Techmeme
January 28, 2025, 1:05 PM

Top News

Vlad Savov / Bloomberg:
Sam Altman says DeepSeek's R1 is an “impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price” and OpenAI “will pull up some releases”  —  OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman welcomed the debut of DeepSeek's R1 model in a post on X late on Monday.
@yishan:
The “DeepSeek moment” is like in 2004 when Google detailed using distributed algorithms to build a supercomputer, and unlike Sputnik, when Russia shared little  —  I think the Deepseek moment is not really the Sputnik moment, but more like the Google moment. If anyone was around in ~2004, you'll know what I mean, but more on that later. I think everyone is over-rotated on this because Deepseek came out of China. Let me try to un-rotate
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Financial Times:
Hayden Field / CNBC:
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Gov, built for US government use, and says 90K+ government employees have generated 18M+ prompts within ChatGPT since the start of 2024  —  OpenAI on Tuesday announced its biggest product launch since its enterprise rollout.  It's called ChatGPT Gov and was built specifically for U.S. government use.
Hugh Son / CNBC:
X announces X Money Account, a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments service with Visa as its launch partner, debuting “later this year”  —  Elon Musk's social media platform X on Tuesday announced the launch of a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments services provided by Visa.
Bloomberg:
Wired:
DeepSeek's privacy policy shows broad data collection and says content that users give to its models, like text, audio, and files, is stored on servers in China  —  Amid ongoing fears over TikTok, Chinese generative AI platform DeepSeek says it's sending heaps of US user data straight to its home country …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Bloomberg:
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Google says it will change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America on Maps when “official government sources” are updated, after Trump signed an EO changing the name  —  Google said Monday it will change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” in Google Maps …
Bloomberg:
When asked if Microsoft is in discussions to acquire TikTok US from ByteDance, Donald Trump told reporters “I would say yes”; Microsoft declined to comment  —  “I would say yes,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked if Microsoft is in discussions to purchase the app.
Bloomberg:
The UK CMA provisionally finds that competition in the cloud services market isn't working for consumers; AWS and Azure each control ~40% of the UK market  —  - CMA publishes provisional views in cloud services study  — Intervention comes as UK government seeks to spur growth
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Nvidia's stock fell 16.86% on January 27, closing at $118.58, losing nearly $600B in market cap, more than twice what any US company has lost in a single day  —  Nvidia lost close to $600 billion in market cap on Monday, the biggest drop for any company on a single day in U.S. history.
Reece Rogers / Wired:
Hands-on with DeepSeek's free chatbot: the R1 model is powerful, but suffers from rampant hallucinations and lacks some ChatGPT tools like the memory feature  —  DeekSeek's chatbot with the R1 model is a stunning release from the Chinese startup.  While it's an innovation in training efficiency, hallucinations still run rampant.
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Google open sources PebbleOS, paving the way for new third-party hardware; Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky aims to develop a new smartwatch, without VC funding  —  Four years after launching the (then) most lucrative crowdfunding campaign in Kickstarter's history, Pebble abruptly ended.
Marques Brownlee / Marques Brownlee on YouTube:
Hands-on with Samsung's Project Moohan headset: resembles the Apple Vision Pro, Gemini integration shines, runs Android XR with mobile and tablet apps, and more  —  The Android XR headset with Gemini has some surprisingly cool features that we'll start to see everywhere.Head to BestBuy to get the latest VR or AR tech in-...
Jem Aswad / Variety:
Spotify says it paid out a record $10B to the music industry in 2024, up from a then-record $9B in 2023, taking its total to nearly $60B since its 2006 founding  —  Spotify paid out $10 billion to the music industry in 2024 — some $1 billion more than last year, the previous record …

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Earlier Picks

Benjamin Breen / Res Obscura:
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Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Bloomberg:
Kif Leswing / CNBC: