Techmeme: Sources: DeepSeek plans to use Huawei's Ascend AI chips to train smaller versions of its upcoming R2 models but will still use Nvidia chips for largest models (The Information)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

August 29, 2025, 9:40 AM

Top News

Juby Babu / Reuters:

xAI launches Grok Code Fast 1, a “speedy and economical” agentic coding model, available for free for a limited time on GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, more — Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, on Thursday released a new “speedy and economical” agentic coding model …

Financial Times:

Court filing: the UK sought broad access to Apple user data, including bulk iCloud interception beyond ADP, and hasn't dropped the mandate as the US claimed — Document suggests British government's ‘back-door’ demand was not limited to the company's most secure iCloud service

More: MacRumors, Engadget, AppleInsider, MacTech.com, Fortune, UKTN, and City A.M.

Forums: r/unitedkingdom and MacRumors Forums

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Alibaba developed a new AI inference chip to compete with H20; it is manufactured by a Chinese company unlike an earlier AI chip made by TSMC — Chinese tech companies spark market exuberance by signaling they are catching up to U.S. — SINGAPORE—Chinese chip companies …

More: Investor's Business Daily, Benzinga, Business Standard, Investing.com, Reuters, City A.M., MarketWatch, Livemint, and Engadget

Forums: r/LocalLLaMA and r/baba

The Information:

Sources: DeepSeek plans to use Huawei's Ascend AI chips to train smaller versions of its upcoming R2 models but will still use Nvidia chips for largest models — DeepSeek, one of China's leading artificial intelligence developers, has decided to use Huawei Technologies' AI chips to train …

More: Investing.com, Fortune, and Livemint

Washington Post:

In a trial over a fatal Autopilot crash, Tesla denied having crash-snapshot data, until a hacker hired by the plaintiffs recovered the data from the vehicle — The critical evidence was presented last month to a jury, which found the company partially liable for the 2019 crash in Key Largo, Florida.

X: @talon_sharpedge and @faizsays. Bluesky: @rivertam

Forums: Hacker News and r/RealTesla

Lydia Beyoud / Bloomberg:

The CFTC says non-US crypto exchanges have a path to bringing on US users, in an advisory clarifying how they can register as so-called foreign boards of trade — The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has taken a step that could make it easier for some overseas crypto exchanges …

Kif Leswing / CNBC:

Dell reports Q2 revenue up 19% YoY to $29.78B, vs. $29.17B est., and forecasts Q3 EPS of $2.45, below $2.55 est.; DELL drops 5%+ after hours — Despite beating on its top and bottom lines, shares of Dell Technologies fell more than 5% Thursday in extended trading after giving third-quarter …

Wall Street Journal:

Police are investigating a murder-suicide in what appears to be the first documented murder involving someone who engaged extensively with an AI chatbot — “Erik, you're not crazy.” ChatGPT fueled a 56-year-old tech industry veteran's paranoia, encouraging his suspicions that his mother was plotting against him.

More: New York Post, Moneycontrol, and Mirror

Bluesky: @kashhill, @prietschka, @jf2u, @albertburneko, @eoinhiggins, @paleofuture, @edzitron.com, and @hagenblix

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to, @davidho@mastodon.world, and @harrymccracken@mastodon …

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:

Intel CFO David Zinser says the company received $5.7B in cash from the US government on August 27; the White House says the deal is still “being ironed out” — Intel CFO David Zinser said that the semiconductor giant received $5.7 billion from the U.S. government on Wednesday evening.

More: Tom's Hardware, Benzinga, Reuters, The Verge, Al Jazeera, Daily Sabah, and Business Today

Bluesky: @stevekovach. Forums: r/hardware and r/technology

Financial Times:

Intel CFO says the US deal aims to deter Intel from selling its foundry; it lets the US buy 5% more at $20/share if Intel's stake in the unit falls below 51%

More: TechRadar, Fast Company, Ars Technica, Robotics & Automation News, Reuters, Moneycontrol, TechCrunch, Proactive, TipRanks Financial, The Straits Times, and Oregonian

Forums: r/intelstock, r/Hasan_Piker, and Ars OpenForum

BBC:

An investigation finds spammers are deploying Holocaust-themed AI slop images across Facebook, in an attempt to game Meta's content monetization program — An international network of spammers are posting AI-generated images of Holocaust victims on Facebook, a BBC investigation into “AI slop” has found.

Bluesky: @newjukeboxcafe, @disabilitystor1, and @janethanderson. Forums: r/Judaism

Reed Albergotti / Semafor:

Microsoft unveils MAI-Voice-1, a speech model that can generate a full minute of audio in under a second on a single GPU, and a text model called MAI-1-preview — On Thursday, Microsoft announced two powerful AI models it built that it says perform at the level of the world's top offerings …

More: Microsoft AI, PCMag, Windows Central, Neowin, The Verge, CNBC, Semafor on YouTube, The Rundown AI, Silicon Republic, PhoneArena, WinBuzzer, Verdict, The Indian Express, Business Today, Livemint, Digit, The Register, Thurrott, Engadget, The Information, and Analytics India Magazine

X: @mustafasuleyman, @emollick, @joefenton, @reedalbergotti, @ml_angelopoulos, @andrewcurran_, @davecitron, @scaling01, @mustafasuleyman, @yusuf_i_mehdi, @mustafasuleyman, @mustafasuleyman, @lmarena_ai, and @reedalbergotti. LinkedIn: Alpana Bajaj

Bluesky: @timkellogg.me and @caseynewton

Forums: r/LocalLLaMA, r/singularity, and Slashdot

Financial Times:

Sources: ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao threatened to quit Meta within days of joining and return to OpenAI; later, he was given the chief AI scientist title — Longtime acolytes are sidelined as Big Tech chief directs biggest leadership reorganisation in two decades

More: Financial Times. Bluesky: @justinhendrix

Reuters:

Autodesk reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $1.76B, vs. $1.73B est., forecasts Q3 revenue above est., and raises its annual forecasts; ADSK jumps 10%+ after hours — Autodesk (ADSK.O) raised its annual revenue and profit forecasts on Thursday, betting on growing demand for its design and engineering software …

More: Benzinga, Yahoo Finance, Wall Street Journal, Autodesk, Inc., SiliconANGLE, Morningstar, Inc., and Associated Press

X: @earnings_time, @fiscal_ai, @autodesk, and @alphasenseinc

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:

Reliance launches a subsidiary called Reliance Intelligence, aiming to create national-scale AI infrastructure in India, in partnership with Google and Meta — Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man and chairman of Reliance Industries, has unveiled an ambitious plan to build the country's AI backbone through …

Anthropic:

Anthropic requires users to accept new terms by September 28, including choosing whether new chats and coding sessions can be used to train AI models — Today, we're rolling out updates to our Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy that will help us deliver even more capable, useful AI models.

More: Perplexity, CNET, AIN, TechCrunch, BGR, Digit, Business Standard, CyberInsider, Business Today, The Register, WinBuzzer, Implicator.ai, MacRumors, Thurrott, and The Verge

X: @simonw, @alexhardmond, @andrey__hq, @conor_d_dart, @claudeai, @claudeai, @claudeai, and @claudeai

LinkedIn: Kelly Koscuiszka and John Dolman

Bluesky: @quinnypig.com and @nbhansen.dk

Forums: Hacker News, Slashdot, and MacRumors Forums

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:

Filing: credit reporting giant TransUnion discloses a data breach affecting 4.4M+ customers' personal info but claims “no credit information was accessed” — Credit reporting giant TransUnion has disclosed a data breach affecting more than 4.4 million customers' personal information.

More: BleepingComputer, ITPro, Infosecurity, Cyber Security News, Benzinga, Security Affairs, Finextra, CNET, NewsMax.com, The Record, Tom's Guide, The Register, Comparitech, American Banker, PCMag, Bloomberg, Insurance Journal, and CyberInsider

Mastodon: @zackwhittaker@mastodon.social. Forums: r/technology, r/cybersecurity, r/cybersecurity, r/technews, and Slashdot

Nicola M White / Bloomberg:

Elon Musk files a motion to dismiss a US SEC suit over his 2022 Twitter stake disclosure, calling allegations that he cheated investors a government overreach — Elon Musk asked a federal judge to dismiss a US Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit over his growing stake in Twitter Inc. in 2022 …

More: BBC, Reuters, WinBuzzer, crypto.news, Benzinga, and Cointelegraph. Bluesky: @pppgrifter

Robert Burnson / Bloomberg:

A judge rules Nvidia must face trial over allegations that it benefitted from autonomous driving data stolen by an engineer who defected from Valeo in 2021 — Nvidia Corp. must face trial in the case of an engineer who inadvertently revealed autonomous driving trade secrets that he allegedly stole from a former employer.

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:

Alibaba reports Q1 revenue up 2% YoY to ~$34.6B, below ~$35.4B est., and net income up 76% to ~$5.9B, above ~$4B est., as AI demand drives cloud sales up 26% — Alibaba posted a better-than-expected bottom line in the June quarter fueled by accelerated sales at its cloud computing unit …

More: South China Morning Post, The Information, Reuters, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Nikkei Asia, Constellation Research, Business Wire, and Benzinga

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:

Beyond violation rates: Are your AI evaluations measuring the right things? — Structured eval design can improve both the breadth of behaviors tested and the interpretability of resulting failures.

Will Reed:

The best sales leaders aren't job hunting. Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach. — Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.

Zoho:

Ask an Expert: How to effectively recover stuck TDS refunds with reduced TDS reconciliation time — The 26AS/Form 168 gets updated quarterly and often gets checked only during the time of ITR filing.

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.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble

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.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Training Data:

Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI

Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.

Subscribe to Training Data.

Invest Like the Best:

Andrew Huberman - The Frontier of Neurotechnology

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Big Technology Podcast:

Who Wins The AI Assistant Wars? + Why Didn't Google Build Muse?

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Sources:

Reflection's founders on building a DeepSeek of the West

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Grit:

How Vercel Is Rethinking Go-to-Market With AI | COO Jeanne Grosser

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:40 AM ET, August 29, 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

CNN:

David Ellison tells Skydance staff he supports CNN's legal action to regain access to covering Trump, reiterates his belief in editorial independence, and more

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:

Filing: Laurene Powell Jobs and former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick join Skydance's board; former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will be a board adviser

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Memo: Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz acknowledge layoffs, saying combining companies will involve “difficult decisions that affect our workforce”

Upcoming Tech Events

Microsoft Windows and Surface media event

Alignment 2026 Valley101 AI Summit: Hear from Cerebras, NVIDIA, OpenAI & Anthropic REGISTER NOW

Sunnyvale, CA

Oct 12-14

Fortune Most Powerful Women

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference

New York Times DealBook Summit

More News

Bloomberg:

Huawei reports H1 2025 revenue up 3.9% YoY to ~$58.5B, driven by soaring AI compute demand and a rebound in phone sales, and net profit down 32% YoY to ~$5.2B

More: Reuters

Chandini Monnappa / Reuters:

India's largest telco Reliance Jio, owned by Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani, says it aims to list its shares through an IPO in India by the first half of 2026

The Information:

Sources: Pinecone, which provides an AI-compatible vector database, is exploring a sale after receiving takeover interest; Pinecone was valued at $750M in 2023

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:

Marvell reports Q2 revenue up 58% YoY to $2.01B, in line with estimates, and forecasts Q3 revenue at $2.06B, below $2.11B est.; MRVL drops 11%+ after hours

More: Reuters, Marvell Technology, Inc., Benzinga, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, and Tech in Asia

Bobby Allyn / NPR:

While facial recognition tech remains unregulated at the US federal level, 23 states have passed or expanded laws to restrict mass scraping of biometric data

LinkedIn: Pete Fussey. Bluesky: @eff.org. Forums: r/technology

Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal:

Affirm reports Q4 revenue up 33% YoY to $876.4M, above $837M est., GMV up 43% to $10.4B, and EPS of $0.20, above $0.12 est.; AFRM jumps 13%+ after hours

More: Yahoo Finance, Tech in Asia, MarketWatch, CNBC Television on YouTube, and Affirm

Jyoti Mann / Business Insider:

Sources: Meta aims to launch its next-gen Llama AI model, Llama 4.X, by the end of 2025; the TBD team developing Llama 4.X is also trying to fix Llama 4 bugs

LinkedIn: Jyoti Mann. Forums: r/LocalLLaMA

Hans Nichols / Axios:

In a letter, FTC chair Andrew Ferguson warns Google not to filter or suppress emails sent by Republicans over Gmail; Google says its spam filters are not biased

More: Benzinga, Reuters, and MediaPost

X: @afergusonftc, @afergusonftc, and @afergusonftc

Earlier Picks

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:

InstaLILY, whose industry-specific AI agents called InstaWorkers integrate with legacy systems, raised $25M from Insight Partners

Sabrina Ortiz / ZDNET:

OpenAI makes its Realtime API generally available with features like MCP support and debuts gpt-realtime, its most advanced speech-to-speech model, in the API

More: OpenAI, MarkTechPost, VentureBeat, Implicator.ai, The Decoder, WinBuzzer, and Inc

X: @omooretweets, @saqbach, @pbbakkum, @liodakis, @juberti, @vapi_ai, @juberti, @sierracatalina1, @kwindla, @openaidevs, @openaidevs, @gdb, @openaidevs, @ritakozlov_, @swyx, @omooretweets, @omooretweets, @ryancarson, and @openai

LinkedIn: Andriana Lazana, Charles Wang, and Kirby Thornton. Forums: Hacker News

Bloomberg:

Sources: Trump's threat of “substantial” tariffs on countries imposing digital taxes came after Zuckerberg raised concerns about the taxes in a private meeting

More: Tom's Hardware, Politico, Fortune, Platformer, India Today, crypto.news, Business Insider, Mobile World Live, Reuters, Irish Independent, and PocketGamer.biz

LinkedIn: Thomas REGNIER. Bluesky: @justinhendrix, @yukonhcornelius, and @noahbarkin. Threads: @mwi.invest. Forums: r/worldnews

Will Wade / Bloomberg:

Commonwealth, which wants to build a fusion power plant, raised $863M from Nvidia's NVentures, Khosla Ventures, and Google, bringing its total raised to ~$3B

More: energynews.pro, cfs, Canary Media, Inc, Yahoo Finance, PitchBook, VC News Daily, Financial Times, Venture Capital Journal, The Boston Globe, and Washington …

Emily Brooks / The Hill:

Two House Republicans open a probe into alleged organized efforts to inject bias into Wikipedia, citing an ADL report about anti-Israel bias on the site

More: Gizmodo, New York Post, ZeroHedge News, Raw Story, USA Today, The Gateway Pundit, PCMag, Breitbart, New York Sun, and MediaNama

Bluesky: @glynmoody, @vegandroid, @michaelsderby, @molly.wiki, @cascoinfoundation.org, @molly.wiki, @elivalley, and @molly.wiki. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to

Forums: r/skeptic, r/BlockedAndReported, r/conservativeterrorism, r/FreeSpeech, r/wikipedia, r/LibertarianUncensored, r/inthenews, r/UkrainianConflict, r/politics, r/technology, and Slashdot