Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News
Techmeme
July 29, 2025, 2:05 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Blake Brittain / Reuters:
Sony sues Tencent for copyright and trademark infringement in California federal court, accusing the Chinese tech giant of ripping off its Horizon game series  —  Sony Interactive (6758.T) has sued Tencent (0700.HK) for copyright and trademark infringement in California federal court …
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Internal memo: Meta is piloting AI-enabled coding interviews, letting candidates use AI during the process, and asks for “mock AI-enabled interview” volunteers  —  “This is more representative of the developer environment that our future employees will work in.”
Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Palo Alto Networks is in talks to acquire Israeli cybersecurity company CyberArk Software; a typical premium could put the deal well above $20B  —  Deal for Israeli firm would be latest in big tech's cybersecurity consolidation  —  Palo Alto Networks is in talks to acquire …
More: CNBC and Reuters
X: @economyapp, @cyburgerim, @cnbc, and @laurenthomas.  LinkedIn: Sid Trivedi.  Forums: r/cybersecurity
Reece Rogers / Wired:
OpenAI launches study mode in ChatGPT, designed to encourage students to engage with learning material, available to logged-in Free, Plus, Pro, and Team users  —  OpenAI's new study mode for ChatGPT throws questions back at students, but the learning feature doesn't address generative AI's underlying disruption of education.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Adobe rolls out new generative AI features for Photoshop to let users more easily add or remove people and objects, including “Harmonize” compositing, in beta  —  Generative AI is rapidly eroding the photo editing skill barrier. … Adobe is launching some new generative AI features …
Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:
Tea, which claims to make dating safer for women, is the #2 app in the US App Store, despite multiple security flaws exposing private chats, photo IDs, and more  —  Two major security vulnerabilities in the Tea app - which claims to make dating safer for women - have exposed the private chats …
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
A second security breach at women's safety app Tea exposes 1.1M+ user messages, dating from early 2023 up to last week, many containing sensitive information
Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft is in advanced talks to land a deal that could give it ongoing access to critical OpenAI tech even if OpenAI reaches its goal of building AGI  —  Microsoft Corp. is in advanced talks to land a deal that could give it ongoing access to critical OpenAI technology …
Financial Times:
Sources: Anthropic is nearing a deal to raise $5B in a funding round led by Iconiq, valuing it at $170B; Anthropic was valued at $61.5B in March  —  Deal would almost triple valuation of OpenAI's rival to $170bn  —  Iconiq Capital is set to lead a $5bn funding round for artificial intelligence start …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple plans to open the Apple Manufacturing Academy in Detroit in August, run by Michigan State University, as Trump ramps up pressure to invest in the US  —  Faced with intensifying pressure from President Donald Trump to bring more jobs to the U.S., Apple is opening a manufacturing program in downtown Detroit.
Dave Michaels / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the US DOJ fired two of its most senior antitrust enforcers after disagreements related to defusing its lawsuit against HPE over its $14B Juniper deal  —  Dismissals come after disagreements over settling case against HPE, which hired allies of President Trump
Katherine Sayre / Wall Street Journal:
Spotify reports Q2 revenue up 10% YoY to €4.2B, MAUs up 11% YoY to 696M, subscribers up 12% YoY to 276M, and an €86M net loss; SPOT drops 9%+ after missing est.  —  The audio streaming service added more listeners than it had forecast, but reported a net loss for the second quarter
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Block-owned Cash App unveils Pools, a new peer-to-peer feature for group payments, and says users can accept contributions via Apple Pay or Google Pay, a first  —  Cash App is going on the offensive in peer-to-peer payments.  —  The Block-owned payments platform on Tuesday unveiled Pools …
AnnaMaria Andriotis / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: JPMorgan Chase is in advanced talks to take over Apple's credit-card program from Goldman Sachs, with Apple telling JPMorgan it is its preferred choice  —  Discussions between the country's biggest bank and Apple accelerated in recent months  —  JPMorgan Chase is in advanced talks …
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
PayPal reports Q2 net revenue up 5% YoY to $8.3B, vs. $8.08B est., TPV up 6% YoY to $443.5B, transactions down 5% YoY to 6.2B, active accounts up 2% YoY to 438M  —  PayPal reported better-than-expected results for the second quarter but saw slowing growth in transaction margin dollars, a key measure of profitability.
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Waymo plans to launch its robotaxi service in Dallas in 2026 with Avis as the fleet partner, a first after exclusively working with Uber in Austin and Atlanta  —  Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo plans to launch robotaxi service in Dallas next year in partnership with Avis Budget Group Inc. …
Reuters:
Sources: Nvidia ordered 300K H20 chips from TSMC last week, adding to its 600K to 700K inventory, amid strong China demand after the US cleared H20 chip sales  —  Nvidia (NVDA.O) placed orders for 300,000 H20 chipsets with contract manufacturer TSMC (2330.TW) last week, two sources said …
Anthony Hughes / Bloomberg:
Sources: Figma's IPO, which could raise as much as $1.2B after Figma raised its range to $30 to $32 per share on July 28, is approaching 40 times oversubscribed  —  Figma Inc.'s US initial public offering is approaching 40 times oversubscribed, according to people familiar with the matter …
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Sparrow, which uses AI to consolidate fragmented leave management processes, raised a $35M Series B led by Silver Lake Waterman, for $64M in total funding  —  Sparrow, the employee leave management technology company, announced Tuesday it raised $35 million in Series B funding led by Silver Lake Waterman …
More: FinSMEs and Sparrow

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Deep analysis for deep questions  —  Introducing Superagent.  A new research product from Airtable: Subagents deeply interrogate your topic and turn it into boardroom-ready reports, slides, docs, or websites.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Turn financial data into better business decisions  —  This is a guest blog by ScaleXP.For CEOs and CFOs of growing small and mid-sized businesses, financial data is everywhere.  Invoices, expenses, subscriptions …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
 Anthropic vs. The Pentagon, Bloodbath at Block, The Citrini Selloff
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
 Netflix Walks, Paramount Wins, and the Ellisons Take Hollywood
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Hard Fork:
 Is A.I. Eating the Labor Market? + The Latest on the Pentagon, OpenClaw and Alpha School
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.
The Upstarts Podcast:
 Valar Atomics' Isaiah Taylor: Solving AI's Energy Crisis With Nuclear 'Gigasites'
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Access:
 Reddit CEO Steve Huffman on surviving the AI slop-pocalypse
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
 His Excellency Khaldoon Al Mubarak: Investing in an AI-Driven World
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:05 PM ET, July 29, 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.

From Mediagazer

Bloomberg:
How Paramount's David Ellison deployed financial backing and political lobbying, including his well-connected chief legal adviser, to beat Netflix and win WBD

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

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
Julius AI, which acts like a data scientist by analyzing data and running predictive models from natural language prompts, raised a $10M seed led by Bessemer
Zoe Kleinman / BBC:
Google will roll out AI Mode in the UK in the coming days after launching in the US and India; the optional feature will appear as a tab and in the search box
Pankaj Mishra / Livemint:
Sources: Coinbase is in advanced talks to acquire CoinDCX, potentially valuing the Indian crypto exchange at less than $1B, below its $2.15B valuation in 2022

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
EssilorLuxottica says sales of Ray-Ban Meta more than tripled year-over-year in the first half of 2025, and it expects “a very fast ramp-up” of Oakley Meta
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Anthropic plans to debut new rate limits for Claude Pro and Max on August 28, likely curbing <5% of users, saying some run Code “continuously in the background”
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Microsoft Edge adds Copilot Mode, an experimental feature that tries to make browsing an agentic AI experience, even anticipating links to click, free for now
Evelyn Cheng / CNBC:
Z.ai, formerly known as Zhipu and that has raised $1.5B from Tencent and others, releases GLM-4.5, an open-source AI model that it says is cheaper than DeepSeek
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter