Techmeme
February 6, 2025, 10:05 AM

Top News

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Stanford and University of Washington AI researchers claim they trained AI reasoning model s1, distilled from a Gemini 2.0 model, for under $50 in cloud compute  —  AI researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington were able to train an AI “reasoning” model for under $50 in cloud compute credits …
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Email: Google eliminates its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and is reviewing some DEI programs after Donald Trump's EOs  —  Search giant is eliminating goals to hire more minority employees and reviewing DEI programs, part of a pullback across Silicon Valley
Emma Roth / The Verge:
OpenAI opens ChatGPT search to users who are not logged in, after launching it to paying subscribers in October 2024 and logged-in users in December 2024  —  OpenAI is making its AI search engine more accessible.  —  OpenAI is making its AI search engine more accessible.
Max A. Cherney / Reuters:
Greg Bensinger / Reuters:
Amazon announces an Alexa-focused event on February 26 in New York; sources say the company will preview its long-delayed Alexa generative AI revamp  —  Amazon (AMZN.O) is set to release its long-awaited - and delayed - Alexa generative artificial intelligence voice service …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Kaspersky researchers found apps in Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store that use OCR to steal crypto wallet recovery phrases from images on users' devices  —  Android and iOS apps on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store contain a malicious software development kit (SDK) …
Politico:
The Senate Commerce Committee approves the Kids Off Social Media Act to ban under-13s from social media, clearing the way for consideration by the full Senate  —  The Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation Wednesday to ban children under 13 from social media.
Henry Stockdale / UploadVR:
Interviews with nearly two dozen VR studios on shipping games on Quest, Meta's increased focus on Horizon Worlds, concerns over declining game sales, and more  —  With concerns about declining sales and discoverability, UploadVR spoke with nearly two dozen VR studios to discuss the state of VR development for Quest.
Casey Hall / Reuters:
Trump's de minimis cancellation is likely to hit Shein harder than online dollar-store Temu, which has shifted to an Amazon-like bulk overseas shipment strategy  —  The Trump administration move to stop low-cost imports entering the U.S. tariff-free is likely to hit fast fashion retailer Shein harder …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: banks sold $5.5B in debt that X borrowed, at $0.97 on the dollar, after strong investor demand; they had planned to sell ~$3B at ~$0.95 on the dollar  —  X CEO tells investors that the financial health of social-media company is improving  —  Elon Musk's power in Washington …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
TrueFoundry, which helps enterprises deploy AI systems at scale, raised $19M led by Intel Capital, taking its total funding to $21M, and claims 30 customers  —  TrueFoundry, a startup run by a group of former Meta engineers to help enterprises deploy AI systems at scale, has raised $19 million in fresh investment led by Intel Capital.
More: TrueFoundry
Kate Clark / Bloomberg:
SEC filing: Sequoia's evergreen fund has grown to $19.6B, up from $13.6B in early 2023, a signal that the firm continues to grow despite a VC funding slowdown  —  The fund's total includes new cash commitments, shares of now-public companies that Sequoia previously backed and cash returns from mergers and acquisitions.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
What will the next generation of developers do when AI writes the code?  —  Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon are betting that the junior devs we train today will be the senior engineers of tomorrow.
Will Reed:
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Zoho:
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More News

MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Karissa Bell / Engadget:

Earlier Picks

404 Media:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Jason Shubnell / The Block:
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: