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Techmeme
August 5, 2025, 9:15 AM
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Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia:
Sources: TSMC fires several employees for violating rules on obtaining sensitive information about its 2nm tech; TSMC says it detected “unauthorized activities”  —  TAIPEI — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has fired several employees for violating rules …
Kathrin Hille / Financial Times:
Taiwanese prosecutors say two ex-TSMC employees and a third suspect were arrested for allegedly stealing proprietary tech; investigators searched Tokyo Electron  —  Taiwanese prosecutors probe ‘potential trade secret leaks’ in first case since key technologies added to national security legislation
Bloomberg:
White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios says the US is exploring software or physical ways to track the location of AI chips, as part of its AI Action Plan  —  The US is exploring ways to equip chips with better location-tracking capabilities, a senior official said …
Wall Street Journal:
A draft White House EO shows President Trump plans to step up pressure against big banks over alleged discrimination against crypto companies and conservatives  —  The president is expected to sign an executive order as soon as this week that targets so-called debanking of businesses including crypto companies
Lydia Beyoud / Bloomberg:
The CFTC is asking for public comment by August 18 about trading spot crypto asset contracts listed on CFTC-registered futures exchanges  —  Takeaways by Bloomberg AI  —  Hide … Tell us how AI is shaping your news experience.  Share your feedback  —  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission …
Tobias Mann / The Register:
Google signs a deal with two power utilities to lower its power use by pausing non-essential AI workloads during demand surges or weather-based grid disruptions  —  Google will pause non-essential AI workloads to protect power grids, the advertising giant announced on Monday.
Anthony Hughes / Bloomberg:
Source: Figma considered a higher IPO price, but CEO Dylan Field wanted to bring on board certain long-term institutional shareholders and approved $33/share
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
The UK's Online Safety Act shows the UK prioritized government control over improving safety, becoming a cautionary tale for democracies regulating the internet  —  Well, well, well.  The “age assurance” part of the UK's Online Safety Act has finally gone into effect, with its age checking …
John Herrman / New York Magazine:
SEO is being supplanted by generative-engine optimization, or GEO, which focuses on AI chatbots and does not benefit from longstanding SEO tricks  —  Search-engine optimization now feels dated.  Generative-engine optimization is all about trying to trick AI chatbots.
The Information:
Internal email: Cognition offers buyouts to the ~200 newly acquired Windsurf staff, with Cognition CEO Scott Wu writing “we don't believe in work-life balance”  —  Cognition, a two-year-old artificial intelligence coding startup last valued at $4 billion, has offered buyouts …
More: The Information and WinBuzzer
Bluesky: @edzitron.com.  X: @theinformation and @lauramandaro.  LinkedIn: Scott Johnson
Min Jeong Lee / Bloomberg:
Filings: SoftBank increased its Nvidia stake to ~$3B in Q1 and bought $330M worth of TSMC stock; a source says Vision Fund monetized ~$2B of assets in H1 2025  —  Takeaways by Bloomberg AI  —  Hide … Tell us how AI is shaping your news experience.  Share your feedback
More: Tech in Asia
Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal:
ElevenLabs launches Eleven Music, letting individuals and businesses use its AI model to generate music cleared for commercial use via English-language prompts  —  New model allows customers to create music with AI that is cleared for commercial use.  But AI-generated music still faces legal battles and stiff opposition from artists.
More: WinBuzzer
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Google unveils Kaggle Game Arena, a benchmarking platform where AI models compete head-to-head in strategic games, starting with a chess tournament this week  —  The world's top performing artificial intelligence models, including OpenAI's o3 and 04-mini, Google LLC's Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Flash …
Kevin Breuninger / CNBC:
President Trump says on tariffs that “we're going to be announcing on semiconductors and chips” as soon as next week “because we want them made in” the US  —  - CNBC Councils  — CNBC on Peacock  — Join the CNBC Panel  — Supply Chain Values  — Select Shopping
More: Bloomberg
Bloomberg:
The US General Services Administration approves OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic for AI contracts with civilian federal agencies via its Multiple Award Schedule  —  The US government's central purchasing arm is adding OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Anthropic to a list of approved artificial …
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:
New York-based sales tool startup Clay raised $100M led by CapitalG at a $3.1B valuation, up from $1.25B in January 2025, and expects $100M in revenue in 2025  —  Investors valued the company, which describes its core user as a kind of marketing engineer, at $3.1 billion.
More: Reuters
Ian Carlos Campbell / Engadget:
ChatGPT now offers “gentle reminders” to take breaks during long sessions and OpenAI is building tools to better detect signs of mental or emotional distress  —  OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will now remind users to take breaks if they're in a particularly long chat with AI.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
OpenAI says ChatGPT will hit 700M weekly active users this week, up from 500M in March and up 4x YoY, and now has 5M paying business users, up from 3M in June

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:15 AM ET, August 5, 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

James Faris / Business Insider:
Sources: Disney is discussing a potential free tier for Disney+; product and tech chief Adam Smith discussed the initiative at a town hall but gave no timeline

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Report: Letterboxd's owners have held early talks with potential buyers, including Netflix, Sony Pictures, Paramount, and PE giant TPG

Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter:
NYT countersues the US EEOC, accusing it of retaliation for NYT's coverage of the agency by suing NYT for passing over a white man for a top editorial role

More News

Earlier Picks

Jon Blistein / Rolling Stone:
A Parkland shooting victim's parents created an AI version of their son to speak about gun safety, starting with an interview with journalist Jim Acosta
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Palantir reports Q2 revenue up 48% YoY to $1B, vs. $940M expected, and boosts full-year outlook guidance to ~$4.15B, up from ~$3.90B; PLTR rises 4%+
Fred Lambert / Electrek:
Transcripts from the trial over a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash: Tesla withheld crash‑snapshot data and took years to admit it existed or was relevant to the case
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Elon Musk says Vine's video archive is being brought back, and xAI's newly launched Grok Imagine, available to X Premium+ subscribers, is “AI Vine”
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare says Perplexity uses stealth crawling techniques, like undeclared user agents and rotating IP addresses, to evade robots.txt rules and network blocks
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