Techmeme
July 15, 2025, 10:00 PM

Top News

Jennifer Maas / Variety:
Roblox launches a licensing platform to help IP rights holders collaborate with creators, with Lionsgate, Netflix, Sega, and Kodansha as founding partners  —  Roblox is launching a new licensing platform to streamline the process for IP rights holders to partner with creators on the gaming platform.
The Information on YouTube:
Mark Zuckerberg Q&A: Meta's focus on “personal super intelligence”, how large compensation packages pale in comparison to AI infra investments, AI glasses, more  —  The Information's TITV is first in tech news and analysis from the people that break and shape the story.
Reuters:
Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab raised a $2B seed led by a16z at a $12B valuation; Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, and Jane Street also invested  —  Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, said on Tuesday it has raised …
Carlos Caminada / Bloomberg:
Apple signs a $500M deal to buy rare-earth magnets from Pentagon-backed US producer MP Materials, with shipments from MP's Texas facility set to begin in 2027  —  Apple Inc. has struck a $500 million deal to buy rare-earth minerals from MP Materials Corp., the US producer that just last week secured backing from the Pentagon.
Erin Doherty / CNBC:
Several crypto regulation bills backed by Trump fail to clear a key hurdle in the US House after 13 Republicans voted with Democrats to block the legislation  —  Several cryptocurrency regulation bills backed by President Donald Trump on Tuesday failed to clear a key procedural hurdle …
Bloomberg:
Sources: the US DOJ and CFTC ended a pair of investigations into crypto betting platform Polymarket that started in the waning days of the Biden administration  —  A pair of US investigations into crypto-betting platform Polymarket that went full-throttle in the waning days of the Biden administration …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
In a paper, AI researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and others recommend further research into chain-of-thought monitorability for AI safety  —  AI researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and a broad coalition of companies and nonprofit groups …
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Users have uploaded 5,000 AI models, previously banned from Civitai for generating nonconsensual sexual content of real people, to Hugging Face  —  Hugging Face, a company with a multi-billion dollar valuation and one of the most commonly used platforms for sharing AI tools and resources …
Calvin French-Owen:
A former OpenAI engineer details his experience working at the company, including its culture, engineering practices, rapid growth, and the launch of Codex  —  I left OpenAI three weeks ago.  I had joined the company back in May 2024.  —  I wanted to share my reflections because there's …
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Mistral releases Voxtral, its first open-source AI audio model family, and says Voxtral Mini Transcribe outperforms OpenAI Whisper for less than half the price  —  As AI systems become more capable, speech is fast becoming the default way we communicate with machines.
Financial Times:
Sources: Cantor Equity Partners 1, a SPAC backed by Cantor Fitzgerald, is in late-stage talks with Blockstream Capital founder Adam Back to buy $3B+ in bitcoin  —  Brandon Lutnick in late-stage talks with Adam Back in latest move to use blank cheque vehicles to buy the cryptocurrency
Martha Muir / Financial Times:
Google signs two 20-year power purchase agreements worth $3B to access hydroelectric power from Brookfield's renewables arm, starting with up to 670MW of power  —  Tech groups seeking renewable energy to meet huge demand from artificial intelligence  —  Google has reached a $3bn deal …
ProPublica:
Investigation: Microsoft uses engineers in China to help maintain US DOD systems, with minimal supervision by US personnel, leaving sensitive data vulnerable  —  The Pentagon bans foreign citizens from accessing highly sensitive data, but Microsoft bypasses this by using engineers in China …
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
Anthropic launches Claude for Financial Services, designed to help analysts conduct market research and handle due diligence, with data from FactSet and others  —  Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is launching a package of new software services aimed at streamlining work for financial analysts …
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Uber and Baidu announce a multiyear partnership to launch robotaxis in markets outside the US and mainland China, starting in Asia and the Middle East in 2025  —  Baidu's autonomous vehicles will be available on the Uber app in Asia and the Middle East later this year, the companies said in a statement Tuesday.
Russell Brandom / TechCrunch:
Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and CLI Codex, terminal-based AI tools launched since February, have surprisingly gained ground on AI code editors with traditional UIs  —  For years, code-editing tools like Cursor, Windsurf, and GitHub's Copilot have been the standard for AI-powered software development.
Hugh Son / CNBC:
On stablecoins, JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon says, “We're going to be involved in both JPMorgan deposit coin and stablecoins to understand it, to be good at it”  —  JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says he doesn't get the appeal of stablecoins, but he also can't afford to stay on the sidelines.
Radhika Rajkumar / ZDNET:
Resume Builder survey of 1,342 managers in the US: 60% say they rely on AI to make personnel decisions, 78% of which use the tech in deciding raises  —  A recent survey from Resume Builder finds that half of managers are using AI to make crucial decisions about their direct reports …
More: InfoWorld
Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
AMD says it will restart shipments of its MI308 AI chips to China after the US Commerce Department gave assurances it would approve the sales, following Nvidia  —  The US Commerce Department told AMD that license applications for the MI308 products would move forward for review, an AMD spokesman said Tuesday.
Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:

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More News

Alex Konrad / Upstarts Media:
Amy Feldman / Forbes:
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Earlier Picks

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Deborah Sophia / Reuters: