Techmeme
January 25, 2025, 4:25 PM

Top News

Caiwei Chen / MIT Technology Review:
Rather than weakening China's AI capabilities, US sanctions appear to be driving startups like DeepSeek to innovate by prioritizing efficiency and collaboration  —  The AI community is abuzz over DeepSeek R1, a new open-source reasoning model.  —  The model was developed by the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek …
Financial Times:
Industry insiders say DeepSeek's focus on research makes it a dangerous competitor as it's willing to share breakthroughs rather than protect them for profits  —  Hedge fund billionaire Liang Wenfeng builds model on tight budget despite US attempt to halt China's high-tech ambitions
More: Constellation Research, Bloomberg, ChinaTalk, Hindustan Times, Moneycontrol, CNBC, VentureBeat, Neowin, and Big Technology
Zeyi Yang / Wired:
DeepSeek, which started as a deep-learning research branch of Chinese quant hedge fund High-Flyer, is now giving US AI giants a run for their money  —  When Chinese quant hedge fund founder Liang Wenfeng went into AI research, he took 10,000 Nvidia chips and assembled a team of young, ambitious talent.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Yann LeCun says DeepSeek “profited from open research and open source” like Meta's Llama and is proof that open source models are surpassing proprietary ones  —  If you hadn't heard, there's a new AI star in town: DeepSeek, the subsidiary of Hong Kong-based quantitative analysis …
New York Times:
Elon Musk's first moves suggest DOGE will be closer to an IT project than the sweeping operation to slash $2T+ from the federal budget that he once predicted  —  The rebranding of a former White House digital office into the new Department of Government Efficiency signals its potential limits, budget experts said.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
After pouring tens of millions into Trump's campaign, the crypto industry has been paid back handsomely during his first week back, with EOs, rule changes, more  —  Crypto executives, companies and investors are getting an early return on their investment in Donald Trump.
Bloomberg:
Sources: people affiliated with DOGE have met with representatives of various public blockchains as they explore using a blockchain to track federal spending  —  - Conversations said to be held with multiple public blockchains  — The technology may be used to track government spending
The Guardian:
An investigation reveals how the Israeli military's reliance on Microsoft's cloud and AI systems surged during the most intensive phase of the Israel-Hamas war  —  Leaked documents shed light on how Israel integrated the US tech giant into its war effort to meet growing demand for cloud and AI tools
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Hands-on with the live translation feature of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses: adept at translating a basic conversation, but struggles with slang and faster speech  —  I was in middle school the last time I took a Spanish class.  I remember enough for toddler talk — phrases like …
More: UploadVR.  Bluesky: @nvondarza, @tylerh.social, and @papapishu.  Mastodon: @vicmsong@mastodon.social.  Threads: @vicmsong
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
OpenAI updates ChatGPT's Canvas feature with o1 model support and HTML and React code rendering, making it a direct competitor to Claude's Artifacts  —  OpenAI Canvas gets a huge upgrade.  Canvas is the ChatGPT feature where ChatGPT can open up a shared editing environment and collaborate …

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Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Catherine McGrath / Fortune:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Jaspreet Singh / Reuters: