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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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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:20 PM ET, August 18, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

CNN:
Don Lemon pleads not guilty to two federal charges stemming from his reporting at an anti-ICE protest in a Minnesota church

Abbey White / The Hollywood Reporter:
A Q&A with PBS Kids' Sara DeWitt on the effect of cuts to the $112M Ready to Learn grant, including potentially partnering with ad tech companies

Isma'il Kushkush / Nieman Reports:
A look at the dearth of media coverage of Sudan's civil war, started in 2023; report: 32 journalists have been killed and 90% of outlets damaged or destroyed

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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