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May 8, 2025, 1:15 PM
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OpenAI:
OpenAI hires Instacart CEO Fidji Simo as CEO of Applications, reporting to Sam Altman, who says he will remain CEO and focus on research, compute, and safety  —  Sam shared this message with the company earlier today:  —  Hi everyone - I have some exciting news to share.
Fidji Simo / Instacart Corporate Blog:
Instacart CEO Fidji Simo tells employees that she is leaving in a couple of months, the new CEO will be a management team member, and she will stay on as Chair  —  Instacart CEO and Chair Fidji Simo shared the email below with Instacart employees this evening.  You can read it in full here:
Bloomberg:
Source: Fidji Simo will oversee several OpenAI executives who previously reported to Altman, including COO Brad Lightcap, CFO Sarah Friar, and CPO Kevin Weil
David Wallace-Wells / New York Times:
Q&A with Bill Gates on closing the Gates Foundation on December 31, 2045, donating ~$200B, President Trump, Elon Musk, AI drug discovery, AI advances, and more  —  Today the Gates Foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary by announcing its plans to close up shop.
Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg:
Nintendo projects Switch 2 sales will reach 15M units for the fiscal year ending March 2026, below 16.8M est., and ~$2.2B in annual operating profit, below est.  —  What Trump's ‘Golden Dome’ Can Learn From Israeli Air Defenses  —  An exclusive look at what Israel's upgraded air defense system can …
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Rockstar says its second Grand Theft Auto VI trailer was “captured entirely in-game from a PlayStation 5, comprised of equal parts gameplay and cutscenes”  —  The trailer was also captured entirely in-game from a PS5. … A second trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI had a surprise drop this week …
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Hackers defaced the LockBit ransomware gang's dark web affiliate panels, linking to a MySQL database dump, including 59,975 BTC addresses and 4,442 victim chats  —  The LockBit ransomware gang has suffered a data breach after its dark web affiliate panels were defaced and replaced with a message linking to a MySQL database dump.
Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal:
Coinbase agrees to acquire Dubai-based Deribit, the world's biggest trading platform for BTC and ETH options, for ~$2.9B, split as $700M in cash and 11M shares  —  Deribit is the world's biggest trading platform for bitcoin options  —  Coinbase Global has agreed to acquire Deribit …
Victoria Kennedy / Eurogamer.net:
Palworld developer Pocketpair says a 2024 update was due to “ongoing litigation” and a new update is “yet another compromise”, as it disputes Nintendo's claims  —  “We... assert the invalidity of the patents in question.”  —  Palworld developer Pocketpair has released …
Tanaya Macheel / CNBC:
Bitcoin jumps above $100,000 for first time since February 2025, after President Trump announced a US-UK trade agreement; ether, dogecoin, and solana rose 9%+  —  Bitcoin on Thursday hit its highest level since February and climbing back above the key $100,000 level.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Eddy Cue's disclosure of Apple's plan to shift its browser to AI systems had a clear goal: downplaying the importance of Apple's existing Google Search deal  —  Apple Inc. made an unusual pitch in its bid to save a lucrative search partnership with Alphabet Inc.'s Google …
The Keyword:
Google says it is continuing to see “overall query growth in Search”, including “an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms”  —  We continue to see overall query growth in Search.  That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms.
Kevin Purdy / Ars Technica:
An interview with curl project founder Daniel Stenberg, who likens “AI slop” in HackerOne submissions to a DDoS attack, echoing Seth Larson and others' concerns  —  “A threshold has been reached.  We are effectively being DDoSed.  If we could, we would charge them for this waste of our time …
Bloomberg:
Analysis: ~66% of US data center projects built or in development since 2022 are in areas with high water stress, with five states having 72% of new facilities  —  Each time you ask an AI chatbot to summarize a lengthy legal document or conjure up a cartoon squirrel wearing glasses …
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Prepared testimony: Microsoft and other AI leaders urge US senators to streamline federal AI energy permits and open more government datasets for AI training  —  Microsoft (MSFT.O) and other AI leaders on Thursday will urge U.S. lawmakers to streamline federal permitting …
Riley Griffin / Bloomberg:
Memo: Meta CPO Chris Cox says Robert Fergus will lead its Fundamental AI Research lab, succeeding Joelle Pineau; Fergus and Yann LeCun co-founded FAIR in 2014  —  Fergus co-founded the Facebook AI Research lab, known as FAIR, in 2014 with Yann LeCun, who currently serves as the chief AI scientist at Meta.
Bloomberg:
Filing: Apple seeks to pause part of the April 30 Epic v. Apple US court order that blocks it from charging commissions on transactions outside the App Store  —  The company is appealing a federal judge's ruling last week in its long-running fight with Epic Games Inc. that the iPhone maker failed …
Bloomberg:
The US Commerce Department says it will rescind the Biden-era “AI diffusion rule” to limit AI chip exports from May 15, replacing it “with a much simpler rule”  —  The Trump administration plans to rescind Biden-era AI chip curbs as part of a broader effort …
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
Sales automation startup Clay lets staff with 1+ year of tenure sell shares in a tender led by Sequoia at a $1.5B valuation, up from $1.25B in January 2025  —  It took seven years of hard work for Kareem Amin, co-founder and CEO of sales automation startup Clay, to see the company's product finally take off in 2022.
Danny Park / The Block:
The US OCC says banks can buy and sell customers' crypto assets on their behalf and can outsource crypto custody and trade execution services to third parties  —  - The OCC clarified that national banks are permitted to execute cryptocurrency buy and sell orders on behalf of their customers.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic adds web search to its API, starting at $10 per 1,000 searches, giving Claude 3.7 Sonnet, 3.5 Sonnet, and 3.5 Haiku access to up-to-date information  —  Anthropic is launching a new API that allows its Claude AI models to search across the web.  Developers using it can build Claude-powered apps …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:15 PM ET, May 8, 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.

From Mediagazer

Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg:
Sources: Nexstar has begun directing stations to fill local newscasts with segments from Nexstar's NewsNation instead of national networks' content like NBC's

Oli Coleman / Page Six:
Source: The Athletic is investigating reporter Dianna Russini's explanation about photos of her with NFL coach Mike Vrabel and “reviewing her coverage”

Financial Times:
Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey drops his £79M libel lawsuit against the Financial Times, after FT said 15 women were willing to testify in court against him

More News

Maggie Harrison / Futurism:
How “AI slop farmer” Jesse Cunningham targets older women on Pinterest and Facebook with AI-generated copies of content from real bloggers and creators

Earlier Picks

Julie Bort / TechCrunch:
WisdomAI, which offers AI-powered data analytics from structured, unstructured, and “dirty” data, launches with a $23M seed led by Coatue Ventures
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Samsung plans to debut the Galaxy S25 Edge at a May 12 virtual event on YouTube at 8pm ET, and those who reserve the super-slim device now will get a $50 credit
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Stripe announces an AI foundation model for payments, plans for stablecoin-powered accounts, a new Orchestration offering, a recent Nvidia migration, and more
Wired:
Sources: OpenAI employees met with the US FDA and two DOGE associates multiple times in recent weeks to discuss cderGPT, a project likely around drug evaluation
Washington Post:
Internal messages show how during trade negotiations, the US State Department pushed nations facing tariffs to clear regulatory hurdles for SpaceX's Starlink
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