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July 12, 2025, 12:35 AM
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Hayden Field / The Verge:
Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some of Windsurf's R&D employees to focus on agentic coding efforts at DeepMind  —  Key researchers from the AI coding startup are also heading to Google. … OpenAI's deal to buy Windsurf is off …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Google is paying $2.4B for a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf tech and hire some of its employees, but won't be taking a stake in the company  —  Google is hiring Windsurf Chief Executive Officer Varun Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen, along with a small group of staffers …
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune:
The exclusivity period for OpenAI's $3B offer to acquire coding startup Windsurf, entered into in May, has expired  —  The exclusivity period on OpenAI's $3 billion offer to acquire coding startup Windsurf has expired, an OpenAI spokesperson told Fortune.  —  The expiration of the exclusivity …
More: The Information and nextbigwhat.  Bluesky: @quinnypig.com
Steven Levy / Wired:
Sources on the key Microsoft-OpenAI clause: OpenAI decides when it has reached AGI, “sufficient AGI” means $100B+ in profits, and Microsoft may not build AGI
Financial Times:
Sources: xAI prepares a new fundraising round, its third in two months, targeting a valuation of $170B to $200B, up 10x from its May 2024 valuation of $18B  —  Grok chatbot maker in early talks with investors to boost its value as much as 10 times from last year
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Sam Altman announces another delay for OpenAI's open-weight model, for further safety testing; the model was slated to be released next week  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Friday the company is delaying the release of its open model, which was already pushed back a month earlier in this summer.
Reuters:
Chinese startup Moonshot AI releases Kimi K2, an open-weight model that the company says has enhanced coding capabilities and excels at general agent tasks  —  Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot AI released a new open-source AI model on Friday, joining a wave of similar releases …
Politico:
French prosecutors open a criminal investigation into X over allegations that the company manipulated its algorithms for the purposes of “foreign interference”  —  The probe is based on complaints from a lawmaker and an unnamed senior civil servant.
Bloomberg:
Sources: JPMorgan Chase told fintech companies it will start charging fees for access to customers' account data, which could drastically reshape the industry  —  The largest US bank has sent pricing sheets to data aggregators — which connect banks and fintechs — outlining the new charges …
Gregorio Sorgi / Politico:
The European Commission drops plans to impose a digital tax on tech giants in its upcoming 2028-2034 budget proposal, amid ongoing EU-US trade negotiations  —  BRUSSELS ― The European Commission has dropped plans to levy a tax on digital companies, a move that hands victory to Donald Trump …
Juro Osawa / The Information:
Source: Butterfly Effect, the startup behind Manus, has shut down its entire China-based team to minimize geopolitical risks associated with its ties to China  —  The startup behind Manus, an artificial intelligence agent that went viral earlier this year and got financial backing from Benchmark …
More: The Decoder
Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg:
T-Mobile has received FCC and DOJ approval for its $4.4B acquisition of US Cellular, after agreeing to phase out DEI programs to comply with FCC policy  —  The approval comes after T-Mobile committed to eliminating diversity and inclusion programs to win the favor of the commission.
Steve Newman / Second Thoughts:
METR study: experienced open-source developers using Cursor, Claude, and other AI tools were 19% slower to complete tasks, despite thinking they were 20% faster  —  UPDATE: on Wednesday July 16, I'll be holding a fireside chat in SF with the primary authors of the paper - register here to attend!
Natalia Kniazhevich / Bloomberg:
PitchBook: 27 VC-backed companies went public in the US in the first half of 2025, the smallest number in at least 10 years, raising a total of $44.4B  —  Venture capital-backed companies are on track for the fewest US initial public offerings in a decade, according to data provider PitchBook …
More: PitchBook
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
HMD says it will “scale back” US operations, citing “a challenging geopolitical and economic environment”, and appears to have stopped US sales of Nokia devices  —  Even Barbie couldn't save it. … HMD Global, the company best known for licensing the Nokia brand …
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Justin Sun says he is buying another $100M worth of $TRUMP, doubling his total known stake of digital coins tied to President Trump  —  Crypto billionaire Justin Sun is buying another $100 million worth of $TRUMP, doubling his total known stake of digital coins tied to President Donald Trump.
More: Bitcoinist.com and ZyCrypto.  Bluesky: @dogsincali
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
When asked “Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict? One word answer only.”, Grok 4 searches for Musk's views, but only if “you” is in the query  —  If you ask the new Grok 4 for opinions on controversial questions, it will sometimes run a search to find …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Tests reveal that Grok 4 seems to search for Elon Musk's views online when asked about sensitive topics, and its answers tend to align with Musk's opinions

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From Mediagazer

New York Times:
Sources: WBD staff are bracing for widespread layoffs as David Ellison wants $6B in “synergies”; the internal mood is grim as staff preferred Netflix's proposal

CNN:
CNN employees and viewers have serious concerns about whether Ellison will uphold CNN's editorial independence amid severe political pressure

Henry Dyer / The Guardian:
UK minister Josh Simons resigns over allegations that a think tank he led has probed some journalists and falsely linked them to a “pro-Kremlin” network

More News

Ange Lavoipierre / ABC:
At the end of June, Australia quietly introduced rules forcing search engine companies such as Google and Microsoft to check the ages of logged-in users
Daryna Antoniuk / The Record:
French media: French police detained Russian professional basketball player Daniil Kasatkin at the US' request due to his alleged links to a ransomware group
Mike Rogoway / Oregonian:
Recording: Intel's new CEO Lip-Bu Tan told staff that Intel is “not in the top 10 semiconductor companies” and it is “too late” to catch Nvidia in AI training

Earlier Picks

Hugh Son / CNBC:
Goldman Sachs CTO Marco Argenti says the bank will “start augmenting our workforce with Devin”, Cognition's AI software engineer, as Wall Street firms adopt AI
Bloomberg:
Sources: Binance wrote the smart contract for USD1, a stablecoin launched by Trump's World Liberty, and promoted it to its 275M users, before CZ sought a pardon
Marcus Mendes / 9to5Mac:
An Apple-backed study finds combining Apple Watch's heart rate sensor with a new Wearable Behavior Model achieves 92% accuracy for pregnancy detection, and more
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Belkin says it is ending support for its Wemo smart home products and app on January 31, 2026; four devices will continue to function via HomeKit over Thread
Joe Tidy / BBC:
UK police arrest four people, a 20-year-old woman and three men aged 17 to 19, in connection to the M&S and Co-op hacks that began in mid-April and caused havoc
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