Techmeme
August 14, 2025, 8:45 AM

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 …
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:
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.”
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:
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 …
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 …
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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Niantic Spatial:
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Zoho:
AWS WorkMail is shutting down: Migrate to a secure alternative without downtime  —  If your organization is currently using AWS WorkMail, this probably wasn't news you were expecting, but it is something …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

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Channels with Peter Kafka:
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Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
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Cheeky Pint:
The history and future of AI at Google, with Sundar Pichai
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
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Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
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Earlier Picks

Zvi Mowshowitz / Don't Worry About the Vase:
Juby Babu / Reuters:
Bloomberg:
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Mark Gurman / @markgurman: