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November 17, 2025, 1:10 PM
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memeorandum
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| Cade Metz / New York Times: |
Sources: AI startup Project Prometheus raised $6.2B, including from Jeff Bezos, who is its co-CEO, his first operational role since leaving Amazon in July 2021 — Called Project Prometheus, the company is focusing on artificial intelligence for the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft.
More: GeekWire, PitchBook, The Guardian, PCMag, Livemint, Benzinga, The Verge, Capital Brief, The Register, The Economic Times, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, The Information, Proactive, Seeking Alpha, Fortune, Forbes, The Decoder, MediaPost, Quartz, Techstrong.ai, Cord Cutters News, PYMNTS.com, Windows Report, Australian Financial Review, Neowin, Implicator.ai, New York Times, Blockchain.News, Engadget, Newser, Telegraph, Silicon Republic, eWeek, NDTV Profit, TVNewsCheck, Reuters, Sherwood News, and Gamereactor UK
X: @elonmusk, @trengriffin, @gavinpurcell, @mattturck, @elidourado, @mims, @jeff_foust, @andrewcurran_, @mikeisaac, @stocksavvyshay, @andrewe_dunn, @pitdesi, @aphysicist, and @moislamvc
Bluesky: @judah-grunstein and @mims
Forums: Hacker News and Slashdot
| New York Times: |
Investigation: $28B+ in crypto tied to illicit activity flowed into crypto exchanges like Binance over the past two years, as President Trump embraced crypto — President Trump has started his own cryptocurrency business and vowed to make the United States the world's “crypto capital.”
More: Wired, Decrypt, Forbes, ICIJ, ICIJ, New York Times, New York Times, ICIJ, ICIJ, Protos, ICIJ, ICIJ, CoinDesk, ICIJ, and Tech in Asia
LinkedIn: Richard H.P. Sia. Bluesky: @bhgreeley, @spencerwoodman, @metacurity.com, @metacurity.com, and @carlquintanilla. Mastodon: @SeanCasten@mastodon.social. Forums: r/CryptoCurrency
| Joe Wertz / Bloomberg: |
Google DeepMind releases WeatherNext 2, a weather model that it says offers faster, more accurate two-week forecasts and includes more tools for energy traders — Google DeepMind has released a new artificial intelligence weather model that it says is faster and more accurate than anything it's built …
More: The Keyword, How-To Geek, 9to5Google, WinBuzzer, and Yahoo Finance
X: @google, @peterwbattaglia, @stocksavvyshay, @osanseviero, @googledeepmind, @googledeepmind, @andrewcurran_, and @googledeepmind
LinkedIn: Jeff Sternberg and James Rosenthal
Forums: Hacker News, r/singularity, and r/Bard
| Emily Mason / Bloomberg: |
Ramp says it is now valued at $32B following a $300M raise led by Lightspeed and an employee tender offer, up from a $22.5B valuation in July — Corporate spending management platform Ramp reached a $32 billion valuation after a $300 million primary financing round and an employee tender offer.
More: Ramp. X: @jbahrdestefano, @lisabethhan, @andrewbenson, @turkishtea__, @eglyman, @packym, and @nickabouzeid
| Bloomberg: |
US filing: Peter Thiel's Thiel Macro sold 537,742 Nvidia shares, worth ~$100M as of September 30, during Q3, amid rising concerns about an AI investment bubble — Peter Thiel's hedge fund Thiel Macro LLC sold off its holdings in Nvidia Corp. during the third quarter, marking another retreat … | Laith Al-Khalaf / Financial Times: |
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski says he is “nervous about the size of these investments in these data centers”; he owns stakes in OpenAI, Perplexity, and xAI — OpenAI backer Sebastian Siemiatkowski says tech industry is committing too much money to huge computing infrastructure
X: @quinnypig
| Bloomberg: |
Sources: Amazon is seeking to raise about $12B through a bond sale, its first such deal in US dollars since 2022, to help fund acquisitions, capex, and more — Amazon.com. Inc. is seeking to raise about $12 billion through a bond sale — its first such deal in US dollars in about three years … | Bloomberg: |
Meta says its 2Africa subsea internet cable project remains incomplete in the southern Red Sea due to security risks; Google's Blue-Raman cable is also delayed — Multiple subsea internet cables slated to run through the Red Sea are yet to complete as planned, as political tensions …
More: Tom's Hardware, Benzinga, Engadget, and Ukrainian National News
| Ben Bergman / Business Insider: |
In an informal survey of 300+ Cerebral Valley AI Conference attendees asking which $1B+ valuation startup to short, most voted Perplexity, followed by OpenAI — - An audience at a top AI conference in San Francisco was asked what startup they would short. — Perplexity, an AI search …
More: The Verge, Analytics India Magazine, Moneycontrol, and Livemint
X: @steadycompound, @zephyr_z9, @salmanso_, and @luke_metro. Bluesky: @edzitron.com. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to
| Kieran Smith / Financial Times: |
Sources: UK companies tell the UK that a planned ban on paying ransoms to ransomware gangs is unlikely to stop attacks and could result in services collapsing — Companies and security groups warn government's proposed measure is unlikely to stop hacking attacks| M.G. Siegler / Spyglass: |
The FT's Tim Cook retirement story could be a “trial balloon” from people close to him, if Cook decides to leave after Apple's “blockbuster” Q1 earnings report — Might Tim Cook retire as CEO of Apple in early 2026? There are signs... Two weeks ago, Tim Cook turned 65.
More: MacRumors, Mashable, Proactive, Inc.com, Tom's Guide, Implicator.ai, Gizmodo, PCMag, 9to5Mac, Dataconomy, TechCrunch, The Information, Pixel Envy, Cult of Mac, and Daring Fireball
X: @markgurman, @spyglass_feed, @sirgoofy28, and @michaelbatnick
| Zoë Schiffer / Wired: |
Q&A with OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo on joining OpenAI, ChatGPT users' mental health, profitability, data center deals, her chronic illness, and more — As OpenAI expands in every direction, the new CEO of Applications is on a mission to make ChatGPT indispensable and lucrative.| Stephen Nellis / Reuters: |
Celero, which is developing a chip to enable long-distance connections between AI data centers, raised $140M, including a $100M Series B led by CapitalG — Celero Communications, a U.S. startup founded by networking industry veterans, on Monday said it has raised $140 million to build a chip …
More: Celero and Breaking Defense
| Alex Konrad / Upstarts Media: |
Span, which aims to help companies measure the value of AI-assisted coding, raised $25M in seed and Series A rounds from Alt Capital, Craft Ventures, and others — In April, J Zac Stein took his cofounder Henry Liu out to dinner to pitch him on a new product: a model for detecting when code was generated by AI.
More: FinSMEs, Span, and Span
X: @murr, @erondu, @span_platform, @myprasanna, @alexrkonrad, and @alexrkonrad
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