Techmeme
June 18, 2025, 10:25 AM

Top News

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
On a podcast, Sam Altman said Meta made “giant offers to a lot of people on our team ... like, $100M signing bonuses”, and “none of our best people” accepted  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on something of a hiring spree lately, trying to staff up Meta's …
CNN:
President Trump plans to sign an executive order this week to grant TikTok a 90-day extension in enforcement of the sale-or-ban law, marking his third extension  —  New York CNN —  —  TikTok just got another lifeline from the White House, with President Donald Trump set to delay enforcement …
Matt Kapko / CyberScoop:
A cyberattack claimed by pro-Israel hacktivist group Predatory Sparrow has reportedly disrupted services at Iran's state-owned Bank Sepah, including its website  —  The attack introduces a clear cyber element with immediate consequences for the country's critical infrastructure amid a growing conflict between Israel and Iran.
Kevin Collier / NBC News:
The Iranian government says it has restricted internet access in response to Israeli cyberattacks; some Western communication apps have reportedly been blocked  —  The connectivity drop appears to be a result of a decision by Iran's government, rather than due to Israeli strikes on infrastructure.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
The US Senate passes the GENIUS Act, which establishes the first federal regulatory framework for dollar-pegged stablecoins; the bill now heads to the House  —  The Senate on Tuesday passed the GENIUS Act, a landmark bill that for the first time establishes federal guardrails …
Financial Times:
Sources: lobbyists for Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta back a campaign for a 10-year US state AI regulation ban, a move dividing the AI industry and the GOP  —  Call by Amazon, Google and Microsoft lobbyists for a ‘moratorium’ has split industry and the Republican party
More: AppleInsider, PYMNTS.com, and The Hill
Bluesky: @elizkolbertX: @pawlegaForums: r/artificial and r/technology
Hayden Field / The Verge:
A look at California's 52-page California Report on Frontier Policy, which proposes an AI regulatory framework based on transparency, risk assessments, and more  —  A long-awaited report says companies are “simply inadequate at fully understanding” risks and harms.
Bloomberg:
Sources: xAI is burning through $1B per month, expects to burn through ~$13B in 2025, and projects its revenue to be just $500M in 2025, rising to $2B+ in 2026  —  Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI is burning through $1 billion a month as the cost of building …
Wall Street Journal:
A look at the Catholic Church's decadelong dialogue with Silicon Valley on AI, as Pope Leo prepares to make AI's potential threat to humanity a signature issue  —  The new pope is making the potential threat of artificial intelligence to humanity a signature issue—but Silicon Valley is trying to win him over
More: TechCrunchBluesky: @timkellogg.me and @lauraapolloMastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to
X: @wsj and @richrahoForums: r/singularity
Steve Kopack / NBC News:
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company expects that “in the next few years” AI use “will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains”  —  Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the retail and tech giant “will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today.”
John Voorhees / MacStories:
Hands-on with Apple's new Speech framework components in the macOS Tahoe beta: the APIs deliver transcription speeds significantly faster than OpenAI's Whisper  —  Late last Tuesday night, after watching F1: The Movie at the Steve Jobs Theater, I was driving back from dropping Federico off at his hotel when I got a text:
Tulsee Doshi / The Keyword:
Kristina Partsinevelos / CNBC:
AWS says Anthropic's Claude Opus 4 launched on its Trainium2 GPUs, and Project Rainier, AWS' supercomputer built for Anthropic, uses 500K+ Trainium2 chips  —  Amazon Web Services is set to announce an update to its Graviton4 chip that includes 600 gigabits per second of network bandwidth …
Shen Lu / Wall Street Journal:
Temu entered into a US data storage deal with Oracle last week and offered few details, but says it is part of an effort to localize more of its US operations  —  Data-storage deal with Oracle follows several states' allegations bargain site could hand over user data to Beijing
Bob Van Voris / Bloomberg:
X sues New York, claiming a law requiring social media companies to disclose how they deal with hate speech and disinformation violates the US Constitution  —  Elon Musk's X Corp. sued the state of New York claiming a law requiring social media companies to disclose how they deal with hate speech …
Chris Metinko / Axios:
Boston-based Maven, which builds autonomous AI agents for enterprises' customer support, raised a $50M Series B led by Dell, taking its total funding to $78M  —  Maven AGI, which builds enterprise AI agents for customer support, raised a $50 million Series B led by Dell Technologies Capital …
More: Maven AGI

Sponsor Posts

Niantic Spatial:
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Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's User Growth Miss, Musk vs. Altman, Prediction Market Ban
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Training Data:
OpenAI's Greg Brockman: Why Human Attention Is the New Bottleneck
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Runway's Cris Valenzuela: Building The Hollywood-Friendly Video AI That OpenAI Couldn't
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
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Hard Fork:
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The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
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Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

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More News

Financial Times:
Michelle Kim / Rest of World:

Earlier Picks

Ted Johnson / Deadline:
Marc Vartabedian / Wall Street Journal:
More: FinTech Global, Salesforce Ventures, and Pano AI
Bluesky: @prietschkaX: @salesforcevcLinkedIn: Abe Yokell and Garry Tan
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
Jez Corden / Windows Central:
CNBC:
More: Business Today, The Indian Express, Times of Oman, and Benzinga
Bluesky: @blemley.us and @sal19Instagram: MetaX: @scobleizer