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Techmeme
July 15, 2025, 12:10 PM
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Top News

Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
Nvidia plans to resume H20 sales to China after the US assured it AI chip shipments would be approved, reversing the Trump administration's stance from April  —  US government officials told Nvidia they would green-light export licenses for its H20 artificial intelligence accelerator …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Researcher: a DOGE employee inadvertently published a private API key for xAI on GitHub on July 13, exposing access to 52+ LLMs, like a Grok version from July 9  —  Marko Elez, a 25-year-old employee at Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been granted access …
ProPublica:
Investigation: Microsoft uses engineers in China to help maintain US DOD systems, with minimal supervision by US personnel, leaving sensitive data vulnerable  —  The Pentagon bans foreign citizens from accessing highly sensitive data, but Microsoft bypasses this by using engineers in China …
Carlos Caminada / Bloomberg:
Apple signs a $500M deal to buy rare-earth minerals from US producer MP, which secured Pentagon backing last week, as it seeks to reduce its dependence on China  —  Apple Inc. has struck a $500 million deal to buy rare-earth minerals from MP Materials Corp., the US producer that just last week secured backing from the Pentagon.
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Reddit says it has started verifying UK users' ages before letting them “view certain mature content”, in order to comply with the country's Online Safety Act  —  Reddit announced today that it has started verifying UK users' ages before letting them “view certain mature content” …
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
The European Commission says that France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and Greece will test a blueprint for an age verification app meant to protect children online
Bloomberg:
Sources: the US DOJ and CFTC ended a pair of investigations into crypto betting platform Polymarket that started under the Biden administration  —  A pair of US investigations into crypto-betting platform Polymarket that went full-throttle in the waning days of the Biden administration …
New York Times:
Researchers: during the 12-day Iran-Israel war, both sides engaged in unprecedented psychological warfare using AI content and social media to spread propaganda  —  The 12-day conflict was marked by a flurry of propaganda, disinformation and covert operations aided by artificial intelligence and spread by social media.
Martha Muir / Financial Times:
Google signs two 20-year power purchase agreements worth $3B to access hydroelectric power from Brookfield's renewables arm, delivering up to 670MW of power  —  Tech groups seeking renewable energy to meet huge demand from artificial intelligence  —  Google has reached a $3bn deal …
Alexey Shabanov / TestingCatalog:
Grok's iOS app now features two AI “Companions”, or 3D animated avatars that interact with users via voice, including Ani, an anime character with an NSFW mode  —  Grok has just introduced a notable addition to its iOS app: AI Companions, which are fully 3D animated characters that can interact with users via voice.
Riley Goodside / @goodside:
[Thread] Some users claim that Grok 4 Heavy responded simply with “Hitler” when asked to “Return your surname and no other text”
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Uber and Baidu announce a multi-year partnership to launch robotaxis in markets outside the US and mainland China, starting in Asia and the Middle East in 2025  —  Baidu's autonomous vehicles will be available on the Uber app in Asia and the Middle East later this year, the companies said in a statement Tuesday.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Meta says it has taken down around 10M Facebook profiles so far this year that were impersonating or repeatedly reusing content from large content producers  —  Meta announced on Monday that it will take additional measures to crack down on accounts sharing “unoriginal” content to Facebook …
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Mistral releases Voxtral, its first open source AI audio model family, and says its API transcription offerings are cheaper than models from OpenAI and Google  —  As AI systems become more capable, speech is fast becoming the default way we communicate with machines.
Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
A look at SpaceX's $2B xAI investment and Tesla's possible investment in xAI, and the idea that Tesla stock is a way to invest in the “Musk Mars Conglomerate”  —  Also the Windsurf deal, duct cleaning, tokenization and HYPE.  —  The Musk Mars Conglomerate
Reuters:
PitchBook: US startup funding surged 75.6% YoY in H1 2025 to $162.8B, the strongest since H1 2021, driven by AI and on track for the second-best year ever  —  U.S. startup funding surged 75.6% in the first half of 2025, thanks to the continued AI boom, putting it on track for its second-best year ever …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:10 PM ET, July 15, 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

Kanis Leung / Associated Press:
Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai is found guilty of colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiring to publish seditious articles

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Major brands were replaced by direct-response advertisers during commercial breaks of CBS News' December 13 town hall with Erika Kirk, moderated by Bari Weiss

Chris Morris / Variety:
Acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele Singer were found dead in their home; LAPD is investigating the deaths as a homicide

More News

Mia Sato / The Verge:
Nextdoor unveils new features like an interactive neighborhood map called Alerts, partners with 3,500+ local news outlets, and more, to revitalize its app
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
CoreWeave says it plans to invest up to $6B to set up a 100MW data center in Lancaster, PA, creating 175 jobs and potentially expanding to 300MW in the future
Andrew Orr / AppleInsider:
IDC: the global smartphone market grew 1% YoY in Q2, despite economic uncertainty and weak demand in China; Samsung led with 58M shipments, up 7.9% YoY
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google adds featured notebooks to NotebookLM from publications, including The Economist and The Atlantic, as well as professors, authors, and select works

Earlier Picks

Eli Tan / New York Times:
Sources: Meta's new superintelligence lab led by Alexandr Wang discussed abandoning its top open-source model, Behemoth, in favor of developing a closed model
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Cognition acquires Windsurf, saying it will waive 100% of Windsurf employees' vesting cliffs and give them “fully accelerated vesting for their work to date”
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Anthropic now uses Canva's MCP server to let Canva users manage designs in Claude, following Claude integrations with Figma, Notion, Stripe, Prisma, and others
Deborah Sophia / Reuters:
The US DOD announces OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI have each won contracts with a $200M ceiling, aimed at enabling agentic AI national security workflows
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Amazon launches Kiro, an IDE that aims to bridge the gap between rapidly vibe-coded prototypes and production systems with specs, testing, and documentation
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