Techmeme
February 15, 2025, 1:00 PM

Top News

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 …
Eric Geller / Wired:
Memo: CISA orders a review of every position related to election security work 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.
Wired:
Romance scams may rise as isolation grows and generative AI helps scammers scale; FBI says US victims lost ~$4.5B to such scams over the past decade  —  Romance scams cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars a year.  As people grow increasingly isolated, and generative AI helps scammers scale …
New York Times:
OpenAI's board unanimously rejects the $97.4B bid by Elon Musk and a consortium of investors, calling it “Mr. 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.”
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Tether's venture arm acquires a minority stake in 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 …
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
CB Insights: a record 1,200 VC-backed unicorns have yet to IPO or get acquired; Carta: fewer than 30% of 2021 unicorns raised funding in the past three years  —  The billion-dollar startup bubble is deflating, and more than $1 trillion in value is locked up in companies with dwindling prospects.
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.
The Information:
Sources: Anthropic expects to burn $3B in 2025, down from $5.6B in 2024, and make up to $3.7B in revenue in 2025, as it seeks to catch up with OpenAI  —  After burning $5.6 billion in cash last year, Anthropic said it would reduce that amount by nearly half in 2025 and projected up to $3.7 billion …
Oliver Knight / CoinDesk:
Argentine President Javier Milei posted and then deleted an X post promoting Libra, a memecoin that rose 2,000%+ to a $4.4B market cap before plunging 95%+  —  Milei deleted his original promotional tweet and revealed that he wasn't aware of its details.  —  What to know:
Bloomberg:
J. Edward Moreno / Sherwood News:
Analysis: consumers spent $259.1B on Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash in 2024, up from $218.5B in 2023, with $162.8B on Uber, $80.2B on DoorDash, and $16.1B on Lyft  —  Lyft and DoorDash just reported their first years with net profits.  Instacart is likely next.  —  For a long time …
Olivia Poh / Bloomberg:
Sources: SoftBank-backed eFishery, Indonesia's high-profile agritech startup, cuts over 1,000 jobs, or ~90% of its workforce, and weighs a potential liquidation  —  - Indonesia's high-profile agritech startup cuts over 1,000 jobs  — Company unraveling after allegedly faking most of its revenue
More: Tech in Asia
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 …
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:

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Jordan Novet / CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Molly White / Citation Needed:
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Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: