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January 24, 2025, 10:45 AM
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Top News

Politico:
While Trump downplayed Elon Musk's Stargate criticism, assuring reporters “they're putting up the money”, key White House sources say they're furious with Musk  —  “It's clear he has abused the proximity to the president,” said one ally of the president.
Financial Times:
Sources: Stargate lacks a fully developed plan, hasn't yet secured funding, will get no government financing, and will exclusively serve OpenAI once operational  —  Donald Trump has called the SoftBank-backed venture a 'resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential'
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Trump signs an EO to create a crypto working group led by David Sacks to consider a national digital asset stockpile “potentially derived” from seized crypto  —  President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to promote the advancement of cryptocurrencies in the U.S …
Associated Press:
Trump signs an EO to develop AI systems “free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas”, revoking Biden policies that “act as barriers” to innovation  —  President Donald Trump signed an executive order on artificial intelligence Thursday …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
OpenAI releases a “research preview” of its Operator AI agent that can automate web-based tasks, launching to US subscribers of its $200/month ChatGPT Pro tier  —  OpenAI is releasing a “research preview” of an AI agent called Operator that can “go to the web to perform tasks for you,” according to a blog post.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI partners with DoorDash, eBay, Instacart, Priceline, StubHub, Uber, and other companies to ensure that Operator respects their terms of service agreements
Every:
Hands-on with Operator: limited in what it can browse, can autonomously perform repetitive workflows, and can do lengthy tasks on its own with minimal prompting
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
OpenAI says Operator is powered by Computer-Using Agent, or CUA, which is built on top of its multimodal GPT-4o and trained similarly to its “reasoning” models
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
The US SEC revokes SAB 121, an unpopular accounting rule that forced banks to treat bitcoin and other tokens as a liability on their balance sheets  —  After years of lobbying by the crypto industry, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has rescinded an accounting rule that forced banks …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
The CMA says Google has agreed to curb UK businesses using fake reviews to boost star ratings and must report to the CMA on its efforts for the next three years  —  Google will take firmer action against British businesses that use fake reviews to boost their star ratings on the search giant's reviews platform.
Jon Keegan / Sherwood News:
DeepSeek's latest AI model R1 sticks to Chinese government restrictions on sensitive topics like Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, and the treatment of Uyghurs in China  —  Those who train the AI models get to decide what the truth is.  —  5H  —  The AI world was abuzz this week with the release …
Jaspreet Singh / Reuters:
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is planning to invest $60B to $65B in capex in 2025, will end the year with 1.3M+ GPUs, and plans to grow its AI teams “significantly”  —  Meta Platforms (META.O) will invest $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditure in 2025, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on Friday.
New York Times:
Instagram suspended the accounts of two abortion pill providers and Facebook removed their posts; Meta blamed “over-enforcement” and restored some accounts  —  Some posts related to obtaining abortion pills were recently hidden on Instagram and Facebook and some accounts were suspended, before being later restored.
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
Sources: Mukesh Ambani's Reliance is buying Nvidia's AI chips and plans to build a 3GW data center in Jamnagar, India, set to be the world's largest by capacity  —  - Reliance joins rush of tech companies building data centers … Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Group is building what may become …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:45 AM ET, January 24, 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.

From Mediagazer

Deadline:
Disney initiates a third round of layoffs under Josh D'Amaro, sources say impacting a couple hundred staff, largely in HR and tech, smaller than prior rounds

John Koblin / New York Times:
Paramount streaming chief Cindy Holland is leaving the company; she joined Skydance as an adviser and became Paramount's direct-to-consumer chief last year

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the Trump administration used DHS funds to finance pro-Trump ads, including one that is almost identical to a 2024 Trump campaign ad, calling them PSAs

More News

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
The US DOJ charges the former CEO of AI chatbot startup GameOn and his wife for allegedly defrauding investors of more than $60M between 2018 and 2024
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic debuts Citations, a new API feature letting developers “ground” answers in source documents, available for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Haiku

Earlier Picks

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Substack launches a $20M Creator Accelerator Fund to lure US creators who have $2K+ per month in recurring revenue away from other subscription-based platforms
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Google rolls out the first public beta of Android 16 for Pixel devices, introducing Live Updates, a limited version of Apple's Live Activities, and more
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Epic launches a free games program on mobile and promises to pay the Apple Core Technology Fee for participants in the program on iOS for one year
Bloomberg:
At Davos, Trump blasts the EU for targeting Apple, Google, and Meta, calling regulators' cases “a form of taxation”, and references Apple's €13B Irish tax bill
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Perplexity launches Perplexity Assistant in its Android app, which can take “multi-app actions” like hailing a ride, initially free for users in 15 languages
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
The UK CMA opens investigations into Apple's and Google's mobile ecosystems, including OSes, app stores, and browsers, to see the impact on users and businesses
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google acquihires “some of the HTC VIVE engineering team” in Taiwan with “a proven track record in VR” for $250M in cash, to “accelerate” Android XR development
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