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February 14, 2025, 6:50 PM
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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
Cade Metz / 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.”
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 …
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
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 …
Bloomberg:
Source: TSMC is considering taking a controlling stake in Intel's factories at the request of Trump's team; it is unclear whether Intel is open to a transaction  —  - TSMC would take controlling stake in potential partnership  — Administration aims to boost manufacturing of advanced chips
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 …
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 …
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.
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  —  The terminations leave a gaping hole in the oversight of financial institutions and tech firms venturing into financial technology.
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  —  Firm also experienced a 51.8% drop in net bookings during its third quarter  —  Ubisoft has released its financial results …
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  —  An email sent to workers at the US Treasury Department's Bureau of the Fiscal Service said DOGE's Tom Krause is “currently” the CEO of the Cloud Software Group.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
The UK renames its AI Safety Institute to AI Security Institute, in a pivot to cybersecurity, and is exploring ways to use Anthropic's Claude in public services

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:50 PM ET, February 14, 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

Associated Press:
President Trump signed an EO on May 1 instructing CPB and other agencies to cut federal funding for NPR and PBS, alleging “bias” in the broadcasters' reporting

Washington Post:
After VOA director said staff can begin a “phased return”, an appeals court stays the preliminary injunction that allowed VOA and USAGM staffers to go back

Sean Burch / The Wrap:
The LA Times Guild says 14 of its members have been laid off, or 6% of its newsroom staff, the third round of newsroom layoffs at LAT in as many years

More News

Reuters:
Sources: the White House plans to renegotiate some Chips Act awards after changing current requirements, and has signaled delays to some upcoming disbursements

Earlier Picks

Paayal Zaveri / Bloomberg:
Eudia, which provides in-house legal teams with AI agents and other tools for common tasks, exits stealth with an up to $105M Series A led by General Catalyst
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to launch its AI features in China as early as May 2025, using its own on-device models and Alibaba software to censor or filter the output
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google's Gemini can now recall and “reference past chats for more tailored help”, rolling out in English for Advanced subscribers on the web and in the app
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
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
YouTube updates Shorts to integrate Google DeepMind's latest video model Veo 2, letting creators generate AI video clips to add to any of their Shorts
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