Techmeme
June 18, 2025, 11:40 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 …
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.
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:
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:
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 …
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: TechCrunch and PCWorld
Bluesky: @timkellogg.me and @lauraapolloMastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to
X: @wsj and @richrahoForums: r/singularity
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 …
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.”
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 …
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
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
OpenAI says it's phasing out its work with Scale AI, into which Meta invested $14.3B, and that Scale AI accounted for a small fraction of its overall data needs  —  OpenAI is phasing out the work it does with data-labeling startup Scale AI, cutting ties with the company days …
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

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More News

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
Bob Van Voris / Bloomberg:
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
Jez Corden / Windows Central: