Techmeme
January 30, 2025, 2:55 PM

Top News

Financial Times:
Sources: SoftBank is in talks to invest $15B to $25B in OpenAI on top of its $15B+ commitment to Stargate; the deal would make SoftBank OpenAI's biggest backer  —  Deal would make Japanese group biggest financial backer in ChatGPT maker  —  SoftBank is in talks to invest as much as $25bn into OpenAI …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils Intel-powered Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 for businesses, both Copilot+ PCs, starting at $1,500, or $500 more than Qualcomm variants  —  Along with a new USB 4 dock, the Surface devices are designed for businesses.  —  Along with a new USB 4 dock, the Surface devices are designed for businesses.
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to make Facebook “way more culturally influential than it is today” and he is focused on returning to “OG Facebook” in 2025  —  Yesterday Meta reported its quarterly earnings, and amid sharing updates on Threads, Instagram, and yes …
Meta:
Charles Rollet / TechCrunch:
Wired:
Wiz: DeepSeek left one of its critical databases exposed, leaking more than 1M records including system logs, user prompt submissions, and users' API keys  —  China-based DeepSeek has exploded in popularity, drawing greater scrutiny.  Case in point: Security researchers found more than 1 million records …
New York Times:
Elon Musk is using the same tactics he used during his Twitter takeover at DOGE, including offering exits to federal employees and testing engineering prowess  —  Federal agencies have offered exits to millions of employees and tested the prowess of engineers — just like when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
More: Gizmodo and Wired
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Europol and German law enforcement arrest two suspects and seize 17 servers to take down Cracked and Nulled, two of the largest hacking forums with 10M+ users  —  Europol and German law enforcement confirmed the arrest of two suspects and the seizure of 17 servers in Operation Talent …
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Vodafone makes “the world's first” satellite video call using a standard smartphone via SpaceMobile satellites; the service is set to launch in Europe in 2025  —  It's partnered with Starlink rival AST SpaceMobile on a direct-to-smartphone satellite service it plans to launch in Europe later this year.
Bloomberg:
The US DOJ sues to block HPE's $14B acquisition of Juniper Networks, arguing the deal would harm competition in the enterprise wireless equipment  —  - Justice Department files complaint in California federal court  — Company executives met with DOJ to discuss concerns this week
Bloomberg:
Sources: bankers trying to offload ~$3B in X debt claim X had $1.2B in adjusted EBITDA in 2024, roughly flat from before Elon Musk's buyout, a sign of recovery  —  Investors are starting to get their most complete look yet at the financial picture of social media platform X in the chaotic three years since its buyout by Elon Musk.
Mistral AI:
Mistral launches Small 3, a latency-optimized 24B-parameter model that it says is competitive with larger models such as Llama 3.3 70B or Qwen 32B  —  Apache 2.0, 81% MMLU, 150 tokens/s  —  Today we're introducing Mistral Small 3, a latency-optimized 24B-parameter model released under the Apache 2.0 license.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
TechCrunch:
AI audio startup ElevenLabs raised a $180M Series C co-led by a16z and ICONIQ Growth at a $3.3B post-money valuation, taking its total funding to $281M  —  ElevenLabs, one of the more popular startups working in the field AI audio, said Thursday that it has raised a Series C round of $180 million …

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