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July 12, 2025, 1:50 AM
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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 …
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune:
The exclusivity period for OpenAI's $3B offer to acquire coding startup Windsurf, entered into in May, has expired  —  The exclusivity period on OpenAI's $3 billion offer to acquire coding startup Windsurf has expired, an OpenAI spokesperson told Fortune.  —  The expiration of the exclusivity …
More: The Information.  Bluesky: @quinnypig.com
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
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
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.
Reuters:
Chinese startup Moonshot AI releases Kimi K2, an open-weight model that the company says has enhanced coding capabilities and excels at general agent tasks  —  Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot AI released a new open-source AI model on Friday, joining a wave of similar releases …
Politico:
French prosecutors open a criminal investigation into X over allegations that the company manipulated its algorithms for the purposes of “foreign interference”  —  The probe is based on complaints from a lawmaker and an unnamed senior civil servant.
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  —  UPDATE: on Wednesday July 16, I'll be holding a fireside chat in SF with the primary authors of the paper - register here to attend!
Bloomberg:
Sources: JPMorgan Chase told fintech companies it will start charging fees for access to customers' account data, which could drastically reshape the industry  —  The largest US bank has sent pricing sheets to data aggregators — which connect banks and fintechs — outlining the new charges …
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 …
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  —  The approval comes after T-Mobile committed to eliminating diversity and inclusion programs to win the favor of the commission.
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
The Economic Times:
Analysis: YC picked just four Indian startups in 2024 vs. 66 in 2021, amid a growing trend of startups shifting their parent entities to India for domestic IPOs  —  Y Combinator's selection of Indian startups has decreased significantly.  This decline is attributed to factors …
Juro Osawa / The Information:
Source: Butterfly Effect, the startup behind Manus, has shut down its entire China-based team to minimize geopolitical risks associated with its ties to China  —  The startup behind Manus, an artificial intelligence agent that went viral earlier this year and got financial backing from Benchmark …
More: The Decoder
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Justin Sun says he is buying another $100M worth of $TRUMP, doubling his total known stake of digital coins tied to President Trump  —  Crypto billionaire Justin Sun is buying another $100 million worth of $TRUMP, doubling his total known stake of digital coins tied to President Donald Trump.
More: Bitcoin Insider and ZyCrypto.  Bluesky: @dogsincali
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
HMD says it will “scale back” US operations, citing “a challenging geopolitical and economic environment”, and appears to have stopped US sales of Nokia devices  —  Even Barbie couldn't save it. … HMD Global, the company best known for licensing the Nokia brand …
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  —  If you ask the new Grok 4 for opinions on controversial questions, it will sometimes run a search to find …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Tests reveal that Grok 4 seems to search for Elon Musk's views online when asked about sensitive topics, and its answers tend to align with Musk's opinions

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:50 AM 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

Rebuild Local News:
The 2026 Local Journalist Index shows a persistent shortage of local journalists; states with fewer local journalists face higher municipal borrowing costs

Lucas Manfredi / The Wrap:
Netflix says it is “not interested” and has no plans to pursue Lionsgate; Lionsgate shares closed up 13.85% on Tuesday before falling ~4% after hours

Mark Sweney / The Guardian:
Analysts: UK social media ban is likely to cause £1.3B in digital ad cuts in 2027, with streaming services poised to benefit as advertisers seek to reach teens

More News

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
Daryna Antoniuk / The Record:
French media: French police detained Russian professional basketball player Daniil Kasatkin at the US' request due to his alleged links to a ransomware group
Mike Rogoway / Oregonian:
Recording: Intel's new CEO Lip-Bu Tan told staff that Intel is “not in the top 10 semiconductor companies” and it is “too late” to catch Nvidia in AI training

Earlier Picks

Hugh Son / CNBC:
Goldman Sachs CTO Marco Argenti says the bank will “start augmenting our workforce with Devin”, Cognition's AI software engineer, as Wall Street firms adopt AI
Bloomberg:
Sources: Binance wrote the smart contract for USD1, a stablecoin launched by Trump's World Liberty, and promoted it to its 275M users, before CZ sought a pardon
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Intel spins out RealSense, its AI robotics and biometric venture, and RealSense raised a $50M Series A from MediaTek Innovation Fund, Intel Capital, and others
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
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Belkin says it is ending support for its Wemo smart home products and app on January 31, 2026; four devices will continue to function via HomeKit over Thread
Joe Tidy / BBC:
UK police arrest four people, a 20-year-old woman and three men aged 17 to 19, in connection to the M&S and Co-op hacks that began in mid-April and caused havoc
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