Techmeme
September 21, 2025, 8:05 AM

Top News

Karoline Leavitt / @presssec:
White House Press Secretary says the $100K H-1B fee is not an annual fee and it is a “one-time fee that applies only to the petition” in the upcoming lottery  —  To be clear: 1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It's a one-time fee that applies only to the petition. 2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter. H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
VCs and founders warn that the $100K fee will make H-1B sponsorship prohibitively expensive for startups, not Big Tech, and drive talent outside the US  —  Longtime entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are sounding the alarm over President Trump's new H-1B fee that would impact tech companies and the workers they hire from abroad.
Ben Berkowitz / Axios:
White House says the $100K H-1B fee will not apply to renewals or existing H-1B holders re-entering the US, only to future applicants in the February lottery  —  A new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas goes into effect Sunday, but it will not be applied to existing holders of valid visas re-entering the country …
Yun Li / CNBC:
Memos: Amazon, which has the most H-1B staff at 14K+, Google, and Microsoft tell H-1B visa holders to return to the US before September 21 and avoid travel  —  Major technology companies and foreign governments are rushing to respond after President Donald Trump late Friday announced plans …
Elizabeth Chamberlain / iFixit News:
iPhone Air teardown: clever use of space by placing the logic board above the 12.26 Wh battery, the same cell used in Apple's MagSafe Battery pack, and more  —  iPhone Air Teardown  —  To be honest, we were holding our breath for the iPhone Air.  Thinner usually means flimsier, harder to fix, and more glued-down parts.
Ben Berkowitz / Axios:
Karoline Leavitt confirms Oracle will handle TikTok's data and security, and says the US is “100% confident” a deal is done and it “just needs to be signed”  —  - Congress passed a ban last year with bipartisan support, but President Trump has repeatedly ordered …
Kasia Klimasinska / Bloomberg:
Matt Burgess / Wired:
As carriers deploy protections against fraudulent texts, scammers are using “SMS blasters” that impersonate base stations to send fake messages to nearby phones  —  Scammers are now using “SMS blasters” to send out up to 100,000 texts per hour to phones that are tricked into thinking the devices are cell towers.
More: Futurism
Phoebe Liu / Forbes:
A profile of Edwin Chen, the CEO of Surge AI, a Scale AI rival that had $1.2B revenue in 2024, is profitable, and is reportedly raising $1B at a $30B valuation  —  This story appears in the October/November 2025 issue of Forbes Magazine.  Subscribe  —  An alum of Google, Facebook and Twitter …
William Sandlund / Financial Times:
Hang Seng Tech Index, which tracks the top 30 Hong Kong-listed tech stocks, is up 41% YTD vs. Nasdaq's 17%, driven by China's AI and chip self-sufficiency push  —  Beijing's push for chip self-sufficiency accelerates triumphant comeback for sector  —  Chinese tech stocks have massively outperformed …

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Robert Booth / The Guardian: