Techmeme
February 11, 2025, 12:00 PM

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 …
More: New York Times, Forbes, eWeek, Livemint, The Information, The Hill, CNN, Deadline, The Wrap, New Jersey Online, Music Ally, BBC, MacRumors, Variety, Taipei Times, Quartz, UnHerd, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, Axios, Reason, Engadget, Tom's Hardware, The Decoder, Financial Times, Benzinga, Maginative, Fortune, El País, Gizmodo, New York Magazine, Tech Funding News, TESLARATI, Tech.co, Silicon Republic, Nairametrics, Moneycontrol, Verdict, ITPro, BetaNews, The Independent, Euractiv, Blockonomi, PetaPixel, Android Headlines, CryptoSlate, Computerworld, TechSpot, Wall Street Pit, Digital Music News, TechRadar, Le Monde, NBC News, Digit, and PhoneArena
The Hill:
In response to Elon Musk's $97.4B OpenAI bid, Sam Altman says on X “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want”; Musk replies “swindler”  —  OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman appeared to shut down a reported offer from an investor group led …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Sam Altman says “OpenAI is not for sale” and “OpenAI's mission is not for sale”, especially to “a competitor who is not able to beat us in the market”  —  - “OpenAI is not for sale. … - Altman said the board has not determined a valuation for OpenAI's operations yet …
Wall Street Journal:
Reuters:
Paris AI summit: US VP JD Vance warns the EU that excessive AI regulation could strangle the tech and rejects content moderation as “authoritarian censorship”  —  U.S. Vice President JD Vance warned Europeans on Tuesday that what he called their excessive regulation …
Liv McMahon / BBC:
The US and the UK refuse to join France, China, India, and 57 other countries in signing the international agreement in Paris promoting “transparent”, “safe” AI  —  The UK and US have not signed an international agreement on artificial intelligence (AI) at a global summit in Paris.
Wall Street Journal:
AI Action Summit in Paris: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the EU plans to mobilize €200B to invest in AI to catch the US and China  —  The announcement underscores efforts from the EU to position itself as a key player in the AI race
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google says it removed Calendar's Pride Month, Black History Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and more events in 2024 for not being “scalable or sustainable”  —  Google says it switched to only showing default entries for public holidays and national observances last year.
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Annual letter: YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says TV has overtaken mobile as the “primary device for YouTube viewing in the US”, indicating YouTube is “the new TV”  —  YouTube CEO Neal Mohan released his annual letter Tuesday morning, outlining his priorities for the video platform.
Gloria Li / Financial Times:
Chinese EV maker BYD unveils a “God's Eye” self-driving system and aims to install it on its entire lineup, including its ~$9,600 Seagull hatchback  —  Tesla rival will equip hatchback on sale for less than $10,000 with features usually found only on upscale vehicles
Patrick Smith / NBC News:
Shopify shutters Ye's store, which began selling swastika shirts before a Super Bowl ad boosted traffic to the site, saying it violated Shopify's ToS  —  Shopify said in a statement: “This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify.”
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple debuts the $250 Powerbeats Pro 2 with heart rate monitoring, an H2 chip, ANC, better water resistance, and 20% lighter design than the previous generation  —  Apple's Beats brand is officially introducing the Powerbeats Pro 2 today, bringing significant updates to the wireless earphones aimed at active users.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
The US, the UK, and Australia sanction Russia-based bulletproof hosting provider Zservers and two Russian nationals for supplying the LockBit ransomware gang  —  The United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom have sanctioned Zservers, a Russia-based bulletproof hosting (BPH) …
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) …
Anthony Capaccio / Bloomberg:
Anduril plans to assume management and eventual manufacturing of the US Army's infantry goggles from Microsoft, in an up to $20B deal that the Army must approve  —  It expands the previously announced role of the defense technology startup in a project that could be valued at more than $20 billion …
More: Axios

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Google:
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UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
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Earlier Picks

Dan Mangan / CNBC:
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Scott Rosenberg / Axios:
Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg: