Techmeme
September 20, 2025, 2:05 AM

Top News

Reuters:
The Trump administration says it would require companies to pay an annual $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, a move that could significantly impact the tech industry  —  - Visas are used principally by tech sector  — Over 70% of beneficiaries of H-1B visas enter US from India
More: The White House, Bloomberg Law, Moneycontrol, Times of India, The Economic Times, Business Today, Engadget, The White House, Reuters, CNN, CBS News, Bloomberg, Benzinga, Livemint, TechCrunch, San Francisco Chronicle, NDTV Profit, Associated Press, The Indian Express, Wall Street Journal, The Register, The Guardian, Le Monde, Implicator.ai, Hindustan Times, The Information, Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, Washington Post, Financial Times, NBC News, Al Jazeera, The American Bazaar, Business Insider, Baller Alert, @amuse, The Daily Caller, Newsweek, Axios, MacDailyNews, Watcher Guru, and The Independent
Emmett Lindner / New York Times:
Trump appears to suggest Xi Jinping approved a deal to divest TikTok's US operations during a call, but neither side elaborated on what the approval entailed  —  The president wrote on Truth Social, “appreciate the TikTok approval,” after a call with China's top leader, Xi Jinping.
The Information:
Sources: OpenAI is recruiting from Apple's hardware, design, manufacturing, and supply chain teams, as it targets late 2026 or early 2027 for its first devices  —  As OpenAI's plans to make devices infused with its artificial intelligence get closer to reality, the company is increasingly plucking talent …
Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft says it will bring a $3.3B data center in Wisconsin online in early 2026 and calls it “the world's most powerful AI datacenter”  —  The $3.3 billion project in Wisconsin is expected to come online in early 2026, said Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith.
Jez Corden / Windows Central:
Microsoft plans to raise Xbox Series X price by $50 to $649.99 and Series S by $20 to $399.99 starting Oct. 3, citing “changes in the macroeconomic environment”  —  The cost of gaming in America just went up — here's why.  —  The tariff situation in the United States …
xAI:
xAI launches Grok 4 Fast, a multimodal model with a 2M context window and a unified architecture that combines reasoning and non-reasoning modes  —  Pushing the Frontier of Cost-Efficient Intelligence  —  We're thrilled to present Grok 4 Fast, our latest advancement in cost-efficient reasoning models.
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Sources: xAI has raised $10B at a post-money valuation of $200B, weeks after reportedly raising $10B in debt and equity at a ~$150B valuation  —  Elon Musk's xAI is raising $10 billion from investors in a round that values the artificial intelligence startup at $200 billion, sources told CNBC's David Faber.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Meta CTO says the technical issues during live demos of its new smart glasses were due to a self-inflicted DDoS and a bug that put Zuckerberg's glasses to sleep  —  Meta ran into some spectacularly embarrassing technical issues during the live demos of its new smart glasses this week, and now we know why.
The Information:
Sources: Apple told at least two suppliers to boost their daily output of entry-level iPhone 17 by at least 30%, after strong pre-orders last weekend  —  Apple is rushing to boost production of its newly released entry-level model iPhone 17 after strong pre-orders last weekend.
Olivia Tam / Bloomberg:
China's market regulator opens a probe into Chengdu Kuaigou, a Kuaishou unit involved in livestream shopping, for suspected violations of e-commerce rules  —  China's market regulator is beginning a probe into a unit of Kuaishou Technology for how live-streaming services are used to promote e-commerce …

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Earlier Picks

Sri Muppidi / The Information:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Kieran Smith / Financial Times:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy / Sherwood News:
Reece Rogers / Wired: