Techmeme
February 25, 2025, 12:05 PM

Top News

Reuters:
Sources: Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, and other Chinese companies are ramping up orders for Nvidia's H20 AI chip due to booming demand for DeepSeek's models  —  Chinese companies are ramping up orders for Nvidia's (NVDA.O) H20 artificial intelligence chip due to booming demand …
Financial Times:
Sources: Huawei has increased its AI chip yield to nearly 40%, up from 20% about a year ago, meaning its Ascend chips are now profitable for the first time  —  Chinese company improves ‘yield’ of latest semiconductor, despite US efforts to prevent manufacturing advances
Brad Norton / Dexerto:
Activision confirms on Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's Steam page that it “uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets”, after fan speculation  —  Activision has finally admitted to using AI-generated content in its games and Call of Duty players aren't the least bit surprised.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google releases its free Gemini Code Assist globally in public preview for solo developers, with 180K code completions per month; GitHub Copilot offers 2,000  —  And provides 90 times more monthly code completions than GitHub Copilot's free tier. … A free version of Gemini Code Assist …
Dan Milmo / The Guardian:
Kate Bush and 1,000+ other musicians “co-write” a “silent” album to protest the UK's proposal to let AI train on their copyrighted work if they don't opt out  —  Recordings of empty studios represent impact on musicians of UK's plans to let AI train on their work without permission
CNBC:
Chegg sues Google, saying AI Overviews hurt its traffic and revenue, as it mulls strategic options, including an acquisition; CHGG drops 30%+  —  Chegg on Monday filed suit in federal district court against Google, claiming that artificial intelligence summaries of search results have hurt …
Ethan Mollick / One Useful Thing:
Claude 3.7 and Grok-3 are the first “Gen3” models with big gains in handling complex tasks, using 10x more compute than GPT-4-class models, and better reasoning  —  Note: After publishing this piece, I was contacted by Anthropic who told me that Sonnet 3.7 would not be considered …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
More: Ars Technica, BleepingComputer, Techreport, Anthropic, Shelly Palmer, VentureBeat, Tom's Guide, Ghacks, The Rundown AI, Analytics India Magazine, Digit, Verdict, Silicon Republic, Moneycontrol, Hindustan Times, en.ain.ua, The Indian Express, Hürriyet Daily News, Interconnects, and Simon Willison's Weblog
LinkedIn: Vikash Kothari and Cal Rueb
Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal:
Arjun Sha / Beebom:
Microsoft quietly launched free, ad-supported desktop versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Windows, with banner and video ads and limited functionality  —  In Short  — Microsoft has quietly introduced a free ad-supported Office that brings access to desktop Word, Excel, and PowerPoint without any subscription.
Faris Mokhtar / Bloomberg:
Sources: Indonesia and Apple agree a deal to lift the iPhone 16 ban, with Apple set to invest $1B; a memorandum of agreement may be signed this week  —  - Tech giant has promised to invest $1 billion in Indonesia  — Deal would be win for Prabowo after series of policy setbacks
Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg:
Bitcoin falls below $90K, its lowest level since mid-November 2024, as the rally that followed Trump's election fades; ETH, XRP, SOL, and more also fell sharply  —  - Biggest token is now down almost 20% since Trump inauguration  — Macro factors and crypto blowups combine to erode confidence
Bloomberg:
Sources: SpaceX seeks to deploy Starlink terminals for the FAA, raising questions about Elon Musk's conflicts of interest and Verizon's $2B FAA contract in 2023  —  Elon Musk's SpaceX is seeking to deploy Starlink satellite internet terminals to help accelerate an upgrade …
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Employee screening company DISA confirms a data breach in February 2024, found in April 2024, affecting 3.3M+ people and including Social Security numbers  —  DISA Global Solutions, a U.S.-based provider of employee screening services, has said it suffered a data breach that affects more than 3.3 million people.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Epic v. Apple: Phil Schiller says he initially feared Apple's 27% App Store fee posed a compliance risk and could create “antagonistic” developer relations  —  Apple Fellow Phil Schiller, the executive in charge of leading the App Store, testified in court on Monday …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Israeli startup Quantum Machines, which offers hardware tools to other quantum computing companies, raised a $170M Series C led by PSG Equity  —  Quantum computing remains a holy grail in the world of technology, but with some important breakthroughs in the last several months …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Italy wants to replace STMicro CEO Jean-Marc Chéry for poor performance, as the Franco-Italian chipmaker struggles to navigate a slump in chip demand  —  Italy's government wants to replace Jean-Marc Chéry, the man at the helm of Franco-Italian chipmaking joint-venture STMicroelectronics NV, for poor performance.
More: MacDailyNews
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple investors reject outside shareholder proposals asking the company to cease its DEI efforts and write a report assessing the risks of its work on AI  —  Apple Inc. investors rejected outside shareholder proposals that asked the iPhone maker to cease its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts …
NBC News:
Sources: the Elon Musk-directed OPM email asking federal staff about recent work requested no links or attachments as part of a plan to feed responses into AI  —  The revelation comes as federal workers face a midnight deadline to respond.  —  WASHINGTON — Responses to the Elon Musk-directed email …

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Bloomberg:
Bloomberg:
Brendan Pierson / Reuters:
Dan Gallagher / Wall Street Journal: