Techmeme
October 2, 2025, 3:45 PM

Top News

Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
Source: OpenAI completed a secondary share sale that let staff sell ~$6.6B at a $500B valuation, making it the world's most valuable startup, ahead of SpaceX  —  OpenAI has completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a $500 billion valuation, propelling …
Reuters:
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
OpenAI's Sora 2 generates copyright infringing content, including numerous AI-generated clips featuring SpongeBob, Pokémon, Mario, Rick and Morty, and Star Wars  —  Within moments of opening OpenAI's new AI slop app Sora, I am watching Pikachu steal Poké Balls from a CVS.
M.G. Siegler / Spyglass:
Sora, which is fun and simple to use, shows that OpenAI remains good at creating viral products, unlike Meta, whose Vibes video feed feels half-baked and obtuse  —  Another viral product hit for OpenAI, this time in video...  It's been a long time since I've been this sucked into an app.
New York Times:
Bloomberg:
A Google executive and sources: a ransomware group that says it has Cl0p ties is sending extortion emails, claiming it stole data from Oracle's E-Business Suite  —  Executives and technology departments at large organizations are being extorted by a notorious ransomware group that claims …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Meta unveils communities on Threads, starting with 100+ dedicated spaces for casual conversations around topics like basketball, television, and K-pop music  —  Instagram Threads, Meta's X rival that now has over 400 million monthly active users, is officially launching a new feature …
More: The Verge, 9to5Mac, Meta Newsroom, Engadget, and Mashable
X: @metanewsroomBluesky: @samblum and @stahlThreads: @threads
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Red Hat confirms a breach of a GitLab instance after the extortion group Crimson Collective claimed to have stolen ~570GB of data from 28K internal repositories  —  Correction: After publishing, Red Hat confirmed that it was a breach of one of its GitLab instances, and not GitHub.  Title and story updated.
Financial Times:
Asahi says most of its 30 factories in Japan have not operated since September 29 following a cyberattack, leaving Japan with just days of Asahi Super Dry stock  —  Vast majority of factories of nation's most popular beer have stopped work this week  —  Japan is just a few days away …
Maya Dharampal-Hornby / Sifted:
NYC-based Dash0, which offers AI agents to monitor and troubleshoot cloud, app, and infrastructure issues, raised a $35M Series A, taking its funding to $44.5M  —  The platform has over 300 paying customers including Starling and Porsche  —  Dash0, an AI-native observability platform …
Charles Rollet / Business Insider:
Perplexity is making its AI browser Comet, previously $200/month with Perplexity Max, free, with rate limits; Perplexity says Comet has millions on its waitlist  —  Follow Charles Rollet … Saved  —  Add us on  — Perplexity is making its $200-a-month browser free for everyone.
Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times:
Sources: Universal Music and Warner Music are nearing landmark AI licensing deals with companies like Google, Spotify, ElevenLabs, Stability AI, Suno, and Udio  —  Universal and Warner seek payment structure similar to streaming as more disruption looms  —  Universal Music and Warner Music …
Russell Brandom / TechCrunch:
Anthropic hires former Stripe CTO Rahul Patil as its new CTO, taking over from co-founder Sam McCandlish, who will move to a new role as chief architect  —  Anthropic has a new chief technical officer, former Stripe CTO Rahul Patil.  Patil started at the company earlier this week …
Rebecca Szkutak / TechCrunch:
Salesforce launches Agentforce Vibes, an enterprise vibe-coding tool and IDE built on a fork of open-source AI coding agent Cline's Visual Studio Code extension  —  Enterprise giant Salesforce is looking to ride the vibe-coding wave — where developers describe what they want in natural language …

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 …
Bitrix24:
Bitrix24 powers the next generation of high-performing businesses  —  Chat, projects, CRM, and automation — all in one place.  Replace dozens of tools so your team moves faster, collaborates smarter, and grows effortlessly.
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

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.
Lenny's Podcast:
Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered "full stack builders" | Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn CPO)
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.
Great Chat:
Code red: our favorite tech rivalries
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Big Technology Podcast:
How An AI Model Learned To Be Bad — With Evan Hubinger And Monte MacDiarmid
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:
PBS Lost a Billion Dollars. Now what? With CEO Paula Kerger
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:45 PM ET, October 2, 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

Earlier Picks

Matt Durot / Forbes:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Jennifer Maas / Variety: