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Techmeme
August 18, 2025, 8:20 PM
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Top News

Kif Leswing / CNBC:
SoftBank agrees to invest $2B in Intel, paying $23/share for Intel's common stock and buying ~2% of its outstanding shares; INTC jumps ~6% to ~$25 after hours  —  Intel and SoftBank announced on Monday that the Japanese conglomerate will make a $2 billion investment in the embattled chipmaker.
Bloomberg:
Sources: the Trump administration is in discussions to take a stake of ~10% in Intel, converting some or all of Intel's $10.9B CHIPS Act grants into equity  —  The Trump administration is in discussions to take a stake of about 10% in Intel Corp., according to a White House official …
Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming service will get RTX 5080 GPUs in September, letting users of its $20/month Ultimate tier stream in 5K at up to 120fps  —  It'll support up to 5K at 120fps and DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation.  —  NVIDIA's GeForce NOW game streaming service is leveling …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Nvidia, Discord, and Epic Games are testing game demos on Discord servers, letting users try a game without downloading it or signing up, starting with Fortnite  —  Try before you try before you buy. … Nvidia's GeForce Now is getting a big upgrade next month — and it's also part of an intriguing new experiment.
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Texas AG Ken Paxton probes Meta and Character.AI over claims they deceptively market chatbots as mental health tools, misleading kids and other vulnerable users  —  Texas attorney general Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into both Meta AI Studio and Character.AI for …
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Palo Alto Networks reports Q4 revenue up 16% YoY to $2.54B, vs. $2.5B est., and Q1 and FY 2026 guidance above estimates; PANW jumps 4%+ after hours  —  Palo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued upbeat guidance for the current period.
Kia Kokalitcheva / PitchBook:
American Exceptionalism Acquisition, a SPAC led by Chamath Palihapitiya and focused on energy, AI, DeFi, and defense, files for a US IPO, seeking to raise $250M  —  Silicon Valley investor Chamath Palihapitiya has filed documents with the SEC for a new special purpose acquisition company …
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
Grok's website is exposing the underlying prompts for its AI personas, including one for a “crazy conspiracist” persona that spends “a lot of time on 4chan”  —  The website for Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok is exposing the underlying prompts for a wealth of its AI personas …
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Google increases its stake in bitcoin miner and datacenter operator TeraWulf from 8% to 14%, bringing its total investment to ~$3.2B; WULF jumps 10%+  —  TeraWulf stock rallied more than 4% after Google hiked its stake in the bitcoin miner and data center operator as it funds an expansion of its Lake Mariner, New York, facility.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Nvidia debuts the Nemotron-Nano-9B-v2, a hybrid Mamba-transformer model, saying it achieves scores comparable to or better than Qwen3-8B on reasoning benchmarks  —  Small models are having a moment.  On the heels of the release of a new AI vision model small enough to fit on a smartwatch …
Ben Bergman / Business Insider:
Sources: Anthropic asked Menlo to use the VC firm's own capital for investment in the startup and not an SPV, as Menlo did in a previous funding round  —  - Anthropic is raising about $5 billion at a $170 billion valuation, BI confirmed.  — The AI startup is being picky about the types …
Max A. Cherney / Reuters:
Source: Arm has hired Amazon AI chip director Rami Sinno to help develop its own chips; he previously worked on Amazon's Trainium and Inferentia chips  —  Arm Holdings has hired Amazon.com (AMZN.O) artificial intelligence chip director Rami Sinno to bolster its plans to develop its own complete chips …
More: Benzinga

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:20 PM ET, August 18, 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

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Memo: Skydance offers certain employees a voluntary buyout in a “one-time offer” and moves to a mandatory five-days-per-week in-office policy

Etan Vlessing / The Hollywood Reporter:
Lionsgate and Steven Paul's SP Media form a JV to invest in new businesses and indie film production; a source says Paul is leading an investment of ~$100M

Kate Knibbs / Wired:
Multiple editors report an influx of unsolicited story pitches and fact-checking inquiries from autonomous AI agents, mostly from a startup called iLands

More News

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
HR giant Workday says hackers stole an unspecified amount of personal information, such as names and email addresses, from one of its third-party CRM platforms
Max Buondonno / The Shortcut:
Samsung announces the Galaxy Buds3 FE, with a new AirPods Pro-like design, improved ANC, and upgraded audio quality, launching September 4 for $149.99
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Grammarly debuts AI agents for writing and grading assistance, like an AI grader agent and a citation finder agent, available to Grammarly Free and Pro users
Financial Times:
Digital bank Monzo, which has 13M UK customers, plans to launch a mobile phone service; Revolut and Klarna, each with ~11M UK customers, announced similar plans

Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
Sources: the EU and the US have delayed formalizing their trade deal partly over “non-tariff barriers”, like relaxing the DSA, which the EU sees as a red line
Debby Wu / Bloomberg:
SoftBank buys Foxconn's Ohio EV plant; Foxconn will still run the plant and make AI servers as part of Softbank's $500B Stargate project with OpenAI and Oracle
Edward White / Financial Times:
China's podcast audience is projected to reach 150M in 2025, up from <700K five years ago, driven by grassroots hosts instinctively navigating China's red lines
Bluesky: @mranthropology and @yaqiu
X: @patrickc and @edwardwhitenz
LinkedIn: Yi Yang and Edward White
Jordyn Holman / New York Times:
As boards and executives mandate using AI to make their businesses more efficient and competitive, many have yet to fully integrate it into their own workdays
Bluesky: @lookitup.baby, @edzitron.com, @raistolo, and @quinnypig.com.  LinkedIn: Chuck Whitten.  Forums: r/business
Himanshi Akhand / Reuters:
Australia's ACCC says Google agreed to pay a AU$55M fine over deals with Telstra and Optus to preinstall only Google Search on Android phones from 2019 to 2021
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