Techmeme
March 26, 2025, 10:10 AM

Top News

Kylie Robison / The Verge:
OpenAI rolls out GPT-4o image generation natively in ChatGPT across all subscription tiers and says the omnimodal model is “a step change above previous models”  —  The new upgrade is better at text rendering. … OpenAI is integrating new image generation capabilities directly …
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Developers say aggressive AI crawlers are overwhelming open-source infrastructure; LibreNews: up to 97% of some projects' traffic comes from AI companies' bots  —  Software developer Xe Iaso reached a breaking point earlier this year when aggressive AI crawler traffic from Amazon overwhelmed …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google debuts Gemini 2.5 “thinking” models for developers and Gemini Advanced subscribers, starting with Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, which tops some benchmarks  —  Following updates to the models that are available for all users, Google today announced Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) for Advanced subscribers and developers.
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Gemini 2.5 Pro hands-on: a very strong model with 1M input tokens, 64K output tokens, a January 2025 knowledge cut-off, and very, very impressive coding skills  —  There's a new release from Google Gemini this morning: the first in the Gemini 2.5 series.  Google call it “a thinking model …
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils AI “deep reasoning” agents for 365 Copilot: Researcher, based on OpenAI's deep research model, and Analyst, based on o3-mini, coming in April  —  Multi-step reasoning AI is coming to Microsoft Copilot. … After Google and OpenAI offered up AI news on Tuesday …
Philip Stafford / Financial Times:
Sources: Fidelity Investments is in the advanced stages of testing its own stablecoin, managed by its digital assets arm; Trump pledged to back USD stablecoins  —  Asset manager is in advanced stages of testing token as the Trump administration prepares to overhaul crypto oversight
TechCrunch:
Leaked email: Block lays off 931 employees, or ~8% of staff, and moves 193 managers to individual contributor roles, after cutting ~1,000 roles in January 2024  —  Fintech Block laid off 931 people, roughly 8% of the company's staff, on Tuesday, according to a leaked message from the company seen by TechCrunch.
Ana Swanson / New York Times:
The US adds export restrictions to 80 organizations, primarily targeting Chinese companies, including server maker Nettrix and clients of Nvidia, Intel, and AMD  —  The additions included companies that are customers of Intel and Nvidia, and one firm that was the focus of a New York Times investigation last year.
James Laporta / CBS News:
Yun Li / CNBC:
GameStop says its board has unanimously approved a plan to buy bitcoin with its corporate cash, and it has not set a ceiling on how much bitcoin it may purchase  —  Video game retailer GameStop announced Tuesday its board has unanimously approved a plan to buy bitcoin with its corporate cash …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple announces WWDC 2025 for June 9-13, which will be an “entirely online” event free for developers, with an in-person special event at Apple Park on June 9  —  Apple has officially announced WWDC 2025.  The event will take place on June 9 and run through June 13 at Apple Park in California.
Laura Dubois / Financial Times:
Sources: the EU's Huawei corruption probe is looking at alleged gifts like soccer tickets exchanged for political favors; one detainee was a Huawei lobbyist  —  Representatives for Chinese tech giant accused of offering cash, football tickets and smartphones to parliament staff
Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal:
Mercury, which helps startups manage their finances, raised $300M led by Sequoia at a $3.5B valuation; the fintech saw $2B in deposits after SVB's collapse  —  Fintech banking startup Mercury says it has more than doubled its valuation to $3.5 billion after raising $300 million in its latest funding round.
Rachel Yeo / Bloomberg:
Chinese AI startup SenseTime reports FY 2024 revenue up 11% YoY to ~$524M, below ~$620M est., and a ~$592M net loss, above ~$551M est., as the AI race heats up  —  China's SenseTime Group Inc. reported a wider-than-estimated net loss for the full year as the AI tools developer continues …
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon unveils Interests, an AI search tool for finding products by passion or hobby, rolling out to all US users, and is testing a chatbot called Health AI  —  Amazon, in an effort to infuse generative artificial intelligence across a wider swath of its e-commerce universe …

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More News

Jason Kehe / Wired:
Bluesky: @wired.com, @waterslicer, and @wired.comMastodon: @benbrown@hackers.townX: @bonybeanForums: r/programming
Ananya Bhattacharya / Rest of World:

Earlier Picks

Erin Brodwin / Axios:
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Rick Porter / The Hollywood Reporter:
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Bloomberg: