PC gaming has been declared dead …
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
SK Hynix reports Q4 revenue up 75% YoY to a record ~$13.7B, a ~$5.6B net profit, and a ~$5.6B operating profit, in line with estimates, as HBM chip demand soars  —  - Its shares slide in Seoul after a 30% run-up this year  — Demand for high-end memory soaring on datacenter rollouts
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
CAIS and Scale AI release “Humanity's Last Exam”, which they claim is the hardest- AI test yet, consisting of ~3,000 multiple-choice and short answer questions  —  If you're looking for a new reason to be nervous about artificial intelligence, try this: Some of the smartest humans …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: India's technology ministry asked Apple, Google, and other smartphone makers to provide Indians direct access to the state-backed GOV.in app store  —  India is trying to pry open the doors of the world's biggest app stores, setting up a likely clash with Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Hugging Face releases SmolVLM-256M and SmolVLM-500M, claiming they can analyze images, short videos, and text on “constrained devices” with under ~1GB of RAM  —  A team at AI dev platform Hugging Face has released what they're claiming are the smallest AI models that can analyze images, short videos, and text.
More: Hugging Face
Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review: fastest Blender benchmark score ever, DLSS4 frame generation works well, and good cooling but very expensive and power hungry  —  It's the fastest video card I've ever seen, but it's not meant for mere mortals.  —  A $2,000 video card for consumers shouldn't exist.
Kat Tenbarge / NBC News:
Moderators for 50+ subreddits announce bans of X links in new posts and comments, with several citing Elon Musk's recent gesture that many saw as a Nazi salute  —  The cascade of link bans came after Musk made a hand gesture at a Monday rally that many compared to a Nazi salute, which many cited in their protests, among other things.

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Featured Podcasts

Grit:
How Malwarebytes Is Protecting Millions In The Era Of AI Scams | Marcin Kleczynski
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Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI Closes in on $100 Billion, OpenClaw Acquired, AI's Productivity Question — With Aaron Levie
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Loyal's Celine Halioua: From Defying Doubters To Pioneering Dog Longevity
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Notion CEO Ivan Zhao on if AI is really killing software companies
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Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
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More News

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Muyao Shen / Bloomberg:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Patrick G. Eddington / Cato Institute:
Kif Leswing / CNBC: