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June 18, 2025, 12:40 AM
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MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
The US Senate passes the GENIUS Act, which establishes a regulatory framework for stablecoins; the bill now heads to the House  —  The Senate on Tuesday passed the GENIUS Act, a landmark bill that for the first time establishes federal guardrails for U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins and creates …
Steve Kopack / NBC News:
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company expects that in the next few years AI “will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains”  —  Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the retail and tech giant “will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today.”
CNN:
President Trump plans to sign an executive order this week to grant TikTok a 90-day extension in enforcement of the sale-or-ban law, marking his third extension  —  New York CNN —  —  TikTok just got another lifeline from the White House, with President Donald Trump set to delay enforcement …
Bloomberg:
Sources: xAI is burning through $1B/month and expects to burn through ~$13B in 2025; revenues are expected to be just $500M this year, rising to $2B+ next year  —  Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI is burning through $1 billion a month as the cost of building …
Bloomberg:
Sources: xAI is in talks to raise $4.3B via an equity investment on top of the $5B in debt it's trying to borrow; of its previously raised $14B, it has $4B left
Kevin Collier / NBC News:
The Iranian government says it has restricted internet access in response to Israeli cyberattacks; some Western communication apps have reportedly been blocked  —  The connectivity drop appears to be a result of a decision by Iran's government, rather than due to Israeli strikes on infrastructure.
Matt Kapko / CyberScoop:
A cyberattack claimed by the pro-Israel hacktivist group Predatory Sparrow has reportedly disrupted services at Iran's state-owned Bank Sepah  —  The attack introduces a clear cyber element with immediate consequences for the country's critical infrastructure amid a growing conflict between Israel and Iran.
Tulsee Doshi / The Keyword:
Google makes Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro generally available and introduces 2.5 Flash-Lite, which it says is its most cost-efficient and fastest 2.5 model yet  —  Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro are now generally available, and we're introducing 2.5 Flash-Lite, our most cost-efficient and fastest 2.5 model yet.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
On a podcast, Sam Altman said Meta made “giant offers to a lot of people on our team...like, $100M signing bonuses”, and “none of our best people” have accepted  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on something of a hiring spree lately, trying to staff up Meta's …
Bob Van Voris / Bloomberg:
X sues New York, claiming a law requiring social media companies to disclose how they deal with hate speech and disinformation violates the US Constitution  —  Elon Musk's X Corp. sued the state of New York claiming a law requiring social media companies to disclose how they deal with hate speech …
CNBC:
Sources: Meta and EssilorLuxottica plan AI-powered smart glasses under Oakley and Prada brands; they will be aimed at athletes, and the Oakleys may cost ~$360  —  Meta and EssilorLuxottica plan to release versions of their AI-powered smart glasses under the Oakley and Prada brands, CNBC has learned.
More: TechCrunch, AzerNews, Benzinga, PCMag, Entrepreneur, CNET, UploadVR, and Road to VR
Bluesky: @blemley.us and @sal19.  Instagram: Meta.  X: @scobleizer
Jez Corden / Windows Central:
Microsoft and AMD announce a “strategic, multi-year partnership” to design custom silicon for a number of devices, including next-generation Xbox consoles  —  Xbox President Sarah Bond shared an update on Xbox consoles today, confirming their ongoing partnership with AMD for first-party hardware …
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
US appeals court rules in Apple's favor by throwing out a $300M verdict that found it infringed on Optis' wireless tech patents, sending the case to a new trial  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has convinced a U.S. appeals court to throw out a $300 million verdict by a jury that found …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Waymo expands its coverage area in San Francisco and LA by 80 square miles each, bringing its total coverage area in California to 250 square miles  —  The company's robotaxis are now operating across 250 square miles of San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Facebook renames its Videos tab as the Reels tab and says all videos on its platform will soon be shared as reels, regardless of their length or orientation  —  Facebook announced on Tuesday that all videos on its platform will soon be shared as reels, regardless of their length or orientation.
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
Apple's Journal app is coming to iPad and Mac in iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe and gains features like multiple journals, map view, inline images, and more  —  Apple's Journal app is coming to the iPad and Mac as part of iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe, and several brand new features will be included too—even on iPhone.
More: How-To Geek and TechRadar.  Forums: r/apple
Jaewon Kang / Bloomberg:
How Walmart plans to leverage its $2.3B Vizio acquisition to push shoppable TV experiences; Walmart's ad business had just $4.4B of sales in FY 2025  —  Walmart Inc. is working toward a future where consumers can buy items while watching their television shows, a strategy retailers have long tried to implement as a way to boost sales.
More: PYMNTS.com
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Salesforce says it will increase prices on many products in August, including Slack; major product lines will see a 6% increase on average  —  List prices will go up by an average of 6% for major product lines in August, the company said in a statement Tuesday.  The cost of the workplace communications tool Slack will also rise.
The Markup:
Investigation: healthcare exchanges in Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island share sensitive data with Google, LinkedIn, and Snapchat via web trackers  —  Healthcare exchanges in Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island shared users' sensitive health data with companies like Google and LinkedIn
Marc Vartabedian / Wall Street Journal:
Pano AI, which uses AI and computer vision to offer active wildfire detection, raised a $44M Series B led by Giant Ventures, bringing its total funding to $89M  —  Pano AI's fundraising signals investor willingness to back startups that rely in part on government entities for revenue
More: Salesforce Ventures and Pano AI
Bluesky: @prietschka.  X: @salesforcevc.  LinkedIn: Abe Yokell and Garry Tan
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google rolls out the ability to upload videos in the Gemini app for both free and paid accounts across Android and iOS; the feature is not yet live on the web  —  Besides the new navigation drawer and 2.5 Pro going stable, the Gemini app is rolling out video upload and analysis.
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
The US Senate confirms Olivia Trusty to the FCC, giving Republicans a 2-1 majority after the recent departures of two members  —  The Senate confirmed Olivia Trusty to the FCC, a move that gives Donald Trump and Republicans a 2-1 majority on the commission.
David Pierce / The Verge:
Threads launches a fediverse feed and a way to search for fediverse users, with support for Mastodon and others, for users who turned on fediverse sharing  —  A dedicated feed, and better search, will make social web content much more visible in Threads.
Bloomberg:
Shanghai-based MiniMax open sources MiniMax-M1, a model for complicated productivity tasks that supports 1M input tokens and it says beats DeepSeek's R1-0528  —  Chinese AI upstart MiniMax released a new large language model, joining a slew of domestic peers inspired to surpass DeepSeek in the field of reasoning AI.

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:40 AM ET, June 18, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

Bloomberg:
Sources: WBD begins exclusive talks with Netflix to sell its film and TV studios and HBO Max; Netflix is offering a $5B breakup fee if the deal isn't approved

The Guardian:
Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, and the Netherlands exit Eurovision after Israel received an all-clear to compete; the BBC and Germany's SWR plan to participate

James Faris / Business Insider:
Kalshi strikes a deal with CNBC that will integrate Kalshi's prediction data into CNBC's channel, site, and app starting in 2026, days after striking a CNN deal

More News

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Adobe debuts Firefly for iOS and Android, letting mobile users generate images and videos using text prompts and experiment with popular AI photo editing tools

Earlier Picks

Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
Self-driving simulation software maker Applied Intuition raised $600M co-led by BlackRock and Kleiner Perkins at a $15B valuation, up from $6B in March 2024
John Koblin / New York Times:
Nielsen: in May, Americans watched more TV on streaming than on cable and broadcast networks combined, the first time streaming was king of TV over a full month
Rohan Paul / @rohanpaul_ai:
[Thread] A US paper shows the best frontier LLM models solve 0% of hard coding problems from Codeforces, ICPC, and IOI, domains where expert humans still excel
Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:
Amazon plans to hold Prime Day 2025 from July 8 at 12:01am PT through July 11, lasting four days instead of the usual two and exclusive to Prime subscribers
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