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January 30, 2025, 3:45 PM
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Top News

Financial Times:
Sources: SoftBank is in talks to invest $15B to $25B in OpenAI on top of its $15B+ commitment to Stargate; the deal would make SoftBank OpenAI's biggest backer  —  Deal would make Japanese group biggest financial backer in ChatGPT maker  —  SoftBank is in talks to invest as much as $25bn into OpenAI …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft makes OpenAI's o1 model, branded as “Think Deeper”, free for all Copilot users, after launching o1 in October 2024 as a paid Copilot Pro feature  —  Think Deeper first launched in October as a paid Copilot Pro feature, but it's now free.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils Intel-powered Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 for businesses, both Copilot+ PCs, starting at $1,500, or $500 more than Qualcomm variants  —  Along with a new USB 4 dock, the Surface devices are designed for businesses.  —  Along with a new USB 4 dock, the Surface devices are designed for businesses.
Bloomberg:
Sources: bankers trying to offload ~$3B in X debt claim X had $1.2B in adjusted EBITDA in 2024, roughly flat from before Elon Musk's buyout, a sign of recovery  —  Investors are starting to get their most complete look yet at the financial picture of social media platform X in the chaotic three years since its buyout by Elon Musk.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google announces a “voluntary exit program” for employees working in the Platforms & Devices group in the US, which includes Android, Chrome, Pixel, and more  —  Last year, the teams responsible for Pixel hardware and Android software were merged into one division …
New York Times:
Elon Musk is using the same tactics he used during his Twitter takeover at DOGE, including offering exits to federal employees and testing engineering prowess  —  Federal agencies have offered exits to millions of employees and tested the prowess of engineers — just like when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Europol and German law enforcement arrest two suspects and seize 17 servers to take down Cracked and Nulled, two of the largest hacking forums with 10M+ users  —  Europol and German law enforcement confirmed the arrest of two suspects and the seizure of 17 servers in Operation Talent …
Wired:
Wiz: DeepSeek left one of its critical databases exposed, leaking more than 1M records including system logs, user prompt submissions, and users' API keys  —  China-based DeepSeek has exploded in popularity, drawing greater scrutiny.  Case in point: Security researchers found more than 1 million records …
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Vodafone makes “the world's first” satellite video call using a standard smartphone via SpaceMobile satellites; the service is set to launch in Europe in 2025  —  It's partnered with Starlink rival AST SpaceMobile on a direct-to-smartphone satellite service it plans to launch in Europe later this year.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Threads adds a dedicated media tab globally for photos and video, days after X and Bluesky added video tabs, and will let users tag people in photos  —  Meta's newer social network Threads announced on Thursday that it's introducing a dedicated “media” tab for both photos and videos …
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to make Facebook “way more culturally influential than it is today” and he is focused on returning to “OG Facebook” in 2025  —  Yesterday Meta reported its quarterly earnings, and amid sharing updates on Threads, Instagram, and yes …
Bloomberg:
The US DOJ sues to block HPE's $14B acquisition of Juniper Networks, arguing the deal would harm competition in the enterprise wireless equipment  —  - Justice Department files complaint in California federal court  — Company executives met with DOJ to discuss concerns this week
Mistral AI:
Mistral launches Small 3, a latency-optimized 24B-parameter model that it says is competitive with larger models such as Llama 3.3 70B or Qwen 32B  —  Apache 2.0, 81% MMLU, 150 tokens/s  —  Today we're introducing Mistral Small 3, a latency-optimized 24B-parameter model released under the Apache 2.0 license.
Stephen Eisenhammer / Reuters:
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum writes to Google arguing that Maps should not accept Trump's decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America  —  Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Thursday presented a letter the government is sending to Google arguing the Google Maps platform …
TechCrunch:
AI audio startup ElevenLabs raised a $180M Series C co-led by a16z and ICONIQ Growth at a $3.3B post-money valuation, taking its total funding to $281M  —  ElevenLabs, one of the more popular startups working in the field AI audio, said Thursday that it has raised a Series C round of $180 million …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:45 PM ET, January 30, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Sara Fischer / Axios:
Source: Bari Weiss is planning to create a masthead for CBS News as part of a broader overhaul of standards and procedures

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Comcast extends Mike Cavanagh's contract through January 1, 2029, and grants a ~$35M performance-based stock package; he's set to become co-CEO in January 2026

Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter:
A US judge denies WBD's bid to block Sling TV from selling short-term offerings that let users sign up for access to its bundles for as little as one day

More News

Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Microsoft's stock fell 5%+ after saying it expects revenues for the current quarter to range between $67.7B and $68.7B, compared to $69.78B est.

Earlier Picks

NewsGuard's Reality Check:
NewsGuard: with news-related prompts, DeepSeek's chatbot repeated false claims 30% of the time and provided non-answers 53% of the time, giving an 83% fail rate
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft adds DeepSeek's R1 to Azure AI Foundry and GitHub, and plans to make a distilled, smaller version of R1 available to run locally on Copilot+ PCs soon
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