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May 21, 2025, 4:30 PM
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Bloomberg:
OpenAI is buying io, Jony Ive's secretive AI startup, for ~$6.5B in stock; Ive and LoveFrom will remain independent but take over design for all of OpenAI  —  OpenAI will acquire the AI device startup co-founded by Apple Inc. veteran Jony Ive in a nearly $6.5 billion all-stock deal …
OpenAI:
In a video and letter signed “Sam & Jony”, Altman and Ive announce io, founded last year by Ive, Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan to create new products  —  This is an extraordinary moment.  —  Computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Sam Altman and LoveFrom have been working for two years on a new device to move consumers beyond screens, including headphones and devices with cameras  —  OpenAI to buy Ive's startup in $6.5 billion deal, as Ive and CEO Sam Altman work on new generation of devices and other AI products
New York Times:
Sources: OpenAI owned a 23% stake in io from a 2024 deal so is now paying ~$5B to fully acquire it; separately, OpenAI's Start-up Fund invested in io last year  —  Jony Ive, a former top executive at Apple, said that the goal with OpenAI was to create “amazing products that elevate humanity.”
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times:
Jensen Huang calls US AI chip export controls “a failure” that spurred Chinese rivals, cutting Nvidia's market share in China from 95% to 50% over four years  —  World's top AI semiconductor maker says export controls have accelerated Chinese rivals' advances
Reuters:
Distributed Denial of Secrets: the TeleMessage hacker stole messages from 60+ US government users spanning about one day ending on May 4, including travel plans  —  A hacker who breached the communications service used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Epic v. Apple: Microsoft files an amicus brief supporting Epic Games and blames Apple for delaying the Xbox mobile gaming store, first announced in May 2024  —  Microsoft has filed support for Epic Games' fight with Apple, as it wants to launch new Xbox mobile improvements.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Epic Games says Fortnite for iPadOS and iOS is back on the US App Store, and on the Epic Games Store and AltStore in the EU; Apple kicked it off in August 2020
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Microsoft seizes about 2,300 domains globally to disrupt Lumma's malware-as-a-service operation, after finding over 394K Windows computers infected by Lumma  —  Earlier this month, a coordinated disruption action targeting the Lumma malware-as-a-service (MaaS) information stealer operation seized thousands …
William Langley / Financial Times:
Inside China's “stolen iPhone building”: electronics traders in Shenzhen describe how even remotely locked stolen iPhones can be stripped and sold for a profit  —  We track the roaring trade of mobiles grabbed in London and New York, then sold on a single district in Shenzhen
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Mistral partners with All Hands AI to release Devstral, a model to help with coding, in “research preview” under Apache 2.0, and says it outperforms Gemma 3 27B  —  AI startup Mistral on Wednesday announced a new AI model focused on coding: Devstral.
Matthew Gault / 404 Media:
Brazilian researchers scraped 2B+ Discord messages from 3,167 public servers using Discord's public API, covering 2015 to 2024, and publish the messages online  —  A Brazilian team used Discord's API to scrape 10% of its open servers.  —  Researchers published a massive database …
More: Gizmodo.  Bluesky: @daphnek, @danhon.com, @josephcox, @cfiesler, @vortexegg.com, and @acab.dad.  LinkedIn: Casey Fiesler.  Forums: r/technology
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft's AI security chief accidentally displayed internal Teams messages about Walmart's AI plans, after her Build talk was disrupted by a protest  —  Internal messages were displayed after two former Microsoft employees disrupted a Build session.
Andrew Romero / 9to5Google:
AI videos from Google's Veo 3, which features synchronized audio as well as crisper, more detailed video, are both impressive and terrifying  —  If the internet wasn't already full of misinformation and general filler content, Veo 3 is going to take it to an entirely new level.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Google tests bringing ads to AI Mode, both below responses as well as “integrated into” them, and expands ads in AI Overviews to desktop in the US  —  Google on Wednesday detailed its plans to bring ads to AI Mode, the company's AI-powered experience in Google Search.
Eric Geller / Cybersecurity Dive:
In a joint statement, the US, France, Germany, and eight other countries say Russia has stepped up cyber attacks on firms aiding Ukraine, often via Fancy Bear  —  One of Moscow's most infamous hacker teams is targeting logistics and technology companies supporting Kyiv's war effort.  —  Listen to the article
MIT Technology Review:
An analysis of AI's energy footprint, from the demands for making a model and the impact of a query to the emissions from data centers and the future ahead  —  The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn't tracking and consider where it's heading next.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Maine AG filing: Coinbase says its recent data breach impacted 69,461 individuals; stolen data included government IDs, account info, and personal identifiers  —  Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange with over 100 million customers, revealed that a recent data breach in which cybercriminals stole customer …
CoinDesk:
The US SEC sues Unicoin and its executives, alleging they broke securities laws by raising $100M+ for crypto tokens falsely claimed to be backed by real estate  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued crypto company Unicoin and three executives on Tuesday night on fraud charges …
Tobias Mann / The Register:
AMD unveils Zen 5-based Threadripper 9000 CPUs with up to 96 cores, and an RDNA 4-based Radeon AI Pro R9700 workstation GPU, both slated to launch in July 2025  —  COMPUTEX AMD aims to extend its lead over Intel in the high-end desktop (HEDT) and workstation arenas with its 9000-series …
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Shopify launches new AI tools, including one for setting up storefronts and another for creating elements like banners, and upgrades its AI assistant Sidekick  —  Shopify is giving its merchants a slew of new AI-powered tools designed to help them enhance the online shopping experience for their customers.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Google's I/O keynote was both scary and chill, a fever dream of sizzle reels selling how AI changes everything, even search, and can give users superpowers  —  At its annual developer conference, the company seeks to reassure everyone that AI is for everyday utility — but the great disruption to the web continues
Michael L Hicks / Android Central:
Google's Android XR Gemini-powered prototype glasses hands-on: light, comfortable to wear, the single display in the right lens works well, and Maps is seamless

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From Mediagazer

Financial Times:
Sources: WaPo is losing about $100M per year but aiming to break even by the end of 2026, which could unlock fresh funding from Jeff Bezos

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Filing: Amazon's spending on content, including music, sports rights, and licensed and produced TV and film, rose 10% YoY to $22.4B

The Guardian:
The UK raises the TV license fee, the BBC's main funding source, from £174.50 to £180 a year from April 1, saying it gives the BBC a “stable financial footing”

More News

Earlier Picks

Colin Lecher / The Markup:
New York City's AI tool, launched in 2018 to score families at risk for child abuse using factors like their neighborhood, is raising racial bias concerns
Kevin Collier / NBC News:
Matthew Lane, a 19-year-old from Massachusetts, pleads guilty to hacking two US companies and extorting them for ransoms; a source says one firm is PowerSchool
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