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October 16, 2025, 7:10 PM
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Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft launches Windows features to help weave AI into regular Windows 11 PCs, including rolling out a “Hey, Copilot!” wake word and Copilot Voice and Vision  —  Microsoft is rewriting Windows to turn computers into AI PCs that you talk to.
Hayden Field / The Verge:
Anthropic announces Skills for Claude, a tool with folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude can load to improve performance on some tasks  —  The announcement follows a similar new tool from OpenAI. … AI agents spent years as a concept and then as an experiment.
Heather Knight / New York Times:
Email: Ron Conway, a close friend of Marc Benioff for 25+ years, stepped down from the Salesforce Foundation board, citing Benioff's comments supporting Trump  —  Ron Conway stepped down from the board of Salesforce's philanthropic arm after the company's chief executive, Marc Benioff …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple readies a slimmer M6 MacBook Pro featuring an OLED touch display with a hole-punch design replacing the notch, for late 2026 or early 2027  —  Apple Inc. is preparing to finally launch a touch-screen version of its Mac computer, reversing course on a stance that dates back to co-founder Steve Jobs.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
DoorDash and Waymo announce a partnership to let DoorDash use Waymo's robotaxis for delivery, starting with deliveries from Phoenix's DashMart store  —  Customers will have to come down to the curb to retrieve their orders from the driverless car's trunk.
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Amazon's Ring partners with Flock to let law enforcement agencies that work with Flock request footage from Ring doorbell users  —  Amazon's surveillance camera maker Ring announced a partnership on Thursday with Flock, a maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras that share footage with law enforcement.
Jeremy Stern / Colossus:
A profile of Joshua Kushner, including Thrive Capital's investments in GitHub and Stripe and its role in reinstating Sam Altman as OpenAI CEO in November 2023  —  Joshua Kushner, Thrive Capital, and the American dream  —  The road to Rick Rubin's house was long and winding for Joshua Kushner …
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Apple and NBCUniversal announce an Apple TV and Peacock Premium bundle for $14.99 per month, a 30% discount over the individual subscriptions  —  In addition to getting both services at a discount of more than 30 percent, Apple TV will add select Peacock programming, while Peacock will get selected Apple TV shows.
Ina Fried / Axios:
Commonwealth Fusion Systems partners with Google DeepMind to use Google's open-source plasma simulator, Torax, for accelerating fusion energy development  —  Google DeepMind is partnering with a Boston-area energy startup to use AI to speed the development of fusion as a clean energy source.
More: Google DeepMind, TechCrunch, and GeekWire
X: @pfau and @googledeepmind.  LinkedIn: Anna Koivuniemi.  Bluesky: @ian-goodfellow.  Forums: r/singularity
Megan Morrone / Axios:
OpenAI hires black hole theoretical physicist Alex Lupsasca, the first person to join the OpenAI for Science initiative led by Kevin Weil, to shape its research  —  Prize-winning black hole theoretical physicist Alex Lupsasca has joined OpenAI's new science team, Axios has learned.
Bluesky: @wesley83
Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:
Ripple acquires GTreasury, a platform used by Fortune 500 companies for managing cash, foreign exchange, and risk, for $1B, set to close in the coming months  —  The deal, pending regulatory approvals, would give Ripple access to large enterprise clients as it is building out financial services around its digital asset business.
Financial Times:
HR software startup Deel raised $300M led by Ribbit Capital at a $17B valuation, up from $12.6B earlier in 2025, and says revenue crossed $100M in September  —  HR start-up raises $300mn from Ribbit, Coatue and Andreessen amid espionage allegations from rival Rippling
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Pinterest adds new tools that let users limit how much AI-generated content they see in their feed in certain categories, including beauty, art, and home decor  —  Following backlash over an increase in “AI slop” taking over users' feeds and making it less useful, Pinterest on Thursday added …
Steven J. Horowitz / Variety:
Spotify partners with Sony Music Group, WMG, UMG, Merlin, and Believe to develop “responsible” AI products and says it will build a generative AI research lab  —  In a significant step towards interfacing with AI and its impact on the music industry, Spotify has partnered …
Bloomberg:
Sources: F5 blames its breach on state-backed hackers from China who used the Brickstorm malware to infiltrate its network for 12+ months and steal source code  —  A potentially “catastrophic” breach of a major US-based cybersecurity provider has been blamed on state-backed hackers from China …
Jaures Yip / CNBC:
Upgrade, which offers financial services like online loans, raised $165M led by Neuberger Berman at a $7.3B valuation and is “12 to 18 months away from an IPO”  —  Upgrade, the online lender started by LendingClub founder Renaud Laplanche, has raised a new round of funding that values the startup at $7.3 billion.
Wall Street Journal:
The White House says representatives from Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, and other corporate donors to a $250M ballroom attended a dinner with President Trump  —  Event included representatives from Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon.com and Palantir
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Kraken acquires US-licensed futures exchange Small Exchange from IG Group, for $32.5M in cash and $67.5M in Kraken parent company's Payward stock, before an IPO  —  Kraken has acquired a US-licensed futures exchange from IG Group as the crypto heavyweight seeks to broaden the range of products it can offer directly to US customers.
Davis Janowski / WealthManagement.com:
Aboon, an AI-powered platform for financial advisers to help business owners launch and manage 401(k) plans, raised a $17.5M seed led by Bain Capital Ventures  —  Backed by lead investor Bain Capital Ventures, the funding will go toward further automation development and product expansion.
Bloomberg:
Sources: CME Group plans to debut financial contracts tied to sports games and economic indicators by the end of 2025, including through its FanDuel partnership  —  CME Group Inc. is planning to debut financial contracts tied to both sports games and economic indicators by the end of the year …
Debby Wu / Bloomberg:
TSMC reports Q3 net profit up 39% YoY to ~$14.8B, above est., and raises its 2025 revenue growth projection to the mid-30% range, citing “very strong” AI demand  —  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. hiked its projection for 2025 revenue growth for the second time this year …
Financial Times:
Investigation: the Trump family's crypto empire has reaped over $1B in pre-tax profits over the past year; Eric Trump says the true figure is “probably more”  —  The president and his family have built a rapidly growing digital assets empire which has been fuelled by the administration's industry-friendly policies
Matt Burgess / Wired:
How facial recognition software rejects people with facial differences, who number an estimated 100M+ worldwide, blocking them from accessing essential services  —  An estimated 100 million people live with facial differences.  As face recognition tech becomes widespread …
Bluesky: @brbarrett, @lhn, @mattburgess1, and @couts.  Forums: r/technews
Financial Times:
Analysis: 10 loss-making AI startups, like OpenAI and Anthropic, gained almost $1T in valuation over the past year, fueling fears of a bubble in private markets  —  Unprecedented funding leads 10 groups including OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI to gain almost $1tn in value in past year

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:10 PM ET, October 16, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

CNN:
Haberman-Swan book: Trump wanted to make Fox News “beg” for a presidential interview, he almost settled for $3M with ABC instead of $16M, and more

Andrew Cohen / InvestmentNews:
Robinhood plans to shutter the Sherwood News site in favor of newsletters and the Robinhood app; at least three reporters were cut in company layoffs this week

Erik Hayden / The Hollywood Reporter:
A report by LA officials estimates that the Paramount-WBD deal places about 2.5K jobs in LA and 6K jobs globally at risk due to duplicative roles

More News

Earlier Picks

Deena Mousa / MIT Technology Review:
How AI-powered tools like PainChek, an app that scans a person's face for tiny muscle movements, are helping health care providers better assess patients' pain
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
An interview with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on YouTube as the future of TV, paying out $100B+ to its creators, partnering with the NFL, scripted content, and more
The Keyword:
Google releases Cell2Sentence-Scale 27B (C2S-Scale), a 27B-parameter foundation model for single-cell analysis built on its Gemma family of open models
Ryan S. Gladwin / Decrypt:
Paxos says it “mistakenly minted” $300T of PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin on October 15 on the Ethereum blockchain and then “burned” the tokens 20+ minutes later
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