Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise
Techmeme
February 15, 2025, 1:15 AM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Get our daily newsletter and never miss a story!   ⓧ Newsletter

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 …
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.
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 …
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Tether acquires a minority stake in the iconic Italian football club Juventus, as part of a broader push to integrate digital assets into sports franchises  —  Tether Holdings SA de CV said it's acquired a minority stake in Juventus Football Club SpA, as one of crypto's most valuable companies continues …
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.
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 …
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 …
Hugh Son / CNBC:
Zelle's payment volume crossed $1T in 2024, the most ever for a P2P platform, user base jumped 12% YoY to 151M accounts, and the total dollars sent grew 27% YoY  —  Zelle, the payments network run by banks-owned Early Warning Services, crossed $1 trillion in total volumes last year …
Lauren Faith Lau / Bloomberg:
DeepSeek's rise has turned the spotlight on its hometown, Hangzhou, the capital of the Zhejiang province, which has earmarked ~$13.7B to fund tech companies  —  Plus: The struggle over improving 7-Eleven, and how Silicon Valley swung to Trump. … There's Shenzhen, whose designation …
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.

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
Are you ready for the era of agentic AI?  —  Tech leaders are always talking about what's next, and right now, agentic AI is dominating the discourse.  Equip yourself with the info you need in this recorded webinar.
Tribe AI:
State of AI: Adoption, Challenges and Recommendations  —  Examining the current state of AI, the key challenges organizations face, and practical recommendations for utilizing AI integration alongside other best practices.
Zoho:
Unveiling AI-powered updates in Zoho Sheet  —  In 2024, we, the Zoho Sheet team, dedicated ourselves to research and development in order to introduce new features that enhance productivity, data management, collaboration, and other functionalities.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
 Why COULDN'T Apple Make An iPhone In The US?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Sponsor this podcast
The Logan Bartlett Show:
 Derek Thompson (Writer, The Atlantic) and Zach Weinberg (Co-founder & CEO, Curie.Bio) Discuss the Tariff Withdrawal and America's Future
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Hard Fork:
 Big Tech's Tariff Chaos + A.I. 2027 + Llama Drama
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
 The bull case for domestic manufacturing
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
 Why DOGE is killing the agency that keeps banks from ripping you off
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Lenny's Podcast:
 OpenAI's CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Add your postcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:15 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

Elsa Keslassy / Variety:
Netflix files an appeal to France's Council of State over the windowing rules that force the streamer to wait 15 months to access newly released films

Katcy Stephan / Variety:
The Academy adds an Oscar award for achievement in stunt design, beginning with the 100th Academy Awards in 2028 for films released in 2027

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

Jaspreet Singh / Reuters:
Filing: Nvidia cut its Arm stake by 43.8% to 1.1M shares in Q4, valuing its remaining shares at ~$181M as of February 13, and discloses 1.7M shares in WeRide
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
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
Reuters:
Sources: the White House plans to renegotiate some Chips Act awards after changing current requirements, and has signaled delays to some upcoming disbursements
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
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter