Techmeme
October 29, 2025, 1:00 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI's restructuring, approved by California's AG, paves the way for an IPO as soon as 2027; Sam Altman says an IPO is likely but gave no timeframe  —  Company assured state officials that it would stay in California as it continues global expansion, which could include a public offering as soon as 2027
Rocket Drew / The Information:
Financial Times:
Nvidia opens at a $5T market cap, becoming the first company to hit the milestone, climbing 5% in early trading; NVDA is up 50% in 2025 and 1,275% since 2022  —  US chip giant's stock propelled by strong sales of AI systems and prospect of access to China  —  Michael Acton in San Francisco …
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Internal memo: Amazon makes “significant role reductions” to its game division and will cut down on big budget titles, as it focuses on Luna and casual games  —  Tech giant will reduce game development work and eliminate jobs  —  Amazon.com Inc. is gutting its video-game division …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
YouTube is using AI to upscale videos uploaded at between 240p and 720p to HD on TV screens, but users can opt out, and plans 4K upscaling “in the near future”  —  The platform is optimizing its TV experience with new resolution upscaling and shopping features.
The Verge:
Grokipedia hands-on: many articles clone Wikipedia, but deviate significantly on topics Elon Musk cares about, with inaccuracies on some scientific topics  —  xAI's Wikipedia-like website offers a generous take on Musk's worldview. … On Monday, a new online “encyclopedia” sputtered to life.
Bloomberg:
After Nvidia GTC, Jensen Huang says “I don't believe we're in an AI bubble” and that Nvidia expects to sell 20M Blackwell chips, up from 4M Hopper chips  —  Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang announced a flurry of new partnerships and dismissed concerns about an AI bubble …
Wall Street Journal:
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
Character.ai plans to limit under-18s to two hours of conversations per day, gradually reducing the time limit before banning them completely from November 25  —  Move comes following growing public and regulatory scrutiny over safety of the technology for young users
Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat:
GitHub updates VS Code with Plan Mode for building step-by-step project approaches, MCP Registry integration, definable project rules via AGENTS.md, and more  —  GitHub is making a bold bet that enterprises don't need another proprietary coding agent.  They need a way to manage all of them.
Adobe Newsroom:
A survey of 16K+ creators in eight countries: 86% use creative GenAI tools, 60% use multiple, 48% use them for ideation, and 52% for creating video and more  —  - 76 percent of creators say creative generative AI has helped grow their business and personal brand
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Amazon opens Project Rainier, an $11B AI data center on 1,200 acres in Indiana that trains and runs Anthropic's AI models using 500K+ Amazon Trainium 2 chips  —  NEW CARLISLE, Indiana — A year ago, it was farmland.  Now, the 1,200-acre site near Lake Michigan is home to one of the largest operational AI data centers in the world.
OpenAI:
OpenAI releases gpt-oss-safeguard, its open-weight reasoning models for safety classification tasks, available in 120B and 20B parameters, under Apache 2.0  —  New open safety reasoning models (120b and 20b) that support custom safety policies.  —  Today, we're releasing a research preview …
Corporate Europe Observatory:
Big Tech's EU lobbying hit €151M in 2025, up from €113M in 2023 and €97M in 2021; between January and June 2025, Big Tech had 146 meetings with EU officials  —  The EU's digital rulebook is under unprecedented pressure from the Trump administration and a homegrown deregulation wave.
Wall Street Journal:
Amazon, UPS, Target, GM, and other major US companies are laying off tens of thousands of white collar workers, as executives hope AI can handle their workload  —  Layoffs at companies ranging from Amazon to Target are sending young and experienced workers alike into an unwelcoming market
Dylan Butts / CNBC:
SK Hynix reports Q3 revenue up 39% YoY to $17.02B, below $17.22B est., and operating profit up 62% YoY to a record $7.92B, boosted by demand for its HBM chips  —  South Korea's SK Hynix on Wednesday posted record quarterly revenue and profit, boosted by a strong demand for its high bandwidth memory used in generative AI chipsets.
Politico:
French lawmakers vote to raise France's digital services tax on US tech giants to 6%, up from 3%; the French government opposes the move, fearing US retaliation  —  PARIS — French lawmakers are moving ahead with plans to double a tax on big tech firms — backing away from a more aggressive push amid fears …
More: Bloomberg
Cursor:
Cursor launches Cursor 2.0, with its first coding model, Composer, that it says is 4x faster than similar models, and a multi-agent interface  —  Today, we're releasing two big updates that make Cursor the best place to work with agents: our first coding model, Composer, and a new interface for working with many agents in parallel.
The Information:
China is expediting IPO approvals amid its AI rivalry with the US, recently approving listings for chip designers MetaX and Moore Threads in just three months  —  The tech rivalry with the U.S. has made China take an unusual step: It is accelerating the pace at which startups go public …
Wall Street Journal:

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26  —  Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Zoho:
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control  —  Picture this: It's Monday morning.  You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
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

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's 2026 Priority, Disney's AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble
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.
Hard Fork:
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
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:
Why the next AI frontier is phone calls, with Beside CEO Maxime Germain
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Great Chat:
So what happens after AGI?
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He's a Must-Read Media Gossip.
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 1:00 PM ET, October 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

Earlier Picks

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:
Dominic Preston / The Verge: