OpenAI launches GPT-5.5, designed to handle complex tasks with minimal guidance; the model will be used to power the company's upcoming “super app”  —  OpenAI is introducing an artificial intelligence model that's intended to be better at completing work without much direction …

At a town hall, Asha Sharma said Microsoft is returning to using Xbox for its gaming division, instead of Microsoft Gaming, as “Xbox needs to be our identity”  —  Xbox is Microsoft's gaming identity moving forward. … Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy week.

Microsoft announces its first voluntary retirement program, for staff whose years of employment and age add up to 70+; source: 7% of US employees are eligible  —  Microsoft will offer voluntary buyouts to some U.S. employee, a first for the 51-year-old software giant, as the tech industry grapples …

Memo: Meta plans to cut 10% of workers, or ~8,000 jobs, on May 20 and won't fill 6,000 open roles, in an effort to offset its AI spending and boost efficiency  —  Meta Platforms Inc. plans to cut 10% of workers, or roughly 8,000 employees, in an effort to boost efficiency and offset its heavy spending on artificial intelligence.

Microsoft says Copilot's agentic features in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are now generally available and enabled by default for 365 Copilot and 365 Premium  —  Try Microsoft 365 Copilot  —  Available on desktop and mobile devices  —  Today, I am excited to share that agentic capabilities in Word …

Sources: Thoma Bravo prepares to hand over customer experience management company Medallia to creditors, leading to a ~$5.1B wipeout for Medallia's investors  —  Private equity firm Thoma Bravo is nearing an agreement to hand over software firm Medallia to its lenders, wrapping up months …

SpaceX's S-1 excerpts list “manufacturing our own GPUs” among the “substantial capital expenditures” it is undertaking, with the size of the expenditure TBD  —  SpaceX may be tackling one of the biggest challenges in the chip business: manufacturing the keys …

Apple fixes a bug that stored notifications for deleted messages on iPhone and iPad, following a report that police used it to extract deleted Signal messages  —  Apple released a software update on Wednesday for iPhones and iPads fixing a bug that allowed law enforcement to extract messages …

Around 30K attend a Samsung union rally demanding 15% of operating profits for chip division staff amid the AI boom; the demand totals $27B or $400K+ per worker  —  Tens of thousands of people gathered outside Samsung Electronics Co.'s main chip hub to demand employees get a greater share of profits reaped from the AI boom.

Internal memo: Amazon is replacing white-collar job titles at its Ring and Blink units with the designation “builder”, and “builder leaders” for managers  —  During Amazon's (AMZN.O) annual review season now under way, hundreds of employees will see their job titles stripped.

How Cash App founder Bob Lee's 2023 killing fed into a narrative pushed by tech leaders like Elon Musk about SF's decline until an acquaintance was convicted  —  The 2023 murder of a tech executive seemed to fit neatly into narratives about street crime in liberal cities, until it didn't.

Spotify celebrates its 20th anniversary with a first-ever list of its 20 most streamed artists, albums, songs, podcasts, and audiobooks  —  But who else made the cut? … It was 20 years ago today that Spotify began to play.  And to mark the streaming service's big anniversary …

Anthropic says it has fixed three causes of recent Claude Code quality issues: reduced default reasoning, a caching bug, and a system prompt to reduce verbosity  —  We traced recent reports of Claude Code quality issues to three separate changes.  Here's what happened and what we're changing.

Vercel says some customer accounts were compromised prior to its early-April breach, potentially through social engineering, malware, or other methods  —  App and website hosting giant Vercel on Thursdays said hackers had accessed some of its customers' data before the company discovered …

Sources: Microsoft considered buying Cursor in recent weeks but didn't make an offer; Microsoft has been working to boost GitHub Copilot's popularity  —  Prior to SpaceX's announcement this week that it's obtained the right to acquire Cursor for $60 billion, Microsoft looked at a potential deal …

A poll of 4,000 workers in the US and the UK finds that the highest-earning and most experienced workers are adopting AI in their jobs far faster than others  —  FT-Focaldata poll offers early evidence on how the technology is reshaping work and reinforcing gender and pay gaps

Anthropic's valuation has hit $1T on Forge Global, a leading private marketplace exchange, surpassing OpenAI's valuation on the platform of $880B  —  - Anthropic's valuation now hovers at $1 trillion on Forge Global, a leading private marketplace exchange.  — That is a higher price than OpenAI …

GitHub says it has begun collecting pseudonymous client-side telemetry from command-line interface (CLI) users and enabled it by default  —  Opt-out instructions included if you're not keen on GitHub watching you in the name of product improvement  —  Users of GitHub's command-line interface (CLI) who value privacy, beware.

Memo: White House says it has info indicating “foreign entities, principally based in China” are engaged in “industrial scale distillation” of American AI tech  —  Trump official Michael Kratsios says Chinese entities stealing from American labs

Joint statement: Apple, Amazon, and others push back on stricter emissions reporting rules proposed by climate body Greenhouse Gas Protocol to cut greenwashing  —  The tech giants and dozens more companies are resisting changes proposed by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a global standard-setter.

X says it is deprecating X Communities, giving members until May 30 to migrate to XChat, and plans to increase group chat limits to 1,000 in the next two weeks  —  Today we're announcing two product changes for organizing communities on X: 1. XChat now supports joinable links for groupchats. Create a public link & share direct to Timeline. With support for 350 members per chat (and growing), Groupchat Links are the fastest way to bring [image]

Instagram launched Instants, an app for sharing disappearing photos, in Italy this week, after rolling out an Instants feature in its main app in some regions  —  - Instagram launched a new app in Italy this week called “Instants.”  — A hodgepodge of apps like Snapchat, Locket, and BeReal, the app is meant to be “low-pressure.”

Music publishers including UMG, Warner Music, and Sony drop a copyright suit against Verizon following a SCOTUS decision limiting ISP liability in Cox's suit  —  Publishers representing the bulk of the music industry dropped a copyright lawsuit against Verizon Communications Inc. over music piracy …

Turkey's parliament passes a bill requiring social media and online game companies to restrict access for children under 15, following a school shooting  —  Turkish lawmakers passed a bill late Wednesday that includes restricting access to social media platforms for children under 15, state media reported.

OpenAI releases ChatGPT for Clinicians, a tool for medical tasks like documentation and research, free for verified physicians, pharmacists, and more in the US  —  Built for clinical work, ChatGPT for Clinicians is now available for free to verified individual clinicians in the U.S.

Sources: Bain Capital seeks to sell a stake of 40%+ in Bridge Data Centres in a deal that would value the Singapore-based data infrastructure builder at $5B  —  U.S. investment firm Bain Capital is seeking to sell a stake of at least 40% in Bridge Data Centres (BDC) in a deal that would value …