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January 30, 2025, 4:05 PM
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Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI is in early talks to raise up to $40B at a $340B valuation; the startup was last valued at $157B in October, when it raised $6.6B  —  SoftBank would lead $40 billion round for the ChatGPT maker, some of which would go to Stargate AI infrastructure venture.
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.
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.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sources: Nadella and Microsoft execs moved quickly to get engineers to test and deploy DeepSeek R1 on Azure and GitHub in 10 days, an unusually fast turnaround  —  Microsoft was ready for the next step in AI models.  —  Microsoft was ready for the next step in AI models.
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 …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google Search adds Ask for me, which uses AI to call businesses to inquire about availability and pricing, starting with nail salons and auto shops in the US  —  Following Daily Listen in early January, Google is launching a new Search Lab called “Ask for me.”
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Irreducible, which provides zero-knowledge proof generation services powered by FPGA chips, raised a $24M Series A co-led by Paradigm and Bain Capital Crypto  —  - Irreducible has raised $24 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Paradigm and Bain Capital Crypto.
More: Irreducible

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:05 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

Noor Nanji / BBC:
The BBC apologizes to President Trump for a Panorama episode that spliced parts of his January 6 speech together but rejects his demands for compensation

Tony Maglio / The Hollywood Reporter:
Bob Iger says upcoming changes to Disney+ include “game-like features” and “mostly short-form” user-generated content made with generative AI

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the first-round bid deadline for WBD is November 20; Paramount wants the full company, and Comcast and Netflix are eying movie/TV studios and HBO Max

More News

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
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
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