Techmeme
June 18, 2025, 5:10 PM

Top News

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:
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 …
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 …
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
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.
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.
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.
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 …
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:
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:
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
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 …
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 …
The Information:
Source: Meta is in advanced talks to hire Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross to work on its AI efforts  —  Meta Platforms is taking another big step to boost its artificial intelligence efforts.  —  The company is in advanced talks to hire Nat Friedman, the former CEO of GitHub who has become …

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Earlier Picks

Michelle Kim / Rest of World:
Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: