Techmeme
September 29, 2025, 9:00 PM

Top News

Anthropic:
Anthropic debuts Claude Sonnet 4.5, claims it is the world's best coding model, the strongest for building complex agents, and its “most aligned” frontier model  —  Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the best coding model in the world.  It's the strongest model for building complex agents.
Hayden Field / The Verge:
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
OpenAI rolls out Instant Checkout to let users make single-item purchases directly in ChatGPT, starting with US Etsy sellers, and plans to add Shopify merchants  —  Arrows pointing outwards  —  OpenAI on Monday announced Instant Checkout, a new feature that allows users to buy products through …
Sabrina Ortiz / ZDNET:
Wall Street Journal:
Filing: YouTube will pay $24.5M to settle a 2021 Trump lawsuit over suspending his account after Jan. 6, the last Big Tech company to settle his lawsuits  —  Google subsidiary is the last of three Big Tech companies to resolve personal litigation Trump filed against social-media platforms
Chase DiFeliciantonio / Politico:
California Governor Gavin Newsom signs SB 53 into law; the first-in-the-nation AI safety law requires AI companies to disclose their safety testing regimes  —  “California has proven that we can establish regulations to protect our communities while also ensuring that the growing AI industry continues to thrive.
Wired:
Sources: OpenAI plans a stand-alone social app powered by Sora 2, featuring a TikTok-like vertical feed with entirely AI-generated videos  —  The platform appears to closely resemble TikTok and is powered by Sora 2, OpenAI's latest video generation model.  —  OpenAI is preparing to launch …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI told studios that it plans to release a new version of Sora that creates videos featuring copyrighted material unless copyright holders opt out  —  Executives at the startup notified talent agencies and studios over the last week  —  OpenAI is planning to release a new version …
Kim Zetter / Wired:
Researchers: Tile tags broadcast unencrypted MAC addresses and unique IDs; researchers informed Life360 in November 2024 but it stopped replying in February  —  A team of researchers found that, by not encrypting the data broadcast by Tile tags, users could be vulnerable to having their location information exposed to malicious actors.
Reece Rogers / Wired:
OpenAI launches new ChatGPT parental safety controls for users aged 13 to 18, including parental and law enforcement alerts for chats about self-harm or suicide  —  OpenAI's review process for teenage ChatGPT users who are flagged for suicidal ideation includes human moderators.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
CNBC:
A judge sentences Frank founder Charlie Javice to 85 months in prison for defrauding JPMorgan Chase by overstating how many customers the fintech company had  —  Charlie Javice, founder of a startup acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2021 for $175 million, was sentenced to just more than seven years …
Ryan Whitwam / Ars Technica:
Open-source Android app store F-Droid says Google's upcoming requirement for all Android devs to verify their identity threatens to kill alternative app stores  —  Google plans to begin testing its recently announced verification scheme for Android developers in the coming weeks …
Electronic Arts:
EA to be acquired by Saudi Arabia's PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners for $210 per share, taking it private at a ~$55B valuation, set to close in Q1 FY27  —  Accelerates EA's Strategic Vision to Advance the Future of Entertainment  —  Stockholders to Receive $210 Per Share …
Bloomberg:
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
DeepSeek releases DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp, saying it built the model using a new technique called DeepSeek Sparse Attention, and halves the pricing of its tools  —  DeepSeek updated an experimental AI model Monday in what it called a step toward next-generation artificial intelligence.
Crypto in America:
Sources: asset manager Vanguard, which has historically been critical of cryptocurrencies, prepares to allow access to crypto ETFs on its brokerage platform  —  The $10 trillion mutual fund giant has stayed on the sidelines of crypto — until now.  —  Crypto in America and Eleanor Terrett
Wired:
Marissa Mayer to dissolve her old startup Sunshine, founded in 2018, and sell its assets to her new company Dazzle, which sources say is making an AI assistant  —  After seven rocky years, the company's assets will be sold to Dazzle, a new AI firm that Mayer founded.
Bloomberg:
Swift says it is building a blockchain-based ledger with over 30 financial institutions and the first prototype will be built in partnership with Consensys  —  Swift, the entity that runs the messaging system used by financial institutions globally to send instructions on tens of millions …
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
South Korean AI chip maker Rebellions raised a $250M Series C at a $1.4B valuation; Arm joined the round as a strategic partner  —  Rebellions Inc. raised $250 million from investors including Arm Holdings Plc to mass produce its chip and speed up product development in a competitive AI market.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Transform ML Experimentation with Tangle  —  Save months of compute time with Tangle, built by Shopify.  Try this open-source platform to simplify ML workflows, ensure reproducibility, and seamlessly share with collaborators.
Zoho:
Contract Signed.  Project Ready.  Tasks Created.  —  Every project begins with a promise; a contract that outlines the deliverables, the timelines, and the terms.  But for most businesses …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
The Pull to Build: Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit and Starting Roadrunner
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
The 100-person AI lab that became Anthropic and Google's secret weapon | Edwin Chen (Surge AI)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
AI Device Wars Heat Up, RIP Metaverse?, Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers
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:
"Hollywood is Truly Freaked Out." Inside the Netflix/WBD Deal with Lucas Shaw
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:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
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.
Access:
Is Roblox making the internet better or worse? We asked the CEO
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:00 PM ET, September 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.

More News

Bernard Goyder / Bloomberg:
Suzi Ring / Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Dominic Chopping / Wall Street Journal:
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: