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May 21, 2025, 3:25 PM
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Top News

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
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft files an amicus brief supporting Epic Games' App Store fight 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  —  After a nearly five-year hiatus, Fortnite is back on the App Store for iPhone and iPad users in the United States.
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 …
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
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
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.
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.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Microsoft seizes ~2.3K domains globally to disrupt Lumma's malware-as-a-service operation, after finding 394K+ PCs infected by Lumma  —  Earlier this month, a coordinated disruption action targeting the Lumma malware-as-a-service (MaaS) information stealer operation seized thousands of domains …
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 …
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
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Volvo expands its Google partnership to integrate Gemini across its model lineup, the first automaker to do so, hoping to ease its drivers' “cognitive load”  —  Gemini can ease a driver's “cognitive load” so they can keep their eyes on the road, the automaker says.
MIT Technology Review:
Analysis: AI's energy consumption is exploding, with data centers' electricity use doubling from 2017 to 2023, accounting for 4.4% of all US energy consumption  —  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.
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 …
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  —  Google's Android XR glasses prototype worked surprisingly well in my quick press demo.  —  I got hands-on time with Google's prototype AR glasses at Google I/O 2025.
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
Emilia David / VentureBeat:
Google rolls out Jules, its asynchronous coding agent unveiled in December 2024, in public beta for free with usage limits and will share pricing after the beta
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 …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:25 PM ET, May 21, 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

Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch:
A look at Hamlet, a startup that uses AI to process local government meeting videos and which plans to provide the tool to local journalists for free

John Koblin / New York Times:
The Netflix-WBD deal should quiet concerns, for now, from CNN employees worried about the prospect of Paramount combining CBS News and CNN in a WBD acquisition

Isabella Simonetti / Wall Street Journal:
Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi agree to part ways and let her contract expire at the end of the year, following new allegations about her affair with RFK Jr.

More News

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

Earlier Picks

Laura Onita / Financial Times:
UK retailer M&S says it expects a £300M operating profit hit from an April cyberattack and disruption to continue until July 2025; its market cap is down ~£750M
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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