Techmeme
May 8, 2025, 12:45 PM

Top News

OpenAI:
OpenAI hires Instacart CEO Fidji Simo as CEO of Applications, reporting to Sam Altman, who says he will remain CEO and focus on research, compute, and safety  —  Sam shared this message with the company earlier today:  —  Hi everyone - I have some exciting news to share.
Fidji Simo / Instacart Corporate Blog:
Instacart CEO Fidji Simo tells employees that she is leaving in a couple of months, the new CEO will be a management team member, and she will stay on as Chair  —  Instacart CEO and Chair Fidji Simo shared the email below with Instacart employees this evening.  You can read it in full here:
Bloomberg:
David Wallace-Wells / New York Times:
Q&A with Bill Gates on closing the Gates Foundation on December 31, 2045, donating ~$200B, President Trump, Elon Musk, AI drug discovery, AI advances, and more  —  Today the Gates Foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary by announcing its plans to close up shop.
Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg:
Nintendo projects Switch 2 sales will reach 15M units for the fiscal year ending March 2026, below 16.8M est., and ~$2.2B in annual operating profit, below est.  —  What Trump's ‘Golden Dome’ Can Learn From Israeli Air Defenses  —  An exclusive look at what Israel's upgraded air defense system can …
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Rockstar says its second Grand Theft Auto VI trailer was “captured entirely in-game from a PlayStation 5, comprised of equal parts gameplay and cutscenes”  —  The trailer was also captured entirely in-game from a PS5. … A second trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI had a surprise drop this week …
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Hackers defaced the LockBit ransomware gang's dark web affiliate panels, linking to a MySQL database dump, including 59,975 BTC addresses and 4,442 victim chats  —  The LockBit ransomware gang has suffered a data breach after its dark web affiliate panels were defaced and replaced with a message linking to a MySQL database dump.
Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal:
Coinbase agrees to acquire Dubai-based Deribit, the world's biggest trading platform for BTC and ETH options, for ~$2.9B, split as $700M in cash and 11M shares  —  Deribit is the world's biggest trading platform for bitcoin options  —  Coinbase Global has agreed to acquire Deribit …
Victoria Kennedy / Eurogamer.net:
Palworld developer Pocketpair says a 2024 update was due to “ongoing litigation” and a new update is “yet another compromise”, as it disputes Nintendo's claims  —  “We... assert the invalidity of the patents in question.”  —  Palworld developer Pocketpair has released …
The Keyword:
Google says it is continuing to see “overall query growth in Search”, including “an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms”  —  We continue to see overall query growth in Search.  That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Eddy Cue's disclosure of Apple's plan to shift its browser to AI systems had a clear goal: downplaying the importance of Apple's existing Google Search deal  —  Apple Inc. made an unusual pitch in its bid to save a lucrative search partnership with Alphabet Inc.'s Google …
Tanaya Macheel / CNBC:
Bitcoin jumps above $100,000 for first time since February 2025, after President Trump announced a US-UK trade agreement; ether, dogecoin, and solana rose 9%+  —  Bitcoin on Thursday hit its highest level since February and climbing back above the key $100,000 level.
Kevin Purdy / Ars Technica:
An interview with curl project founder Daniel Stenberg, who likens “AI slop” in HackerOne submissions to a DDoS attack, echoing Seth Larson and others' concerns  —  “A threshold has been reached.  We are effectively being DDoSed.  If we could, we would charge them for this waste of our time …
Bloomberg:
Bloomberg:
Filing: Apple seeks to pause part of the April 30 Epic v. Apple US court order that blocks it from charging commissions on transactions outside the App Store  —  The company is appealing a federal judge's ruling last week in its long-running fight with Epic Games Inc. that the iPhone maker failed …
Bloomberg:
Analysis: ~66% of US data center projects built or in development since 2022 are in areas with high water stress, with five states having 72% of new facilities  —  Each time you ask an AI chatbot to summarize a lengthy legal document or conjure up a cartoon squirrel wearing glasses …
Riley Griffin / Bloomberg:
Memo: Meta CPO Chris Cox says Robert Fergus will lead its Facebook AI Research lab, succeeding Joelle Pineau; Fergus and Yann LeCun co-founded FAIR in 2014  —  Fergus co-founded the Facebook AI Research lab, known as FAIR, in 2014 with Yann LeCun, who currently serves as the chief AI scientist at Meta.
Danny Park / The Block:
The US OCC says banks can buy and sell customers' crypto assets on their behalf and can outsource crypto custody and trade execution services to third parties  —  - The OCC clarified that national banks are permitted to execute cryptocurrency buy and sell orders on behalf of their customers.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic adds web search to its API, starting at $10 per 1,000 searches, giving Claude 3.7 Sonnet, 3.5 Sonnet, and 3.5 Haiku access to up-to-date information  —  Anthropic is launching a new API that allows its Claude AI models to search across the web.  Developers using it can build Claude-powered apps …
Maggie Harrison / Futurism:
How “AI slop farmer” Jesse Cunningham targets older women on Pinterest and Facebook with AI-generated copies of content from real bloggers and creators  —  “It's just a bunch of fraud.”  —  Last year, Jesse Cunningham — a self-described “SEO specialist who leverages the power …
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
Sales automation startup Clay lets staff with 1+ year of tenure sell shares in a tender led by Sequoia at a $1.5B valuation, up from $1.25B in January 2025  —  It took seven years of hard work for Kareem Amin, co-founder and CEO of sales automation startup Clay, to see the company's product finally take off in 2022.

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

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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.
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Decoder with Nilay Patel:
How chatbots — and their makers — are enabling AI psychosis
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
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Lenny's Podcast:
Why experts writing AI evals is creating the fastest-growing companies in history | Brendan Foody (CEO of Mercor)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
I tried Zuckerberg's $800 Ray-Bans. Are they the future? With Alex Heath
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Earlier Picks

Julie Bort / TechCrunch:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Wired:
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Muyao Shen / Bloomberg:
Washington Post: