Techmeme
March 17, 2025, 6:05 PM

Top News

Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Alphabet is in advanced talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for ~$30B; Alphabet was close to a $23B deal for Wiz last summer before talks ended  —  A deal worth some $30 billion could come together soon, after talks fizzled last summer  —  Google parent Alphabet …
New York Times:
HR service Rippling sues Deel, accusing its rival of hiring a mole in its Dublin office to comb through trade secrets, uncovered via a “honeypot” Slack channel  —  A lawsuit by Rippling accuses a top competitor, Deel, of placing a mole in its ranks — which it uncovered via a “honeypot” trap on Slack.
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Mistral debuts Mistral Small 3.1, a 24B-parameter multimodal and multilingual open-source model it says outperforms Gemma 3 and GPT-4o-mini and runs on 32GB RAM  —  French artificial-intelligence startup Mistral AI unveiled a new open-source model today that the company says outperforms similar offerings …
Max A. Cherney / Reuters:
Sources: Intel's new CEO Lip-Bu Tan has considered restructuring Intel's AI approach and cutting staff to address a slow and bloated middle management layer  —  Intel's incoming CEO Lip-Bu Tan has considered significant changes to its chip manufacturing methods and artificial intelligence strategies ahead …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Users report that Gemini 2.0 Flash is very good at removing watermarks from images; many models allow this but some, like Claude 3.7 Sonnet and GPT-4o, do not  —  Users on social media have discovered a controversial use case for Google's new Gemini AI model: removing watermarks from images …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Open letter: ~100 EU companies urge EU lawmakers to take “radical action” to shrink the reliance on foreign infrastructure by fostering a so-called “Euro stack”  —  A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe's tech industry is calling for “radical action” …
Mike Pastore / Search Engine Land:
Adobe: traffic from AI sources to US retail sites in February rose 1,200% from July 2024; 39% of US consumers used generative AI for shopping, 53% plan to do so  —  Traffic from generative AI surged to U.S. retail sites over the holiday season and that trend has continued into 2025, according to new Adobe data.
Stephen Morris / Financial Times:
Alphabet spins off laser-based internet company Taara from its X “moonshot” incubator; Taara, which raised new funding, has its origins in Loon, closed in 2021  —  Taara start-up aims to compete with Elon Musk's Starlink to connect remote areas to the internet using light beams
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Discord launches a Social SDK to let developers offer friends lists, cross-platform messaging, voice, and more, with console and mobile support “coming soon”  —  An easier way to connect with Discord friends. … Discord is launching a way for developers to directly integrate …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Roblox open sources Cube 3D, the first version of its AI foundation model for generating 3D objects, trained on licensed and public datasets and its own data  —  The model, Cube 3D, creates 3D models from a text prompt. … Roblox is launching and open-sourcing Cube 3D …
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
AI slop, shared by thousands of prolific accounts, is brute forcing virality, and platforms like Meta embrace it; some AI videos get 350M+ views  —  Consider, for a moment, that this AI-generated video of a bizarre creature turning into a spider, turning into a nightmare giraffe inside of a busy mall has been viewed 362 million times.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Cheap code, precious trust: Code modernization at scale  —  The promise—and challenges—of agentic software engineering, from large-scale code migration to language modernization.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
Pro Tips: 5 ways to keep your OKR rollout on track past the three-month mark  —  Three months into an OKR rollout is when the cracks appear.  Manual tracking stalls, CRM data and strategic goals drift apart, and missed targets catch leaders by surprise.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Cheeky Pint:
The airline CEO putting Starlink on every plane
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Invest Like the Best:
Cliff Sosin - Owning the Complements to Intelligence
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Big Technology Podcast:
Emergency Pod: Anthropic's S-1 IPO Filing — With Dan Primack
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.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Lubricate the Inside of the Hinge', With Joanna Stern
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Lenny's Podcast:
An 86-minute guide to finding PMF | Rob Snyder (Author, The Power of Pull)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Machine Gods:
Fired OpenAI Safety Researchers Speak Out + We Look Inside Pandora's Box
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:05 PM ET, March 17, 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.

More News

Daryna Antoniuk / The Record:
Paige Smith / Bloomberg:
Hugh Son / CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg:
Nick Robins-Early / The Guardian: