Techmeme
March 12, 2025, 12:35 AM

Top News

Emma Roth / The Verge:
OpenAI debuts a Responses API to help devs build agents that search the web, scan for files, and perform tasks on computers, and an Agents SDK for orchestration  —  OpenAI's new Responses API comes with web search, the ability to look through files, and computer use out of the box.
Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Apple MacBook Air M4 review: fast, thin and light, great keyboard and touchpad, and excellent battery life, but could use more ports and only a 60Hz screen  —  No surprises, but a lower $999 entry-level price is welcome.  —  At the risk of repeating myself from Engadget's MacBook Air M1 …
Dave2D on YouTube:
Brandon Hill / Tom's Hardware:
Sam Altman / @sama:
Sam Altman says OpenAI trained an AI model that is good at creative writing and shares a short story it wrote; he's “not sure yet how/when it will get released”  —  we trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). this is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI; it got the vibe of metafiction so right. PROMPT: Please write a metafictional literary short story
Reuters:
Manus partners with Alibaba's Qwen to integrate Manus' AI agent functions with AI models and computing platforms in China and to collaborate on Qwen's AI models  —  China's Manus AI announced on Tuesday a strategic partnership with the team behind tech giant Alibaba's Qwen AI models …
Reuters:
Sources: Meta is testing its first in-house AI training chip and is working with TSMC to produce it, as part of a long-term plan to lower infrastructure costs  —  Facebook owner Meta (META.O) is testing its first in-house chip for training artificial intelligence systems …
The Information:
Source: Anthropic's annualized revenue grew from $1B at the end of 2024 to $1.4B in early March; Manus uses tools including Claude 3.7 Sonnet to power its agent  —  Anthropic's year is off to a good start.  —  Its annualized revenue—a measure of the past month's revenue multiplied by 12 …
David McCabe / New York Times:
The Senate approves Gail Slater, President Trump's pick to lead the DOJ's antitrust unit, by a 78-19 vote; she has been critical of power in the tech industry  —  Slater, a longtime Washington lawyer, has been particularly critical of power in the tech industry.
Stephen Totilo / Game File:
Mike Verdu, who joined Netflix in 2021 to launch its game offering and took on a new role as VP of Generative AI for games four months ago, has left the company  —  Plus: Some key changes for this year's Game Developers Conference  —  Mike Verdu, the executive who led Netflix's foray …
David Latona / Reuters:
Spain's government approves a bill, pending lower house assent, imposing fines of up to €35M or 7% of annual turnover on firms not labeling AI-generated content  —  Spain's government approved a bill on Tuesday imposing massive fines on companies that use content generated by artificial intelligence …
Forums: Slashdot
Riddhi Kanetkar / Business Insider:
OpusClip, which offers a multimodal AI tool to simplify short-form video editing for creators, raised $20M led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 at a $215M valuation  —  - AI startup OpusClip has secured $20 million in funding, led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2.  — The startup uses natural …
More: FinSMEs
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Waymo expands its operating area around Silicon Valley to a 27 square-mile region, including Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos, and parts of Sunnyvale  —  The company is operating in a 27 square-mile service area that includes Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos, and parts of Sunnyvale.
Sam Sabin / Axios:
President Trump nominates Sean Plankey, the director of cyber policy at the White House during the first Trump administration, to run CISA  —  President Trump has nominated Sean Plankey, a veteran cyber official from his first administration, to run the lead U.S. cyber agency, according to a list of nominations sent to Congress.
Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:
Mesh raised an $82M Series B, settled mostly in PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin and led by Paradigm, to expand its stablecoin-based payments settlement network  —  The fundraising was completed using PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin and was led by Paradigm.  —  What to know:
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune:
Cartesia, which is developing real-time generative AI models for voice AI, raised a $64M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins, taking its total funding to $91M  —  Since 1897, Karan Goel's family has been running the same business.  —  “My great-great-grandfather started a manufacturing business back in the day,” said Goel.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Sander Lutz / Decrypt:
Sen. Lummis unveils the Bitcoin Act in the US Senate, with five Republican cosponsors, to codify a strategic Bitcoin reserve and let the US buy up to 1M BTC  —  Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate Tuesday that would authorize the U.S. government to buy …
Reuters:
India's Airtel signs a deal with SpaceX to launch Starlink in the country, subject to Starlink obtaining government approval to begin operations  —  India's Bharti Airtel (BRTI.NS) said on Tuesday it had signed a deal with Elon Musk's SpaceX for the highly anticipated launch …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
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
Zoho:
Recruiters, be that zeroth candidate  —  Welcome again!  Earlier, we looked at how personality assessments are evaluation tools that help look at candidates beyond resumes.  Let's look at how to use …
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.

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