Techmeme
February 15, 2025, 7:50 AM

Top News

New York Times:
OpenAI's board rejects the $97.4B bid by Elon Musk and a consortium of investors, saying they reject “Musk's latest attempt to disrupt his competition”  —  Bret Taylor, the chairman of OpenAI's board, said the artificial intelligence company was “not for sale.”
Bloomberg:
Source: TSMC is considering taking a controlling stake and fully running Intel's US factories after a Trump team request, as Trump aims to boost manufacturing  —  - TSMC would take controlling stake in potential partnership  — Administration aims to boost manufacturing of advanced chips
Eric Geller / Wired:
Memo: CISA halts election security work and reviews related activities conducted since 2017, to comply with Trump's January 20 EO on “ending federal censorship”  —  The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has frozen efforts to aid states in securing elections, according to an internal memo viewed by WIRED.
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Perplexity releases Deep Research, offering five queries daily to free users and 500 to subscribers, available now on the web and soon on iOS, Android, and Mac  —  Perplexity shattered the artificial intelligence market's status quo today by launching Deep Research, a tool …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Meta plans major investment in AI-powered humanoid robots, with an initial focus on household chores, and has formed a new team within Reality Labs  —  - Company is aiming to be the engine powering humanoid market  — Ex-Cruise CEO Marc Whitten to run new group in Reality Labs
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Tether acquires a minority stake in the iconic Italian football club Juventus, as part of a broader push to integrate digital assets into sports franchises  —  Tether Holdings SA de CV said it's acquired a minority stake in Juventus Football Club SpA, as one of crypto's most valuable companies continues …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's overhaul of Siri faces engineering problems and software bugs; some features, planned for April, may have to be postponed until May or later  —  - Software's makeover is key to Apple Intelligence ambitions  — New Siri features slated for April at risk of being postponed
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Meta announces Project Waterworth, a subsea cable project that will span over 50,000 km and connect five continents  —  Back in November, we broke the news that Meta — owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with billions of users accounting for 10% of all fixed and 22% of all mobile traffic …
Scharon Harding / Ars Technica:
In an AMA, Steve Huffman says Reddit is planning to roll out paid subreddits in 2025 and is “laying the foundation” to monetize commerce within subreddits  —  Huffman previously showed interest in potentially introducing a new type of subreddit with “exclusive content or private areas” that Reddit users would pay to access.
Boone Ashworth / Wired:
A profile of Watch Duty creator John Clarke Mills, who wants the fire-tracking app to become a one-stop shop for information during any disaster  —  Watch Duty proved indispensable during the recent LA wildfires.  John Mills, the app's creator, wants it to be the one place to go for tracking disasters.
More: Mirror
Dwarkesh Patel / Dwarkesh Podcast:
Q&A with Google's Jeff Dean and Noam Shazeer on Google's path to AGI, future of Moore's Law and TPUs, inference scaling, open research, and more  —  Two of Gemini's co-leads on Google's path to AGI  —  This week I welcome on the show two of the most important technologists ever, in any field.
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
The website of President Trump's World Liberty Financial shows the crypto project sold 24B+ of its 25B WLFI tokens after a slow start, implying sales of $1.25B  —  - The project has sold more than 24 billion tokens so far  — Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun is a project investor
More: The Block
Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
Sources: Lightspeed, whose bets include Wiz, Anthropic, and Stripe, returned $8B from current and active funds in the past five years, with $3B+ coming in 2024  —  I've got my hands on slides from Lightspeed's $7 billion fundraising effort  —  Lightspeed Venture Partners …

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Featured Podcasts

Sources:
OpenAI's Dots lead on the future of ChatGPT
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Great Chat:
What does the tech industry owe San Francisco?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
David George from a16z
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Big Technology Podcast:
SAP CEO: AI Won't Kill Software, But It Will Change Your Job — With Christian Klein
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
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Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
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Earlier Picks

Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Jaspreet Singh / Reuters: