Techmeme
July 25, 2026, 2:20 AM

Top News

Anthropic:
Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5, which it says comes close to Fable 5 performance at half the price; it is the new default model on Claude Max  —  Claude Opus 5 is available today.  It's a thoughtful and proactive model that comes close to the frontier intelligence of Claude Fable 5 at half the price.
Madison Mills / Axios:
Leo Schwartz / The Information:
Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and others sign a letter defending open-weight AI models; Jensen Huang, in his first X post, says open models strengthen cybersecurity  —  Many of the largest U.S. tech companies signed a joint letter on Friday defending open-source AI software as the Trump administration …
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
In their letter defending open-weight AI, tech companies urge lawmakers to avoid “premature restrictions” that “stifle competition or drive innovation overseas”  —  Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir and more than 20 other companies released a letter on Friday urging policymakers …
Reuters:
Sources: OpenAI's models breached Hugging Face from July 11 to 13 and OpenAI realized their models were behind the hack several days later  —  The OpenAI agent that broke into tech firm Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn't notice until well after the threat …
Harry Booth / Time:
Rafe Rosner-Uddin / Financial Times:
Sources: Waymo is exploring exiting its Uber partnership, with their relationship souring amid an intense lobbying battle over the future of robotaxis  —  Partnership between two groups has soured amid intense lobbying battle over rollout of autonomous vehicles
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Cognition acquires the makers of Poke, an AI assistant that users can access via messaging services, in a deal valuing Poke's parent in the “low nine figures”  —  Poke, the AI assistant you text like a friend, is making its next big move.  The company behind the assistant …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple has pitched Trump on using Chinese memory chips in its products sold outside the US; Micron warned such a plan could destroy the US chip industry  —  Two of the president's priorities—cutting prices for U.S. consumers and increasing domestic semiconductor output—come into conflict
More: 9to5Mac and Motley Fool
AI Security Institute:
A joint preliminary evaluation by the UK's AISI and the US' CAISI finds Kimi K3 trails leading US frontier closed weight models on cyber capability  —  The UK Artificial Intelligence Security Institute (UK AISI) and the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) (UK AISI / CAISI) …
Timothy Pratt / The Guardian:
The DOJ is prosecuting a Cop City protester for allegedly providing CBP with a “duress” passcode that wiped the contents of his GrapheneOS phone  —  Concern over US effort to prosecute Sam Tunick, accused by authorities of wiping his phone using GrapheneOS
Kevin Breuninger / CNBC:
Trump says the US will initiate a probe into the EU's practice of “robbing” US tech giants with fines, threatening the bloc with “substantial” tariffs  —  President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration will launch a trade probe into the European Union …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Meta updates Meta AI with Muse Spark 1.1-powered agentic capabilities, connecting to Gmail and Google Calendar to perform tasks like creating daily updates  —  Meta is giving its AI assistant new agent-like capabilities powered by Muse Spark 1.1, its latest model.
Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE:
Neocloud Fluidstack, which has partnered with Anthropic, announces that it raised an $830M Series A led by Situational Awareness at a $7.5B valuation in January  —  Fluidstack Ltd., a startup helping Anthropic PBC build artificial intelligence data centers, has raised $830 million in funding.
Reuters:
Sources: CXMT expelled Huawei-linked SiCarrier staff from its R&D zone amid a pricing dispute, as Chinese memory makers flex their newfound clout to hike prices  —  For months, Chinese chip manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) had been hiking prices on Huawei, one of the country's biggest technology companies.
Financial Times:
Analysis: US tech companies have cut ~140K jobs YTD, or more than 33% of announced US layoffs in 2026, with ~50K cuts from Amazon, Oracle, Meta, and Microsoft  —  Investment spree is reshaping Silicon Valley while wider US jobs market holds steady  —  US tech companies have shed nearly 140,000 jobs since …
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
An appeals court narrowly blocks Texas from enforcing a monitoring and filtering requirement under its children's online safety law, over Section 230 preemption  —  A divided federal appeals court on Friday blocked Texas from enforcing a key provision of a state law meant to shield children from harm through using social media.
More: MediaPostX: @ewess92, @ccianet, @ewess92, @ewess92, and @ewess92Forums: r/politics
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
After a backlash, Meta pauses its plan to “rate limit” Conversation Focus, an accessibility feature for its glasses that runs on-device  —  “We're still exploring all our options for the best approach.” … The company is not giving up on the idea of a subscription fee for certain features — that's still moving forward.

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More News

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Mat Smith / Engadget:
Eli Tan / New York Times:
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Corbin Bolies / Variety:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: