Techmeme
September 30, 2025, 9:55 AM

Top News

Spotify:
Spotify says Daniel Ek will step down as CEO and become executive chairman in January 2026, and names CPTO Gustav Söderström and CBO Alex Norström as co-CEOs  —  The following press release went live on Business Wire earlier today.  —  Today, Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) …
Wall Street Journal:
Filing: YouTube will pay $24.5M to settle a 2021 Trump lawsuit over suspending his account after January 6, the last Big Tech company to settle his lawsuits  —  Google subsidiary is the last of three Big Tech companies to resolve personal litigation Trump filed against social-media platforms
Chase DiFeliciantonio / Politico:
California Governor Gavin Newsom signs SB 53 into law; the first-in-the-nation AI safety law requires AI companies to disclose their safety testing regimes  —  “California has proven that we can establish regulations to protect our communities while also ensuring that the growing AI industry continues to thrive.
Anthropic:
Anthropic debuts Claude Sonnet 4.5, saying it is the world's best coding model, the strongest for building complex agents, and its “most aligned” frontier model  —  Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the best coding model in the world.  It's the strongest model for building complex agents.
Hayden Field / The Verge:
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
OpenAI rolls out Instant Checkout to let users make single-item purchases directly in ChatGPT, starting with US Etsy sellers, and plans to add Shopify merchants  —  Arrows pointing outwards  —  OpenAI on Monday announced Instant Checkout, a new feature that allows users to buy products through …
Wired:
Sources: OpenAI plans a stand-alone social app powered by Sora 2, featuring a TikTok-like vertical feed with entirely AI-generated videos  —  The platform appears to closely resemble TikTok and is powered by Sora 2, OpenAI's latest video generation model.  —  OpenAI is preparing to launch …
Wall Street Journal:
Financial Times:
How Jared Kushner and Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban brokered the EA takeover using Kushner's deep Saudi Arabia ties; sources: Kushner's firm will own ~5% of EA  —  Trump's son-in-law used deep ties in Saudi Arabia to help pull off the largest buyout  —  Antoine Gara, James Fontanella-Khan …
Bloomberg:
Ryan Whitwam / Ars Technica:
Open-source Android app store F-Droid says Google's new requirement for all Android developers to verify their identity threatens to kill alternative app stores  —  Google plans to begin testing its recently announced verification scheme for Android developers in the coming weeks …
Bloomberg:
Analysis: US wholesale electricity now costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did in 2020 in areas located near significant data center activity  —  Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers.  That's being passed on to customers.
Mahfouz Zubaide / BBC:
NetBlocks: Afghanistan is experiencing a “total internet blackout” as the Taliban imposes a telecom shutdown; an official says it will last until further notice  —  Afghanistan's main airport is at a standstill as the country grapples with the fallout of a nationwide internet shutdown imposed by the Taliban government.
Bloomberg:
Education software maker Anthology files for bankruptcy, listing $1B to $10B in both assets and liabilities after its Blackboard merger debt became unmanageable  —  Anthology Inc., the Veritas Capital-backed education-software provider, sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US …
Emily Forgash / Bloomberg:
Unit 42: suspected Chinese hackers, known as Phantom Taurus, have breached foreign ministers' email servers as part of a years-long effort targeting diplomats  —  Suspected Chinese hackers have breached email servers of foreign ministers as part of a years-long effort targeting the communications …
More: Unit 42
CNBC:
A US judge sentences Frank founder Charlie Javice to 85 months in prison for defrauding JPMorgan Chase by overstating how many customers the fintech company had  —  Charlie Javice, founder of a startup acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2021 for $175 million, was sentenced to just more than seven years …

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Command Line:
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Featured Podcasts

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The company building underwater drones for $50,000
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
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More News

Earlier Picks

Ana Ionova / New York Times:
More: Business Today and The Week
X: @brij and @bgurley
Bluesky: @ddayen and @piyushmittal
Forums: r/Brazil and r/neoliberal
Bernard Goyder / Bloomberg:
Crypto in America:
Suzi Ring / Financial Times: