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Techmeme
August 14, 2025, 8:50 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 …
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 …
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
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 …
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.
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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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:50 AM ET, August 14, 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

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Trump names Danielle Thumann, an adviser to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, to serve as an FCC commissioner; if confirmed, she'd bring the Republican majority to 3-1

Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Scripps' CEO says the company is adopting a streaming news model enabled by AI, including cutting 12% of staff, and praises the FCC's lift of the ownership cap

Ted Johnson / Deadline:
A federal judge has dismissed an antitrust challenge to Paramount's WBD acquisition brought by a group of consumers, but allows them to file a revised complaint

More News

Earlier Picks

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
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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