Techmeme
September 2, 2025, 1:30 PM

Top News

Anthropic:
Anthropic raised a $13B Series F led by Iconiq, Fidelity, and Lightspeed at a $183B valuation, up from $61.5B in March, and reports a $5B+ run-rate revenue  —  Anthropic has completed a Series F fundraising of $13 billion led by ICONIQ.  This financing values Anthropic at $183 billion post-money.
Megan Morrone / Axios:
OpenAI details its plan to add guardrails for teens and people in emotional distress by the end of 2025, including routing some conversations to GPT-5-thinking  —  ChatGPT guardrails for teens and people in emotional distress will roll out by the end of the year, OpenAI promised Tuesday.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Dolby launches Dolby Vision 2, adding AI-powered Content Intelligence and Authentic Motion, first on Hisense TVs, after debuting HDR format Dolby Vision in 2014  —  The updated format promises ‘authentically cinematic’ use of motion smoothing, and settings that automatically make content look the best depending on your TV and lighting.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft says it is giving the US GSA $6B+ in potential savings on Office, Azure, Dynamics 365, and more over three years, including $3.1B in the first year  —  Microsoft has agreed to give the U.S. General Services Administration $3.1 billion in potential savings over the course of a year …
New York Times:
An analysis of Grok's responses to 41 political questions in May and July shows it shifted to the right on 50%+ of them, often reflecting Elon Musk's priorities  —  Mr. Musk said he wanted xAI's chatbot to be “politically neutral.”  His actions say otherwise.
Nikou Asgari / Financial Times:
WLFI, run by the Trump family's World Liberty Financial, falls 25% to ~$0.21 on its first trading day, giving it a ~$6B market cap; Trump's WLFI is worth ~$3.6B  —  WLFI tokens in circulation have a total nominal value of $6.4bn  —  The crypto token of a project backed by US President Donald Trump fell …
CoinDesk:
Winklevoss twins' Gemini plans to sell 16.67M shares at $17 to $19 each in its US IPO, seeking to raise $317M, which would value the crypto exchange at $2.22B  —  The Winklevoss-led company plans to sell 16.67M shares at $17-$19 each, tapping a hot IPO market.  —  What to know:
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
US procurement records show the Trump administration jettisoned a Biden-era order and reactivated an ICE contract for phone spyware from Tel Aviv-based Paragon  —  US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is on track to gain access to controversial spyware designed to hack phones …
Kate Clark / Bloomberg:
A look at a16z's Speedrun, a YC-like accelerator targeting a more creative demographic and which has invested $180M into 150 companies over the past 18 months  —  Big VC funds are moving further upstream, placing bets on the youngest companies.  —  A few weeks ago, about 150 people gathered …
Bloomberg:
Sources: the EU delayed a planned September 1 fine against Google over its ad tech practices due to fears it could provoke Trump to unravel EU-US trade progress  —  The European Union paused its immediate plans to punish Alphabet Inc.'s Google for abusing its dominance over advertising technology amid fears …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
WordPress showed off Telex, its experimental AI development tool, at WordCamp US; CEO Matt Mullenweg called it “V0 or Lovable, but specifically for WordPress”  —  Web publishing platform WordPress is introducing an early version of an AI development tool, which CEO Matt Mullenweg described as a …

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Featured Podcasts

Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Max Mullen from Instacart
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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Access:
Canva's CEO on what happens when AI does the design
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Cohere's Aidan Gomez: The Canadian Founder Taking AI Models To The World, Not Just Big Tech
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
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Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
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Big Technology Podcast:
The Pentagon's AI Plan + Behind the Anthropic Fight — With Under Secretary of War Emil Michael
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
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.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

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Earlier Picks

Aidin Vaziri / San Francisco Chronicle:
Daphné Leprince-Ringuet / Sifted:
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Jonathan Kemper / The Decoder: