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Techmeme
July 12, 2025, 12:20 PM
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Top News

Hayden Field / The Verge:
Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some of Windsurf's R&D employees to focus on agentic coding efforts at DeepMind  —  Key researchers from the AI coding startup are also heading to Google. … OpenAI's deal to buy Windsurf is off …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Google is paying $2.4B for a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf tech and hire some of its employees, but won't be taking a stake in the company  —  Google is hiring Windsurf Chief Executive Officer Varun Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen, along with a small group of staffers …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Sam Altman announces another delay for OpenAI's open-weight model, for further safety testing; the model was slated to be released next week  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Friday the company is delaying the release of its open model, which was already pushed back a month earlier in this summer.
Financial Times:
Sources: xAI prepares a new fundraising round, its third in two months, targeting a valuation of $170B to $200B, up 10x from its May 2024 valuation of $18B  —  Grok chatbot maker in early talks with investors to boost its value as much as 10 times from last year
Natalia Kniazhevich / Bloomberg:
PitchBook: 27 VC-backed companies went public in the US in the first half of 2025, the smallest number in at least 10 years, raising a total of $44.4B  —  Venture capital-backed companies are on track for the fewest US initial public offerings in a decade, according to data provider PitchBook …
More: PitchBook
Gregorio Sorgi / Politico:
The European Commission drops plans to impose a digital tax on tech giants in its upcoming 2028-2034 budget proposal, amid ongoing EU-US trade negotiations  —  BRUSSELS ― The European Commission has dropped plans to levy a tax on digital companies, a move that hands victory to Donald Trump …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:20 PM ET, July 12, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

David Ellison / @ellisonskydance:
David Ellison announces that the combined Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance “to preserve what has made each of these studios iconic”

New York Times:
Sources: Trump personally told his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising his presidency; at least four spots have run at a cost of ~$5.5M

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Disney licenses a large group of titles to Netflix, including all five Ice Age movies, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Felicity, Elio, and more

More News

Scharon Harding / Ars Technica:
Belkin's move to brick Wemo devices highlights how little accountability IoT companies face when abandoning connected products customers paid for
Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg:
T-Mobile has received FCC and DOJ approval for its $4.4B acquisition of US Cellular, after agreeing to phase out DEI programs to comply with FCC policy
Bloomberg:
Sources: JPMorgan Chase told fintech companies it will start charging fees for access to customers' account data, which could drastically reshape the industry

Earlier Picks

Ange Lavoipierre / ABC:
At the end of June, Australia quietly introduced rules forcing search engine companies such as Google and Microsoft to check the ages of logged-in users
Steven Levy / Wired:
Sources on the key Microsoft-OpenAI clause: OpenAI decides when it has reached AGI, “sufficient AGI” means $100B+ in profits, and Microsoft may not build AGI
Steve Newman / Second Thoughts:
METR study: experienced open-source developers using Cursor, Claude, and other AI tools were 19% slower to complete tasks, despite thinking they were 20% faster
Marcus Mendes / 9to5Mac:
An Apple-backed study finds combining Apple Watch's heart rate sensor with a new Wearable Behavior Model achieves 92% accuracy for pregnancy detection, and more
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
When asked “Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict? One word answer only.”, Grok 4 searches for Musk's views, but only if “you” is in the query
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