Techmeme
August 3, 2025, 11:20 PM

Top News

Noah Smith / Noahpinion:
A look at why the AI data center building boom could spark a financial crisis akin to 2008, including the rising use of debt financing via private credit funds  —  This time let's think about a financial crisis before it happens.  —  The U.S. economic data for the last few months is looking decidedly meh.
Paul Kedrosky:
As a percentage of US GDP, AI datacenter capex is already larger than peak telecom spending during the dot-com era and is approaching the railroad spending boom  —  AI capex is so big that it's affecting economic statistics, boosting the economy, and beginning to approach the railroad boom
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple formed an Answers, Knowledge, and Information team to work on ChatGPT-like search experiences; iPhone 17 Pro may have been seen in live testing  —  Apple has a new “Answers” team developing a stripped-down rival to ChatGPT to help users access world knowledge.
Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal:
Young Americans are increasingly turning to BNPL loans from Affirm and others, as getting approved for credit cards becomes harder in today's economic climate  —  Young Americans are turning to easy, high-interest loan products; research shows some are spending more
Jessica Roy / The Information:
A look at newsletter platform Beehiiv, which has hit $30M in ARR and fees starting at $43/month for 1,000 subscribers, unlike Substack, which takes a 10% cut  —  Last August, when CNN's Oliver Darcy decided he wanted to leave the network and launch Status, an email newsletter focused on the media industry …
Clément Delangue / VentureBeat:
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue says open-source AI is vital for US innovation and the US risks losing the AI race to China if it falls behind in open source  —  When President Trump released the U.S. AI Action Plan last week, many were surprised to see “encourage open-source and open-weight AI …
Kieran Smith / Financial Times:
Darktrace says it plans to invest $200M in the US in 2026, up 11% YoY, as part of a push to surpass $1B in revenue and grow its US sales to 50% of its revenue  —  UK-based cyber security group steps up investment plans following takeover by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo
David DiMolfetta / Nextgov/FCW:
The US Senate confirms Sean Cairncross to serve as National Cyber Director, making him the first Senate-approved cybersecurity official of Trump's second term  —  The Senate confirmed Sean Cairncross to serve as national cyber director in a 59-35 vote on Saturday night …
Emily Baker-White / Forbes:
A profile of Rumble founder Chris Pavlovski, who declined an offer to become CEO of Truth Social and opted to provide services to the platform through Rumble  —  Before he helped run Truth Social, Chris Pavlovski owned porn domains.  Now, he's allied with a political movement that wants to ban pornography.
Zack Abrams / The Block:
Arkham Intelligence claims to have uncovered a previously undisclosed heist of 127,426 BTC, now worth ~$14.5B, from Chinese mining pool LuBian in December 2020  —  - Blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence claims to have uncovered a heist of 127,426 BTC, now worth nearly $14.5 billion, from a Chinese mining pool in 2020.

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Earlier Picks

Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Wall Street Journal: