Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News
Techmeme
July 12, 2025, 7:40 AM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

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 …
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
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 …
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.
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
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

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Deep analysis for deep questions  —  Introducing Superagent.  A new research product from Airtable: Subagents deeply interrogate your topic and turn it into boardroom-ready reports, slides, docs, or websites.
Clay:
Turn any GTM idea into reality  —  Clay helps GTM teams combine AI agents, enrichment, and intent data to move faster and turn insights into action.
Zoho:
Why now: Building cloud infrastructure that the UAE can rely on  —  For years, the main question in the UAE was whether organizations should adopt cloud technology.  Today, cloud adoption is no longer up for debate.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
 'Something Big Is Happening' + A.I. Rocks the Romance Novel Industry + One Good Thing
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Lenny's Podcast:
 "Engineers are becoming sorcerers" | The future of software development with OpenAI's Sherwin Wu
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
 Ben Thompson from Stratechery on AI ads, the end of SaaS, and the future of media
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
 His Excellency Khaldoon Al Mubarak: Investing in an AI-Driven World
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
 The Billionaire Button w/ Tim Wu
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Great Chat:
 No one won the AI Bowl
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:40 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

New York Times:
A Q&A with NYT reporters on handling the Epstein files, including creating tools to make them searchable, prepping for the release, and dealing with redactions

Scott Nover / Washington Post:
The Richmond Free Press, a 34-year-old Black-owned weekly, shuts down due to falling ad revenue as the Black press suffers from the dispersion of its readership

Advanced Television:
Report: AI-generated music uploads account for <1% of total streams; AI-adoption is strongest in functional and low-stakes settings such as background music

More News

Bloomberg:
Sources: JPMorgan Chase told fintech companies it will start charging fees for access to customers' account data, which could drastically reshape the industry
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
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

Earlier Picks

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
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
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
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
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter