Techmeme
April 16, 2025, 4:39 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Meta offered $450M in late March to settle the FTC's antitrust case and raised its offer to ~$1B as the trial neared; the FTC had demanded $30B  —  The FTC wanted $30 billion to drop its case.  Zuckerberg offered much less and hoped Trump would back him up.
Bloomberg:
Email: Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram in 2018 as he increasingly became concerned that its success was hurting the Facebook social network  —  Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram into a separate company in 2018 as he increasingly became concerned that the photo …
Business Insider:
Email: Mark Zuckerberg offered to buy Snapchat for $6B in 2013; Zuckerberg testified that he thought Snapchat “wasn't growing at the potential that it could”  —  - Mark Zuckerberg's failed Snapchat bid resurfaced in Meta's antitrust trial.  — And the Meta boss seems like he hasn't fully moved on.
Bloomberg:
FTC v. Meta: Mark Zuckerberg testified about his acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, including a 2012 email exchange rationalizing the apps' acquisition  —  - Meta CEO asked in email if deal may ‘neutralize a competitor’  — FTC claims acquisitions created a social networking monopoly
CNBC:
Filing: Nvidia says it will record a $5.5B quarterly charge after new US rules to require a license to export the H20 chips to China; NVDA drops 6%+  —  Nvidia said on Tuesday that it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion tied to exporting H20 graphics processing units to China and other destinations.
The Verge:
Sources: OpenAI is in the early stages of building its own X-like social network, focused on ChatGPT image generation, and is asking some outsiders for feedback  —  Is Sam Altman ready to up his rivalry with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? … OpenAI is working on its own X-like social network …
More: TechCrunch, New York Magazine, Business Standard, Business Today, CNBC, Spyglass, Moneycontrol, iThinkDifferent, Decrypt, Financial Express, Digit, Marcus on AI, VentureBeat, BGR, Mashable, The Indian Express, The Crypto Times, Neowin, Social Media Today, Interesting Engineering, Windows Central, MakeUseOf, PCMag, Business Insider, The Information, Proactive, Türkiye Today, MacRumors, Dexerto, Cointelegraph, Gizmodo, PYMNTS.com, Techstrong.ai, Reuters, Android Authority, CoinGape, WinBuzzer, Livemint, Fast Company, iPhone in Canada Blog, ZeroHedge News, Tom's Guide, and Engadget
David DiMolfetta / Nextgov/FCW:
Mitre, the nonprofit research organization behind the CVE program, says the US government funding needed to develop and operate CVE will expire on April 16  —  The U.S. government funding needed for non-profit research giant MITRE to develop, operate and maintain its flagship Common Vulnerabilities …
Reuters:
Figma confidentially files for a US IPO, more than a year after Adobe's $20B acquisition failed; the company was valued at $12.5B in a May 2024 tender offer  —  Cloud-based designer platform Figma on Tuesday confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the United States …
Mohar Chatterjee / Politico:
Sources: the US DOD's Defense Digital Service is effectively shutting down as nearly all staff are resigning, saying they were sidelined by DOGE's efforts  —  Employees of a defense tech unit say they were sidelined by DOGE.  “Either we die quickly or we die slowly,” says the director.
Jenna McLaughlin / NPR:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google rolls out its text-to-video AI model Veo 2 to Gemini Advanced subscribers and makes its Whisk Animate tool available for Google One AI Premium users  —  A new Whisk Animate tool is coming to Google One AI Premium users, as well. … Google is letting Gemini Advanced subscribers try out Veo 2 …
Ben Sherry / Inc:
Anthropic's Claude adds Research, capable of searching the web and internal documents to give comprehensive answers, in beta for Max, Team, and Enterprise plans  —  The integration should make Claude even more effective as a virtual assistant.  Plus, there's a new ‘Research’ mode.
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
4chan is down after an apparent hack late on April 14; an Imgur post seems to show a hacker gained shell access to 4chan's hosting server and doxxed some users  —  More like 404chan, amirite?  —  4chan, the controversial forum known for birthing early meme culture and Gamergate, is down, following an apparent hack.
Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg:
Analysis: stablecoins' market value rose ~4.5% from the end of February 2025 to a new high of ~$234B in April, as crypto traders sat out the market volatility  —  In stable condition  —  As volatility took over global markets over the past couple of months, one part of the volatile digital asset market quietly grew: stablecoins.
Ellen Huet / Bloomberg:
Inside San Francisco-based live-in startup accelerator HF0, whose alumni include OpenSea's founders; HF0's latest fund is $100M, up from its previous $16M fund  —  HF0, a live-in program for startup founders in San Francisco, mixes New Agey spirituality with Silicon Valley-esque hypercapitalism.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Reimagine your photos with a prompt  —  Our new native image generation and editing is state-of-the-art, and ranked #1 in the world.  Try it for free in the Gemini app.
F5:
Securing AI models and agents in the enterprise  —  The new AI stack creates a highly dynamic attack surface, and traditional controls aren't keeping up.  F5's recent acquisition will bring advanced AI guardrails to enterprise apps.
Zoho:
Uncover what's new in Zoho Solo with iOS 26 and iPadOS 26  —  It's that time of the year again when we get to bring you exciting new updates in Zoho Solo, all built to complement the latest from Apple.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
How WordPress Became a Web Giant | Automattic Founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
How We Use ChatGPT, Meta's New AI Glasses, Can Jimmy Kimmel Be Canceled?
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:
Charlie Kirk and Online Rage + Inside Trump's Chip Flip + This Week in A.I.
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
I tried Zuckerberg's $800 Ray-Bans. Are they the future? With Alex Heath
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:39 AM ET, April 16, 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.

More News

PYMNTS.com:

Earlier Picks

David Pierce / The Verge: