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February 15, 2025, 12:00 AM
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Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Meta plans major investment in AI-powered humanoid robots, with an initial focus on household chores, and has formed a new team within Reality Labs  —  - Company is aiming to be the engine powering humanoid market  — Ex-Cruise CEO Marc Whitten to run new group in Reality Labs
New York Times:
OpenAI's board rejects the $97.4B bid by Elon Musk and a consortium of investors, saying they reject “Musk's latest attempt to disrupt his competition”  —  Bret Taylor, the chairman of OpenAI's board, said the artificial intelligence company was “not for sale.”
Bloomberg:
Source: TSMC is considering taking a controlling stake and fully running Intel's US factories after a Trump team request, as Trump aims to boost manufacturing  —  - TSMC would take controlling stake in potential partnership  — Administration aims to boost manufacturing of advanced chips
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Sources: Dell nears a $5B deal to provide servers with Nvidia's GB200 chips for xAI's supercomputer project in Memphis  —  - Musk's AI startup developing supercomputer project in Memphis  — Dell working to win large share of xAI's Memphis build-out  —  Dell Technologies Inc …
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Perplexity releases Deep Research, offering five queries daily to free users and 500 to subscribers, available now on the web and soon on iOS, Android, and Mac  —  Perplexity shattered the artificial intelligence market's status quo today by launching Deep Research, a tool …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's overhaul of Siri faces engineering problems and software bugs; some features, planned for April, may have to be postponed until May or later  —  - Software's makeover is key to Apple Intelligence ambitions  — New Siri features slated for April at risk of being postponed
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Meta announces Project Waterworth, a subsea cable project that will span over 50,000 km and connect five continents  —  Back in November, we broke the news that Meta — owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with billions of users accounting for 10% of all fixed and 22% of all mobile traffic …
Eric Geller / Wired:
Memo: CISA halts election security work and reviews related activities conducted since 2017, to comply with Trump's January 20 EO on “ending federal censorship”  —  The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has frozen efforts to aid states in securing elections, according to an internal memo viewed by WIRED
Scharon Harding / Ars Technica:
In an AMA, Steve Huffman says Reddit is planning to roll out paid subreddits in 2025 and is “laying the foundation” to monetize commerce within subreddits  —  Huffman previously showed interest in potentially introducing a new type of subreddit with “exclusive content or private areas” that Reddit users would pay to access.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Instagram is testing a dislike button for comments; Instagram will not show a dislike count and dislikes may eventually count toward ranking comments  —  After users noticed a new button on Instagram to downvote or dislike comments, the company confirmed that it is testing a way for users …
Bloomberg:
Sources: humanoid robot startup Figure is in talks to raise $1.5B led by Align Ventures and Parkway VC at a $39.5B valuation, up from $2.6B in February 2024  —  Backed by OpenAI and Microsoft, Figure is discussing a $1.5 billion funding round. … The deal is set to be led by Align Ventures …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Mastodon is working on a quote posts feature, which it says is a “source of concern” for some and “highly requested” by others  —  Mastodon, the decentralized alternative to X, is going to adopt a controversial feature from the platform formerly known as Twitter: quote posts.
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
The doge.gov website tracking Elon Musk's cuts to the federal government pulls from a database that anyone can edit, say two sources who found the vulnerability  —  The doge.gov website that was spun up to track Elon Musk's cuts to the federal government is insecure and pulls from a database …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:00 AM ET, February 15, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Harshita Mary Varghese / Reuters:
Warner Bros. Discovery says John Malone is not seeking re-election to the board of directors and will instead take on the role of chairman emeritus

Natalie Korach / Vanity Fair:
Q&A with Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway on covering Trump's tariffs; their Odd Lots newsletter saw sign-ups jump 142% in April vs. March average

Julian Clover / Broadband TV News:
A group of current and former BBC World Service journalists warn that cuts to the international service risk fracturing “the core identity of the World Service”

More News

Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
DOGE's Tom Krause, the US Treasury's new Fiscal Assistant Secretary, is still the CEO of Cloud Software Group; critics say it may be a conflict of interest
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Sources: around 20 technologists at CFPB were fired on Thursday, gutting a team that specialized in understanding Big Tech's entrance into financial products

Earlier Picks

Sophie McEvoy / GamesIndustry.biz:
Ubisoft reports revenue for the nine months ending December 31, 2024, down 31.4% YoY to €990M, net booking down 34.8% to €944M, but remains optimistic about Q4
Tom Bristow / Politico:
The UK recasting its AI Safety Institute as an AI Security Institute, without bias concerns, followed JD Vance's speech criticizing “hand-wringing about safety”
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Sources: Mark Zuckerberg cozying up to President Trump has made employees uncertain and is part of an effort to shift antitrust scrutiny off Meta and onto Apple
Reuters:
Sources: the White House plans to renegotiate some Chips Act awards after changing current requirements, and has signaled delays to some upcoming disbursements
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple and Google restore TikTok to their US app stores after its January 18 removal, following Trump admin assurances that a ban won't immediately be enforced
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Tim Cook teases an announcement of “the newest member of the family” on February 19; Mark Gurman reported Apple would update the iPhone SE
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