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Techmeme
July 12, 2025, 7:40 AM
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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 …
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

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From Mediagazer

Sara Fischer / Axios:
Source: Bari Weiss is planning to create a masthead for CBS News as part of a broader overhaul of standards and procedures

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Comcast extends Mike Cavanagh's contract through January 1, 2029, and grants a ~$35M performance-based stock package; he's set to become co-CEO in January 2026

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
WBD's board says it will “carefully review and consider” Paramount's revised offer, which includes a full backstop personally guaranteed by Larry Ellison

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
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