Techmeme
September 20, 2025, 1:20 PM

Top News

Reuters:
Collins Aerospace, which provides check-in and boarding systems, confirms a “cyber-related disruption” as Heathrow and other European airports report issues  —  - London's Heathrow, airports in Berlin, Brussels affected by disruption  — RTX experiencing ‘cyber-related disruption’ in airport software
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.
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: Business Insider, The White House, New York Sun, Associated Press, The White House, Bloomberg Law, KSTP-TV, Times of India, Axios, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, Fast Company, Times of India, Breitbart, One America News Network, CBS News, Forbes Middle East, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, Business Today, Press Trust of India, Hindustan Times, Inc42 Media, NDTV Profit, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, Moneycontrol, Financial Express, Türkiye Today, Fortune India, Modern Diplomacy, Livemint, Tech Xplore, Washington Post, Engadget, Reuters, TechCrunch, The Guardian, Benzinga, Wall Street Journal, The Register, The American Bazaar, Le Monde, Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, Implicator.ai, Sky News, Daily Sabah, The Information, Baller Alert, Business Insider, @amuse, NBC News, Newsweek, and Financial Times
Yun Li / CNBC:
Memos: Amazon, which employs the most H-1B holders at 14K+, and Microsoft advise H-1B staff to avoid travel and return to the US before 12:01am ET on Sept. 21  —  Major technology companies and foreign governments are rushing to respond after President Donald Trump late Friday announced plans …
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.
Robert Booth / The Guardian:
Meta faces a backlash after using Instagram photos of teenage schoolgirls, posted by their parents with visible faces and names, to promote Threads to a man  —  Exclusive: Instagram pictures of girls as young as 13 were posted to promote Threads site ‘as bait’, campaigner says
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.
Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg:
BitGo's S-1 shows it had net income of $12.6M on revenue of $4.19B in H1 2025, compared with net income of $30.9M on revenue of $1.12B a year earlier  —  BitGo Holdings Inc. has filed for an initial public offering in the US, adding to an active market for digital assets.
Eduardo Baptista / Reuters:
Huawei says DeepSeek-R1-Safe, which was trained on 1,000 of its Ascend AI chips, is “nearly 100% successful” in preventing politically sensitive topics  —  - Model better prevent discussion of politically sensitive topics  — Model trained using 1,000 of Huawei's own Ascend AI chips
Bluesky: @nanlinear

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.

Featured Podcasts

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.
Lenny's Podcast:
OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again) | Tibo Sottiaux
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:20 PM ET, September 20, 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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Jez Corden / Windows Central:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: