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August 14, 2025, 9:05 AM
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Top News

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin, who led xAI's engineering, says he is leaving the company to launch a venture firm that backs AI safety research and startups  —  Igor Babuschkin, a co-founder of Elon Musk's xAI startup, announced his departure from the company on Wednesday in a post …
The Information:
Sources: Perplexity spoke to The Browser Co. and Brave about acquiring them, offering ~$1B for Brave; OpenAI also spoke to The Browser Co. about an acquisition  —  Perplexity made headlines this week when the artificial intelligence startup said it had offered to buy Google's Chrome …
Business Insider:
Sources: Perplexity is seeking funding at a $20B post-money valuation, up from a reported $18B in its fundraising round in July 2025 and $520M in January 2024
Alexandra Alper / Reuters:
Sources: the US Navy and Air Force may cancel two nearly complete HR software projects worth $800M+ to let Salesforce, Palantir, and others win similar work  —  Donald Trump's Navy and Air Force are poised to cancel two nearly complete software projects that took 12 years and well over $800 million combined …
Jennifer Ouellette / Ars Technica:
Q&A with researcher Petter Törnberg on his preprint study showing how social network structures cause problematic outcomes like filter bubbles and echo chambers  —  “The [structural] mechanism producing these problematic outcomes is really robust and hard to resolve.”
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
New York AG Letitia James sues Zelle, claiming that security lapses led to $1B+ in consumer fraud losses; the US CFPB dropped a similar case in March 2025  —  Zelle was sued on Wednesday by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who said the electronic payment platform's refusal …
Dasha Litvinova / Associated Press:
Russia is “partially” restricting WhatsApp and Telegram calls, saying the apps are used “to deceive and extort money” and “in sabotage and terrorist activities”  —  Russian authorities announced Wednesday they were “partially” restricting calls …
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Microsoft Windows head Pavan Davuluri says the next Windows version will be more ambient, pervasive, and multi-modal, with voice becoming more important  —  In a new video, Microsoft CVP and Windows boss Pavan Davuluri has teased that the future of Windows will consist of a truly ambient …
Jeff Horwitz / Reuters:
An internal Meta doc shows its chatbots were allowed to engage in provocative conversations; Meta removed some examples, including romantic roleplay with kids  —  An internal Meta policy document, seen by Reuters, reveals the social-media giant's rules for chatbots, which have permitted provocative behavior …
Financial Times:
Sources: DeepSeek R2's launch delay is due to training issues on Huawei Ascend chips, prompting a switch to Nvidia chips for training and Huawei's for inference  —  Difficulties of training the start-up's latest system with Huawei's semiconductors highlight dependence on Nvidia
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's AI plans include robots, like a tabletop one in 2027, a conversational Siri, a smart speaker with a display in 2026, and home security cameras  —  Apple Inc. is plotting its artificial intelligence comeback with an ambitious slate of new devices, including robots …
Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg:
Fitness band maker Whoop says it will not disable its blood pressure tracking tool after a request from the US FDA in July and requests meeting with the agency  —  Whoop Inc., the maker of screen-less fitness bands, said it will not disable its blood-pressure tracking tool despite a request from the US Food and Drug Administration.
Jaspreet Singh / Reuters:
Google plans to spend $9B in Oklahoma over two years on cloud and AI infrastructure, including a new data center campus and an expansion of its Pryor facility  —  Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it will spend an additional $9 billion in Oklahoma over the next two years to expand cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Aisha S Gani / Bloomberg:
Klarna, which is planning a potential NY IPO as soon as September, is focusing on its banking push to boost revenue while shedding its image as a BNPL phenom  —  As the payments giant prepares an IPO, it's trying to persuade millions of consumers to use its debit cards.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google is rolling out a feature for Gemini that, when enabled, will let the AI chatbot “remember” a user's past conversations without prompting  —  You'll no longer have to prompt Gemini in order for it to recall what you've discussed in previous chats.

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From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:
WBD shareholders vote to approve Paramount Skydance's deal to acquire the company; in a non-binding vote, they reject compensation packages for David Zaslav

Washington Post:
The DOD fires the Stars and Stripes ombudsman after calling the paper “woke”; the ombudsman says she believes she was fired for defending editorial independence

Wall Street Journal:
Former Disney CEO Bob Iger rejoins Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital in an advisory role; he served as a venture partner at Thrive in 2022

More News

Zvi Mowshowitz / Don't Worry About the Vase:
GPT-5 review: GPT-5-Thinking is a substantial upgrade over o3, Auto is only useful for free tier users, picking the right model still matters, and more

Earlier Picks

Juby Babu / Reuters:
Cisco reports Q4 revenue up 8% YoY to $14.67B, vs. $14.62B est., net income up 31% to $2.8B, and forecasts Q1 revenue above estimates
Bloomberg:
Bullish shares closed up 84% at $68 in the company's NYSE debut, above the IPO price of $37, giving Bullish a market value of $9.9B based on outstanding shares
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Core Devices CEO Eric Migicovsky unveils the Pebble Time 2 in four colors, with a 1.5" e-paper display, multicolor RGB backlighting, and a 30-day battery life
Mark Gurman / @markgurman:
In response to Elon Musk's claims that the App Store favors ChatGPT, Apple says that it “is designed to be fair and free of bias” and has “objective criteria”
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