Techmeme
April 30, 2025, 1:20 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
US v. Google: Sundar Pichai says the DOJ's proposal to share Google search data with rivals amounts to a “de facto” spinoff of Google's search engine and its IP  —  - Alphabet CEO testifies as part of Justice Department lawsuit  — Rivals could reverse-engineer ‘every aspect of our technology’
Erin Woo / The Information:
US v. Google: Sundar Pichai says he had at least a “couple” of calls with Tim Cook in 2024 about a Gemini deal; Cook said Apple plans to add more AI chatbots  —  Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook had at least a “couple” of phone calls last year where Pichai made the case …
Financial Times:
Microsoft President Brad Smith says the company would take the US to court if necessary to protect European customers' “continuity of access” to its services  —  Tech group says it would sue to keep European access to crucial cloud services  —  Microsoft's top legal officer …
Yuan Gao / Bloomberg:
Xiaomi unveils open-source AI reasoning model MiMo, joining other Chinese tech leaders hoping to make a splash in the burgeoning AI field endorsed by Beijing  —  Xiaomi debuted MiMo a day after Alibaba unveiled the latest version of its own flagship model, amplifying a race between China's tech players …
Ben Jiang / South China Morning Post:
DeepSeek quietly open sources Prover-V2, a math-focused, 671B-parameter AI model using mixture-of-experts, on Hugging Face, one day after Alibaba released Qwen3  —  The Chinese start-up has released the Prover-V2 model a day after Alibaba released Qwen3, and ahead of an anticipated release of DeepSeek-R2
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Duolingo launches 148 new language courses developed with generative AI, doubling its offerings for non-English speakers within a year, as it aims for 1B+ users  —  On Wednesday, Duolingo signaled that approach is helping to rapidly expand its language-learning courses …
Jane Lanhee Lee / Bloomberg:
TSMC begins building a third fab in Arizona, announcing the third phase of its US expansion the same day Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick toured TSMC's site  —  The world's most advanced chipmaker announced the third phase of its US expansion the same day Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick toured TSMC's site …
Reuters:
Samsung reports Q1 revenue up 10% YoY to ~$55.4B, operating profit up 1.2% YoY to ~$4.68B, and chip division operating profit down 42% YoY to ~$770M  —  Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) reported on Wednesday a small rise in first-quarter operating profit as customers concerned about U.S. tariffs rushed …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple reorganizes its global affairs unit, including management of the government teams for Europe and Asia, and Apple Music's leadership structure  —  Powerbeats Pro 2 Review: Best Workout Earbuds Still Lag on Audio Quality  —  Beats' newest exercise headphones are improved, but they face stiffer competition than ever.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
At LlamaCon, Satya Nadella says 20% to 30% of code in Microsoft's repositories was AI-written, and Microsoft was seeing more progress in Python and less in C++  —  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that 20%-30% of code inside the company's repositories was “written by software” — meaning AI …
Martin Young / Cointelegraph:
Filing: PayPal discloses that the US SEC said in February 2025 that it was closing its investigation into the PayPal USD stablecoin “without enforcement action”  —  PayPal says the US Securities and Exchange Commission has abandoned its investigation into the payment giant's US-dollar stablecoin.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
An Indian court directs the government to block Proton Mail after a local firm alleged its staff received emails containing obscene content sent via the service  —  A court in India has ordered the blocking of encrypted email provider Proton Mail across the country.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI says GPT-4o's latest update is “now 100% rolled back” for free ChatGPT users and is rolling back for paid users, in a bid to fix the model's sycophancy  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday said that the company is “rolling back” the latest update to the default AI model powering ChatGPT …
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Waymo and Toyota announce a preliminary partnership aiming to develop a new autonomous vehicle platform and enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles  —  Alphabet-owned Waymo and Toyota on Tuesday announced a preliminary partnership to explore bringing robotaxi tech to personally-owned vehicles.
Mathieu Pollet / Politico:
Doc: the EU's draft International Digital Strategy, set for June 4, acknowledges that decoupling from US tech is “unrealistic” and calls for strategic alliances  —  The European Union is set to admit that untangling from the dominance of U.S. tech companies is “unrealistic” …
More: BloombergBluesky: @katjabego, @elinorcarmi, and @parismarx.comForums: r/eutech
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
EA says it laid off staff and canceled “two early-stage incubation projects”; sources say EA cut 300 to 400 roles and its Respawn unit canceled a Titanfall game  —  The video-game publisher cuts between 300 and 400 jobs  —  Electronic Arts Inc. is laying off hundreds of workers …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Online graphic design platform Freepik releases F Lite, a ~10B-parameter “open” AI image model that it says was trained on ~80M licensed, “safe-for-work” images  —  Freepik, the online graphic design platform, unveiled a new “open” AI image model on Tuesday that the company …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Transform ML Experimentation with Tangle  —  Save months of compute time with Tangle, built by Shopify.  Try this open-source platform to simplify ML workflows, ensure reproducibility, and seamlessly share with collaborators.
Zoho:
Contract Signed.  Project Ready.  Tasks Created.  —  Every project begins with a promise; a contract that outlines the deliverables, the timelines, and the terms.  But for most businesses …
Bitrix24:
Bitrix24 powers the next generation of high-performing businesses  —  Chat, projects, CRM, and automation — all in one place.  Replace dozens of tools so your team moves faster, collaborates smarter, and grows effortlessly.
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

Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
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.
Access:
Is Roblox making the internet better or worse? We asked the CEO
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Lenny's Podcast:
Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered "full stack builders" | Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn CPO)
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.
Great Chat:
Code red: our favorite tech rivalries
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
How An AI Model Learned To Be Bad — With Evan Hubinger And Monte MacDiarmid
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:20 PM ET, April 30, 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

Earlier Picks

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Karen Freifeld / Reuters:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
CNBC: