Techmeme
February 11, 2025, 9:20 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Investors led by Elon Musk make an unsolicited $97.4B bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, complicating Sam Altman's plans to convert to a for-profit  —  Unsolicited offer complicates Sam Altman's plans to convert OpenAI to a for-profit company — A consortium of investors led …
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The Hill:
In response to Elon Musk's $97.4B OpenAI bid, Sam Altman says on X “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want”; Musk replies “swindler”  —  OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman appeared to shut down a reported offer from an investor group led …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Sam Altman says “OpenAI is not for sale” and “OpenAI's mission is not for sale”, especially to “a competitor who is not able to beat us in the market”  —  - “OpenAI is not for sale. … - Altman said the board has not determined a valuation for OpenAI's operations yet …
CNBC:
Investors behind the $97.4B OpenAI bid include xAI, Baron Capital, Valor, Atreides, Vy Capital, Joe Lonsdale's 8VC, and an investment vehicle led by Ari Emanuel  —  Elon Musk is leading a group of investors in offering to buy control of OpenAI for $97.4 billion, CNBC confirmed.
Wall Street Journal:
Reuters:
Paris AI summit: US VP JD Vance warns the EU that excessive AI regulation could strangle the tech and rejects content moderation as “authoritarian censorship”  —  U.S. Vice President JD Vance warned Europeans on Tuesday that what he called their excessive regulation …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Paris AI summit takeaways: Europe has regulation regrets, AI doomsayers have lost ground, and policymakers can't seem to grasp how soon powerful AI could arrive  —  At times, Kevin Roose writes, it feels like he is watching policymakers on horseback trying to install seatbelts on a passing Lamborghini.
Liv McMahon / BBC:
The US and the UK did not join France, China, India, and other countries in signing an international AI agreement in Paris, without explaining their reasons  —  The UK and US have not signed an international agreement on artificial intelligence (AI) at a global summit in Paris.
Wall Street Journal:
At the AI Action Summit in Paris, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the bloc plans to mobilize €200B to invest in AI to catch the US and China  —  The announcement underscores efforts from the EU to position itself as a key player in the AI race
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google Calendar removes Pride month, Black History Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and other events, saying it wasn't “scalable or sustainable” to keep them  —  Google says it switched to only showing default entries for public holidays and national observances last year.
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Gloria Li / Financial Times:
Chinese EV maker BYD unveils a “God's Eye” self-driving system and aims to install it on its entire lineup, including its ~$9,600 Seagull hatchback  —  Tesla rival will equip hatchback on sale for less than $10,000 with features usually found only on upscale vehicles
Steve Nadis / Quanta Magazine:
In a January paper, three computer scientists presented a faster hash table, one of the oldest data structures, disproving a 40-year-old data science conjecture  —  Together, Krapivin (now a graduate student at the University of Cambridge), Farach-Colton (now at New York University) …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Google brings NotebookLM Plus, its AI research assistant tier with higher usage limits, to Google One AI Premium subscribers, and debuts a 50% student discount  —  Google has expanded NotebookLM Plus, a paid version of its AI-based note-taking and research assistant, to individual users subscribed …
Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:
Dublin-based Tines, which uses AI to automate tasks in cybersecurity and other business operations, raised $125M at a $1.13B valuation, up from $600M in 2024  —  - Business software company raised $125 million from investors … The deal boosted Tines' valuation by more than 80% from its previous value of $600 million last year.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Tel Aviv-based Voyantis, which uses AI to predict a customer's future propensity and lifetime value for marketers, raised $41M, taking its total funding to $60M  —  How much is a customer worth to a company?  That's the eternal question.  To arrive at an answer, customer and sales teams …

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Dan Mangan / CNBC:
Bloomberg:
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