Techmeme
February 11, 2025, 3:05 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Investors led by Elon Musk make an unsolicited $97.4B bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, complicating Sam Altman's plans to convert to a for-profit  —  Unsolicited offer complicates Sam Altman's plans to convert OpenAI to a for-profit company — A consortium of investors led …
The Hill:
In response to the $97.4B OpenAI bid, Sam Altman says on X “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want”; Elon Musk replies “swindler”  —  OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman appeared to shut down a reported offer from an investor group led …
CNBC:
Investors behind the $97.4B OpenAI bid include xAI, Baron Capital, Valor, Atreides, Vy Capital, Joe Lonsdale's 8VC, and an investment vehicle led by Ari Emanuel  —  Elon Musk is leading a group of investors in offering to buy control of OpenAI for $97.4 billion, CNBC confirmed.
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Paris AI summit takeaways: Europe has regulation regrets, AI doomsayers have lost ground, and policymakers can't seem to grasp how soon powerful AI could arrive  —  At times, Kevin Roose writes, it feels like he is watching policymakers on horseback trying to install seatbelts on a passing Lamborghini.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Google brings NotebookLM Plus, its AI research assistant tier with higher usage limits, to Google One AI Premium subscribers, and debuts a 50% student discount  —  Google has expanded NotebookLM Plus, a paid version of its AI-based note-taking and research assistant, to individual users subscribed …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
The Logic:
Source: Shopify tells support staff to give “no comment” if merchant clients asked about Kanye West using its tech to sell a T-shirt with a Nazi swastika  —  One former Shopify employee told The Logic it was 'heartbreaking to see your life's work perverted by full-on friggin' Nazis'
Bloomberg:
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says DeepSeek's $5.6M training cost claim is “exaggerated and a little bit misleading” and a “fraction of the total cost”  —  DeepSeek Ramps Up Hiring for Arcane AI Field as Ambitions Swell  —  Mistral CEO Plans to Raise More Funds to Back AI Data Center
Matthew Garrahan / Financial Times:
Dan Mangan / CNBC:
An Alabama man pleads guilty in relation to the SIM-swap hack of the US SEC's X account, to falsely claim in January 2024 the agency had approved bitcoin ETFs  —  An Alabama man pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Washington, D.C., in connection with last year's hack of the U.S. Securities …
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Bloomberg:
Sources: on February 7, DOGE staff gained access to all the CFPB's data systems, which hold potentially competitive info that may be useful to X's payments push  —  Government-efficiency team's initial ‘read-only’ access expanded quickly to encompass closely guarded data, internal emails say
Steve Nadis / Quanta Magazine:
In a January paper, three computer scientists presented a faster hash table, one of the oldest data structures, disproving a 40-year-old data science conjecture  —  Together, Krapivin (now a graduate student at the University of Cambridge), Farach-Colton (now at New York University) …

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Scott Rosenberg / Axios:
Liam Dawe / GamingOnLinux:

Earlier Picks

Anna Washenko / Engadget:
Reuters:
Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg: