Techmeme: Roku reports Q4 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.2B, vs. $1.15B est., net loss down 55% YoY to $35.5M, and streaming households up 12% YoY to 89.8M; ROKU jumps 15%+ (Todd Spangler/Variety)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:

Sources: Apple plans to launch its AI features in China as early as May 2025, using its own on-device models and Alibaba software to censor or filter the output — - Company to use own models, with help from Alibaba and Baidu — Work includes system to censor or block content for government

More: Engadget, MacRumors, PhoneArena, Sherwood News, The Independent, Neowin, MSPoweruser, BGR, MacDailyNews, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Mobile World Live, and Tech in Asia

Bluesky: @paleofuture. X: @markgurman, @markgurman, and @sino_market

Forums: r/apple and MacRumors Forums

Qianer Liu / The Information:

Sources: Apple continues to work with Baidu to develop an AI-powered Siri search feature for iPhone users in China, even after onboarding new partner Alibaba

More: TechNode, The Register, Bloomberg, Reuters, and MacRumors

Abner Li / 9to5Google:

Google's Gemini can now recall and “reference past chats for more tailored help”, rolling out in English for Advanced subscribers on the web and in the app — Google today is rolling out a new Gemini app feature for Advanced subscribers that can recall and “reference past chats for more tailored help.”

More: The Keyword, TechCrunch, Thurrott, Business Standard, The Verge, Ghacks, Mashable, Shelly Palmer, Digital Trends, Android Headlines, Engadget, Neowin, Tech in Asia, TheCable, Android Police, PhoneArena, Droid Life, How-To Geek, and Android Authority

Mastodon: @glenngabe@mas.to. X: @geminiapp, @mark_k, and @ai_for_success

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

The UK renames its AI Safety Institute to AI Security Institute, in a pivot to cybersecurity, and is exploring ways to use Anthropic's Claude in public services — The U.K. government wants to make a hard pivot into boosting its economy and industry with AI, and as part of that …

More: GOV.UK, GOV.UK, Tech Monitor, Infosecurity, Fortune, Reuters, AI Now Institute, TechRadar, ITPro, Silicon Republic, Maginative, Verdict, The Stack, The Times, Bloomberg Law, The Independent, and UKTN

Bluesky: @ewaluger. Mastodon: @jonpsp@mstdn.social. LinkedIn: Azeem Azhar, Jeremy Kahn, and Ajit Jaokar

Forums: r/singularity and Slashdot

Tom Bristow / Politico:

The UK recasting its AI Safety Institute as an AI Security Institute, without bias concerns, followed JD Vance's speech criticizing “hand-wringing about safety”

More: The Standard. X: @kevinbankston

New York Times:

Sources: banks sold ~$4.7B of X's debt on February 13, more than the $3B that they originally intended to sell, leaving ~$1B of X debt on their balance sheets — The social media company is attracting investor interest because of Elon Musk's close ties to President Trump and a recent jump in revenue.

More: Financial Times, Business Insider, and Bloomberg

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:

Sources: Mark Zuckerberg cozying up to President Trump has made employees uncertain and is part of an effort to shift antitrust scrutiny off Meta and onto Apple — Mark Zuckerberg kicked off 2025 with an Instagram video that outlined his vision for what he called restoring “free expression” …

Bluesky: @annmlipton. Forums: Hacker News

Tanaya Macheel / CNBC:

Coinbase reports Q4 revenue up 138% YoY to $2.27B, vs. $1.88B est., transaction revenue up 194% to $1.56B, vs. $1.29B est., and trading volume up 185% to $439B — Coinbase Thursday reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results and its biggest quarterly revenue in three years …

Sources: the White House plans to renegotiate some Chips Act awards after changing current requirements, and has signaled delays to some upcoming disbursements — The White House is seeking to renegotiate U.S. CHIPS and Science Act awards and has signaled delays to some upcoming semiconductor disbursements …

More: Tom's Hardware, Engadget, The Korea Herald, Sherwood News, Benzinga, Seeking Alpha, Reuters, Center for Technology …, and Tech in Asia

X: @jonathanlanday. Forums: r/politics

Sophie McEvoy / GamesIndustry.biz:

Ubisoft reports revenue for the nine months ending December 31, 2024, down 31.4% YoY to €990M, net booking down 34.8% to €944M, but remains optimistic about Q4 — Firm also experienced a 51.8% drop in net bookings during its third quarter — Ubisoft has released its financial results …

More: Game World Observer, PC Gamer, PC Games Insider, Reuters, and 80 Level

Forums: r/pcgaming and r/Games

The European Commission's digital chief, Henna Virkkunen, says the EU is reducing regulation to boost AI investments, not due to US Big Tech or Trump pressure — Henna Virkkunen says efforts to cut red tape are not prompted by US pressure — The EU is cutting back tech regulation …

More: European Commission, TechCrunch, Politico, and European Commission

Sources: President Xi will chair a symposium on February 17 to boost private sector sentiment, with Tencent CEO Pony Ma and other tech executives set to attend — Chinese President Xi Jinping plans to chair a symposium to boost private sector sentiment next week that will be attended …

More: Agence France-Presse and Yahoo Finance

Baidu says it plans to open source its next-generation AI model, Ernie 4.5, from June 30, a major shift in strategy as competition heats up following DeepSeek — China's Baidu (9888.HK) said on Friday that it would make the next-generation artificial intelligence model Ernie open-source from June 30.

More: Reuters, Pandaily, CNN, Verdict, South China Morning Post, and South China Morning Post

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:

Instagram is testing a dislike button for comments; Instagram will not show a dislike count and dislikes may eventually count toward ranking comments — After users noticed a new button on Instagram to downvote or dislike comments, the company confirmed that it is testing a way for users …

More: New York Post, Baller Alert, Daily Mail, and TechIssuesToday.com. Threads: @mosseri

Sources: Arm is recruiting executives from its own customers in a push to sell its own chips, and is competing against Qualcomm to sell data center CPUs to Meta — Arm (O9Ty.F) has begun recruiting from its own customers and competing against them for deals as it pushes toward selling its own chips …

More: Ars Technica, eeNews Europe, The Guardian, Hackster.io, UKTN, and Benzinga

The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:

Sources: Arm plans to launch its own chip in 2025, expected to be a CPU for servers in large data centers, after securing Meta as one of its first customers

More: DatacenterDynamics, Engadget, Computerworld, PC Gamer, TechPowerUp, TrendForce News, Sherwood News, Fortune, PYMNTS.com, Seeking Alpha, SiliconANGLE, Motley Fool, Quartz, and Bloomberg

X: @masasoncap and @dylanonchips

Forums: r/hardware and Slashdot

Sponsor Posts

Soxton:

Fast, affordable law for startups — Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better. We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts. Join the waitlist for early access!

Equals:

Stop vibe coding analytics — Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards. Build once, iterate for years.

Zoho:

Zoho named an overall leader in Dresner's 2026 Wisdom of Crowds® BI Market Study — Zoho Analytics has once again earned top honors in the analytics and business intelligence space.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

Zuckerberg's Disappointment, OpenAI's Equity Gamble, Alex Karp's Rally Cry

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Hard Fork:

Fable Ban Reversed + Dr. Dana Suskind on Parenting With A.I. + Prediction Market Drama

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Blitzy's Brian Elliott: Cursor And Claude Code Are Looking At Your Enterprise Code 'Through A Straw'

Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.

Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.

Re-Release: The Death of Hollywood? W/ Allan Loeb

Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.

Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.

Great Chat:

Maybe Twitter isn't real life

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:15 PM ET, February 14, 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

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:

A look at ABC News' 24-hour Fourth of July programming marathon for the US' 250th anniversary, which it calls “the longest commercial broadcast in history”

Peter Walker / The Guardian:

UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy says she and her department will stop using X because the site favors “abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate”

Matthew Weaver / The Guardian:

Three men have been found not guilty of murdering the journalist Lyra McKee in 2019; the New IRA claimed responsibility for the killing

Upcoming Tech Events

HYBRID: Dreamforce REGISTER NOW

WSJ Tech Live California

More News

Italy accuses Amazon of evading €1.2B in VAT payments; sources: the claim is linked to the sale of goods from China and other non-EU countries from 2019 to 2021

More: Reuters and RTÉ

Bloomberg:

Memo: Meta hires the former CEO of luxury goods marketplace The RealReal as its VP of Retail, as it seeks to boost Quest, Ray-Ban Meta, and AI wearables sales

X: @markgurman

Jaspreet Singh / Reuters:

Filing: Nvidia cut its Arm stake by 43.8% to 1.1M shares in Q4, valuing its remaining shares at ~$181M as of February 13, and discloses 1.7M shares in WeRide

More: Finbold, The Motley Fool, Wall Street Pit, Yahoo Finance, Sherwood News, Seeking Alpha, CNBC, and Reuters

Sources: Shein's UK IPO may be delayed to H2 2025 after President Trump's import crackdown; Shein had told investors a London IPO could happen as soon as Easter

More: PYMNTS.com, City A.M., and Reuters

PYMNTS.com:

London-based OneID, which provides a bank-verified digital ID service, raised £16M+ led by ACF Investors; 200+ UK, Swedish, and US angel investors also invested

More: The Paypers, OneID Limited, FinSMEs, and EU-Startups

Paayal Zaveri / Bloomberg:

Eudia, which provides in-house legal teams with AI agents and other tools for common tasks, exits stealth with an up to $105M Series A led by General Catalyst

More: Pulse 2.0, Verdict, Tech in Asia, Eudia, eudia.com, General Catalyst, and VC News Daily

Kendra Barnett / Adweek:

Reddit says content licensing deals with Google and OpenAI account for ~10% of its revenue but it's focused on its ad revenue business, which grew 60% YoY in Q4

More: Search Engine Land, The Wrap, CNBC, Bloomberg, and Digiday

Bluesky: @kendrabarnett. Threads: @mattnavarra. Forums: Slashdot

The Indian Express:

JioStar, the joint venture that merged Viacom18 and Star India, launches JioHotstar, a streaming service in India offering JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar content

More: WORLD SCREEN, Advanced Television, The Hindu, Trak.in, JioHotstar helpdesk, Livemint, Business Today, Hindustan Times, TechCrunch, Inc42 Media, Deadline, and Tech in Asia

Earlier Picks

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

OpenAI removes “warning” messages in ChatGPT that indicated when content might violate its terms of service, to cut down on “gratuitous/unexplainable denials”

More: WinBuzzer and Platformer

Threads: @crumbler. X: @laurentia___, @nickaturley, @mark_k, @joannejang, and @kimmonismus

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Roku reports Q4 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.2B, vs. $1.15B est., net loss down 55% YoY to $35.5M, and streaming households up 12% YoY to 89.8M; ROKU jumps 15%+

More: CNBC, Proactive, Kiplinger, MediaPost, Sherwood News, Motley Fool, Associated Press, MarketWatch, The Wrap, Roku, The Desk, Reuters, Deadline, Benzinga, The Hollywood Reporter, Barron's Online, and Cord Cutters News

J. Edward Moreno / Sherwood News:

Airbnb Q4: revenue up 12% YoY to $2.48B, Nights and Experiences Booked up 12% to 111M, Gross Booking Value up 13% to $17.6B, vs. $17.2B est.; ABNB jumps 13%+

More: Quartz, Kiplinger, Yahoo Finance, Benzinga, Airbnb, Bloomberg, Airbnb Newsroom, and Reuters

Chainalysis:

In 2024, crypto scams received at least $9.9B on-chain, up 40% YoY and likely a record; scams marketplace Huione Guarantee received $376M+ in crypto in 2024

More: crypto.news, Coinmonks, The Block, The Week, Blockonomi, Dark Reading, Bitcoin Insider, Yahoo Finance, and CoinDesk. LinkedIn: Jacqueline Burns Koven

Dan Primack / Axios:

Slow Ventures raised $60M+ for a fund to invest in creators who are authorities on niche areas like automotive; the fund appears to be the first of its kind

More: Bloomberg and Business Insider

Bluesky: @danprimack. X: @lessin, @lessin, @captainhahaa, @slow, @mikeisaac, and @othman

Emma Roth / The Verge:

Tim Cook teases an announcement of “the newest member of the family” on February 19; Mark Gurman reported Apple would update the iPhone SE

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:

YouTube updates Shorts to integrate Google DeepMind's latest video model Veo 2, letting creators generate AI video clips to add to any of their Shorts