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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.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

New York Times:
Sources: CNN CEO Mark Thompson told Paramount he would not share oversight of CNN with another exec, as David Ellison weighs whether to put Bari Weiss in charge

Washington Post:
The US Supreme Court paused a lower court order that would have forced ex-Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge to reveal a source or pay $800 a day in sanctions

Ryan McGrady / The Conversation:
An analysis of 20M blocks of users of English language Wikipedia shows a shrinking number of administrators relying on more-frequent blocks, to raise efficiency

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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