Techmeme
January 22, 2025, 12:40 PM

Top News

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle unveil The Stargate Project, a JV to invest in US AI infrastructure, committing $100B now and up to $500B over the next four years  —  OpenAI says that it will team up with both the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and with Oracle, along with others, to build multiple data centers for AI in the U.S.
More: OpenAI, The White House on YouTube, CBS News, The Verge, Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Guardian, BBC, Reuters, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economic Times, CNN, Gizmodo, Austin Business Journal, Benzinga, CNBC, New Republic, Axios, Silicon Republic, Quartz, Silicon UK, RCR Wireless News, Finbold, New York Post, 24/7 Wall St., GovInfoSecurity.com, Taipei Times, Just Security, Fortune, Mediaite, Fast Company, Inside Bitcoins, Light Reading, SupplyChainBrain, Engadget, The Motley Fool, Cautious Optimism, CryptoSlate, Ace of Spades HQ, PCMag, Cryptopolitan, Analytics India Magazine, The Coin Republic, Interesting Engineering, City A.M., Daily Sabah, Tech Monitor, ComputerWeekly.com, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and The Hollywood Reporter
Bluesky: @martyswant and @edzitron.com
M.G. Siegler / Spyglass:
A look at The Stargate Project: unanswered questions, PR wins, SoftBank only has ~$30B cash, many projects are old news, and Elon Musk trolled the announcement  —  If John ‘Hannibal’ Smith loves it when a plan comes together, I love it when a plan comes together hastily.
New York Times:
Trump pardons Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, a crypto and libertarian cult hero serving a life sentence since 2015 on money laundering, drug charges, and more  —  Ross Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for creating a site in a shady corner of the internet to sell heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances.
Financial Times:
Sources: Google is investing $1B+ more in Anthropic, which is also nearing a further $2B round from Silicon Valley VCs led by Lightspeed at a ~$60B valuation  —  Artificial intelligence group closes in on $60bn valuation  —  Google is making a fresh investment of more than $1bn into OpenAI rival Anthropic …
Becky Bracken / Dark Reading:
The Trump administration fires all advisory committee members within the DHS, including those in the CISA's CSRB, which was investigating Salt Typhoon hackers  —  In a letter sent today, the acting DHS secretary terminated membership to all advisory boards, including the Cyber Safety Review Board …
The Cloudflare Blog:
In 2024, Cloudflare's autonomous DDoS defense systems blocked ~21.3M DDoS attacks, up 53% YoY, and 420+ DDoS attacks in Q4 2024 exceeded 1Tbps, up 1,885% QoQ  —  This post is also available in .體中文, Deutsch, 한국어, Español (Espaňa) and Français.
Jennifer Maas / Variety:
Insomniac Games founder and CEO Ted Price plans to step down from the Sony-owned studio after 30+ years; a trio of Insomniac veterans will serve as co-heads  —  Taking over for Price, who will be staying with the PlayStation Studio through March, are a trio of Insomniac vets who will serve …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Microsoft says it has signed a new deal with OpenAI that gives Microsoft “right of first refusal”, meaning it's no longer OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider  —  Microsoft was once the exclusive provider of data center infrastructure for OpenAI to train and run its AI models.  No longer.
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Source: OpenAI plans to release a new ChatGPT feature called Operator this week to automate complex tasks typically done via a web browser  —  OpenAI is preparing to release a new ChatGPT feature this week that will automate complex tasks typically done through the Web browser …
More: The DecoderBluesky: @davelee.meX: @mpopv, @btibor91, @kylebrussell, @simonw, and @steph_palazzoloForums: Slashdot
Washington Post:
Sources: a deep philosophical rift over how DOGE should operate spurred Vivek Ramaswamy's exit, with Donald Trump's January 20 EO embodying Elon Musk's vision  —  A deep philosophical rift between the two billionaire leaders of the “Department of Government Efficiency” left Musk to run the group.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
A survey of 3,000+ game developers: 11% were laid off in the past year, 58% back unionization, 30% say generative AI negatively impacts the industry, and more  —  The 2025 GDC survey revealed the impact of industry-wide layoffs in 2024 where one of every 11 game developers lost a job.
Financial Times:
UK CMA Chair Marcus Bokkerink plans to leave the antitrust agency, forced out by UK ministers; the CMA appoints ex-Amazon executive Doug Gurr as interim chair  —  Marcus Bokkerink replaced at CMA with government saying it wants pro-business decisions to drive prosperity and growth
TechCrunch:
Truecaller rolls out real-time caller ID to its ~750K iOS subscribers, who account for 40% of its revenue; Truecaller has 2.6M+ paying subscribers in total  —  Popular caller ID app Truecaller has long left iPhone users at a disadvantage by not offering the caller information in real-time …
Bloomberg:
Donald Trump says he would be open to Elon Musk or Larry Ellison purchasing TikTok US as part of a joint venture that would give the US government 50% ownership  —  “I have the right to make a deal,” Trump said at an event alongside Ellison at the White House on Tuesday.
Alexandra S. Levine / Bloomberg:
Danny Park / The Block:
A Texas District Court rules against the sanctions on Tornado Cash, ordering a previous decision to be reversed; the US sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022  —  - A U.S. District Court has ordered the sanctions on Tornado Cash to be reversed.  — The price of TORN jumped over 140% following the news.

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Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Radhika Rajkumar / ZDNET: