Techmeme
June 18, 2025, 7:45 PM

Top News

MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
The DOJ announces the seizure of $225.3M in crypto linked to “pig butchering” scams, marking “the largest cryptocurrency seizure in US Secret Service history”  —  The Justice Department announced Wednesday the largest-ever U.S. seizure of cryptocurrency linked to so-called …
Bloomberg:
Texas Instruments plans to spend $60B+ on US semiconductor plants, including two new factories in Texas, and says its long-term spending plan remains unchanged  —  The company said its long-term capital spending plan remains unchanged.  The total includes amounts allotted to plants …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft plans to announce thousands of job cuts, particularly in sales, early next month after the end of its fiscal year  —  The cuts are expected to be announced early next month, following the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, according to people familiar with the matter.
Financial Times:
Sources: Microsoft is prepared to walk away from high-stakes talks with OpenAI if they cannot agree on critical issues, such as the size of Microsoft's stake  —  ChatGPT maker's plans to convert into a for-profit leads software giant to make contingency plans
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
At Cannes, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says YouTube will integrate Veo 3 into Shorts later this summer and that AI tech “will push the limits of human creativity”  —  The Veo 3 video generator is capable of creating both videos and sound based on text prompts, with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan saying the …
Kayla Cobb / The Wrap:
Gian Volpicelli / Bloomberg:
The European Commission accuses Chinese marketplace AliExpress of failing to tackle the spread of illegal products on its platform, in preliminary DSA findings  —  The EU's executive arm on Wednesday unveiled a list of grievances against China-owned AliExpress, which had been under investigation …
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Midjourney launches V1, its first AI video generation model, letting subscribers animate images via its website; video jobs will cost ~8x more than image jobs  —  Popular AI image generation service Midjourney has launched its first AI video generation model V1, marking a pivotal shift …
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
Hayden Field / The Verge:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google rolls out the ability to have back-and-forth voice conversations with AI Mode, available in the Google app by tapping the Live button  —  Google is rolling out the ability for users to have a back-and-forth voice conversation with AI Mode, its experimental Search feature that lets users ask complex, multi-part questions.
Financial Times:
Netflix signs a landmark deal with France's TF1 to show linear TV for the first time; TF1 will broadcast all five of its channels, showing live sports and more  —  Deal will be closely watched by broadcasters, who are losing millions of viewers to streaming giants  —  Daniel Thomas and Hannah Murphy in Cannes
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Waymo applied for a NYC permit to test its cars with safety drivers and plans to start collecting mapping data with manually driven cars in Manhattan in July  —  The company wants to change state law so it can operate vehicles without safety drivers.  That will be a challenge.
Washington Post:
The US State Department restarts student visa interviews and requires all applicants to make their social media accounts public for vetting by US embassies  —  The new requirements could affect hundreds of thousands of visa applications each year, raising concerns about staffing requirements.
The Information:
Source: Meta is in advanced talks to hire Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross to work on its AI efforts and possibly buy out part of their venture capital fund NFDG  —  Meta Platforms is in advanced talks to hire the prominent artificial intelligence investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross …
Vanessa Hand Orellana / CNET:
An interview with Samsung SVP Dr. Hon Pak on the Galaxy Watch getting a first-ever blood analysis feature, AI health tools, and a potential monthly subscription  —  With a first-ever blood analysis feature and four new AI-powered health tools, the Galaxy Watch is shaping up to be a smarter ally …
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 …
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:
Lisa Stiffler / GeekWire:
TerraPower, which develops small modular nuclear reactors, raised $650M from investors including Nvidia's NVentures and TerraPower co-founder Bill Gates  —  Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI details why “emergent misalignment”, where training on wrong answers in one area can lead to misalignment in others, happens and how it can be mitigated  —  OpenAI researchers say they've discovered hidden features inside AI models that correspond to misaligned “personas …
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

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Michelle Kim / Rest of World:
Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:
Matt Kapko / CyberScoop: