Techmeme
March 14, 2026, 12:50 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the Trump administration is set to receive a ~$10B fee from investors in TikTok's US business for the government's role in brokering the TikTok US deal  —  Investors in social-media platform's U.S. business, including Oracle and Silver Lake, agreed to give the government several multibillion-dollar payments, sources say
Karandeep Singh Oberoi / Android Police:
Meta says Instagram will no longer support end-to-end encrypted messages starting May 8, saying “very few people” were using E2EE in their DMs  —  Can you imagine a world where WhatsApp stops offering end-to-end encryption (E2EE)?  That's not happening, but a different Meta-owned company …
Financial Times:
Sources: Elon Musk pushed out two more xAI co-founders after getting frustrated with xAI's coding product progress and brought in “fixers” from SpaceX and Tesla  —  Tesla and SpaceX managers sent in to review work as billionaire's start-up struggles to keep pace with rivals
Fred Lambert / Electrek:
Elon Musk says xAI “was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up”  —  Elon Musk admitted today that xAI, his artificial intelligence venture, “was not built right first time around” and “is being rebuilt from the foundations up.”
The Information:
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Travis Kalanick renames CloudKitchens' parent company as Atoms, focused on creating “gainfully employed robots” for the food, mining, and transport industries  —  Uber Technologies Inc. co-founder Travis Kalanick has launched a new venture that will focus on creating …
Jessica E. Lessin / The Information:
Sources: Travis Kalanick prepares to launch a self-driving car company with backing from Uber and has been discussing acquiring Anthony Levandowski's Pronto.ai  —  Former Uber CEO and cofounder Travis Kalanick is preparing to launch a new robotics and self-driving car company with major backing …
Reuters:
Sources: Meta plans sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, amid mounting AI infrastructure costs; it had ~79,000 employees as of Dec. 31  —  Meta (META.O) is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters …
Bloomberg:
$TRUMP memecoin surged as much as 60% after its promoters said it would host a gala luncheon at Mar-a-Lago with Trump; the WH hasn't confirmed his attendance  —  The memecoin bearing Donald Trump's name surged as much as 60% in the last 24 hours after its promoters advertised an exclusive gala …
Elizabeth Chamberlain / iFixit News:
MacBook Neo teardown: most repairable MacBook in ~14 years, with no parts pairing issues, a screwed-down battery, and relatively easy keyboard replacement  —  Is Apple's most affordable laptop ever also one of its most repairable?  For years, opening a MacBook has usually meant fighting your way through glue and buried parts.
Wall Street Journal:
AWS plans to deploy Cerebras' Wafer-Scale Engine chip for AI inference functions; AWS will still offer slower, cheaper computing using its Trainium processors  —  Amazon Web Services says the partnership will allow it to offer lightning-fast inference computing
Anthropic:
Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6 now offer a 1M context window at standard pricing; it is the default for Claude Code Max, Team, and Enterprise users on Opus 4.6  —  Standard pricing now applies across the full 1M window for both models, with no long-context premium.  Media limits expand to 600 images or PDF pages.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Amazon Prime Video plans to raise the price of its ad-free plan, Ultra, to $4.99 per month, and add support for up to five simultaneous streams, from April 10  —  The revamped Prime Video ‘Ultra’ tier will cost $4.99 per month and come with ‘exclusive’ access to 4K streams.

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More News

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Jessica Lyons / The Register:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Sebastian Herrera / Wall Street Journal:
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: