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July 15, 2025, 12:50 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.
Bloomberg:
Sources: the US DOJ and CFTC ended a pair of investigations into crypto betting platform Polymarket that started in the waning days of 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 …
Martha Muir / Financial Times:
Google signs two 20-year power purchase agreements worth $3B to access hydroelectric power from Brookfield's renewables arm, starting with up to 670MW of power  —  Tech groups seeking renewable energy to meet huge demand from artificial intelligence  —  Google has reached a $3bn deal …
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
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Reddit says it is now verifying UK users' ages using Persona before letting them “view certain mature content”, 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
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”
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 …
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.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:50 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

Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
Disney and OpenAI sign a three-year deal to bring 200+ Disney characters to Sora; Disney makes a $1B investment in OpenAI and will become a major OpenAI client

Dominick Mastrangelo / The Hill:
President Trump told reporters “it's imperative” for CNN to be sold: “Any deal it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately”

Dan Friedman / Mother Jones:
Jack Posobiec, a new Pentagon press corps member, seems to be working in coordination with the Pentagon to threaten a journalist writing about a DoD official

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
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
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

Earlier Picks

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google adds featured notebooks to NotebookLM from publications, including The Economist and The Atlantic, plus professors, authors, researchers, and nonprofits
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”
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
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