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January 30, 2025, 4:35 PM
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Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI is in early talks to raise up to $40B at a $340B valuation; the startup was last valued at $157B in October, when it raised $6.6B  —  SoftBank would lead $40 billion round for the ChatGPT maker, some of which would go to Stargate AI infrastructure venture.
Financial Times:
Sources: SoftBank is in talks to invest $15B to $25B in OpenAI on top of its $15B+ commitment to Stargate; the deal would make SoftBank OpenAI's biggest backer  —  Deal would make Japanese group biggest financial backer in ChatGPT maker  —  SoftBank is in talks to invest as much as $25bn into OpenAI …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sources: Nadella and Microsoft execs moved quickly to get engineers to test and deploy DeepSeek R1 on Azure and GitHub in 10 days, an unusually fast turnaround  —  Microsoft was ready for the next step in AI models.  —  Microsoft was ready for the next step in AI models.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft makes OpenAI's o1 model, branded as “Think Deeper”, free for all Copilot users, after launching o1 in October 2024 as a paid Copilot Pro feature  —  Think Deeper first launched in October as a paid Copilot Pro feature, but it's now free.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils Intel-powered Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 for businesses, both Copilot+ PCs, starting at $1,500, or $500 more than Qualcomm variants  —  Along with a new USB 4 dock, the Surface devices are designed for businesses.  —  Along with a new USB 4 dock, the Surface devices are designed for businesses.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google announces a “voluntary exit program” for employees working in the Platforms & Devices group in the US, which includes Android, Chrome, Pixel, and more  —  Last year, the teams responsible for Pixel hardware and Android software were merged into one division …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Europol and German law enforcement arrest two suspects and seize 17 servers to take down Cracked and Nulled, two of the largest hacking forums with 10M+ users  —  Europol and German law enforcement confirmed the arrest of two suspects and the seizure of 17 servers in Operation Talent …
New York Times:
Elon Musk is using the same tactics he used during his Twitter takeover at DOGE, including offering exits to federal employees and testing engineering prowess  —  Federal agencies have offered exits to millions of employees and tested the prowess of engineers — just like when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google Search adds Ask for me, which uses AI to call businesses to inquire about availability and pricing, starting with nail salons and auto shops in the US  —  Following Daily Listen in early January, Google is launching a new Search Lab called “Ask for me.”
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Vodafone makes “the world's first” satellite video call using a standard smartphone via SpaceMobile satellites; the service is set to launch in Europe in 2025  —  It's partnered with Starlink rival AST SpaceMobile on a direct-to-smartphone satellite service it plans to launch in Europe later this year.
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to make Facebook “way more culturally influential than it is today” and he is focused on returning to “OG Facebook” in 2025  —  Yesterday Meta reported its quarterly earnings, and amid sharing updates on Threads, Instagram, and yes …
Wired:
Wiz: DeepSeek left one of its critical databases exposed, leaking more than 1M records including system logs, user prompt submissions, and users' API keys  —  China-based DeepSeek has exploded in popularity, drawing greater scrutiny.  Case in point: Security researchers found more than 1 million records …
Bloomberg:
The US DOJ sues to block HPE's $14B acquisition of Juniper Networks, arguing the deal would harm competition in the enterprise wireless equipment  —  - Justice Department files complaint in California federal court  — Company executives met with DOJ to discuss concerns this week
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Threads adds a dedicated media tab globally for photos and video, days after X and Bluesky added video tabs, and will let users tag people in photos  —  Meta's newer social network Threads announced on Thursday that it's introducing a dedicated “media” tab for both photos and videos …
Mistral AI:
Mistral launches Small 3, a latency-optimized 24B-parameter model that it says is competitive with larger models such as Llama 3.3 70B or Qwen 32B  —  Apache 2.0, 81% MMLU, 150 tokens/s  —  Today we're introducing Mistral Small 3, a latency-optimized 24B-parameter model released under the Apache 2.0 license.
Stephen Eisenhammer / Reuters:
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum writes to Google arguing that Maps should not accept Trump's decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America  —  Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Thursday presented a letter the government is sending to Google arguing the Google Maps platform …
Apple Inc.:
Apple reports first quarter results  —  All-time records for total company revenue and EPS  —  Services revenue reaches new all-time high  —  Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2025 first quarter ended December 28, 2024.  The Company posted quarterly revenue of $124.3 billion …
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Irreducible, which provides zero-knowledge proof generation services powered by FPGA chips, raised a $24M Series A co-led by Paradigm and Bain Capital Crypto  —  - Irreducible has raised $24 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Paradigm and Bain Capital Crypto.
More: Irreducible

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:35 PM ET, January 30, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

Sara Fischer / Axios:
Source: Bari Weiss is planning to create a masthead for CBS News as part of a broader overhaul of standards and procedures

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Comcast extends Mike Cavanagh's contract through January 1, 2029, and grants a ~$35M performance-based stock package; he's set to become co-CEO in January 2026

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Trump says Stephen Colbert is a “pathetic trainwreck” and “CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW”; earlier CBS aired the Kennedy Center Honors, hosted by Trump

More News

TechCrunch:
AI audio startup ElevenLabs raised a $180M Series C co-led by a16z and ICONIQ Growth at a $3.3B post-money valuation, taking its total funding to $281M
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Microsoft's stock fell 5%+ after saying it expects revenues for the current quarter to range between $67.7B and $68.7B, compared to $69.78B est.

Earlier Picks

Hayden Field / CNBC:
OpenAI says the US National Laboratories will use its o1 models for research; it will work with Microsoft to deploy a model on Los Alamos' Venado supercomputer
NewsGuard's Reality Check:
NewsGuard: with news-related prompts, DeepSeek's chatbot repeated false claims 30% of the time and provided non-answers 53% of the time, giving an 83% fail rate
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