Techmeme
August 5, 2025, 9:05 AM

Top News

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 …
Anthony Hughes / Bloomberg:
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.
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.comX: @theinformation and @lauramandaroLinkedIn: Scott Johnson
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare says Perplexity uses stealth crawling techniques, like undeclared user agents and rotating IP addresses, to evade robots.txt rules and network blocks  —  We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine.  Although Perplexity initially crawls …
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
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 …
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
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.
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:

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Jon Blistein / Rolling Stone:
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Fred Lambert / Electrek:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: