← Back to news
T

Techmeme

OpenAI partners with Foxconn to design and develop data center server racks to be manufactured in the US; Foxconn will produce cabling, power systems, and more (Bloomberg)

T

Grok's chatbot on X says Elon Musk is superior at almost anything, including drinking urine; Musk says Grok was "manipulated by adversarial prompting" (Adi Robertson/The Verge)

T

A survey of US adults on social media: 84% use YouTube, 71% use Facebook, 50% use Instagram, 37% use TikTok, 32% use WhatsApp, 26% use Reddit, and 21% use X (Pew Research Center)

T

Sources: Google is offering voluntary buyouts to employees in its UK offices, following similar offers in several US divisions this year (Hugh Langley/Business Insider)

T

Source: Kalshi raised $1B led by Sequoia and CapitalG at a $11B valuation, less than two months after it announced a $300M fundraise at a $5B valuation (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

T

Method Security, which specializes in dual-use cyber capabilities, raised $26M across seed and Series A rounds led by a16z and General Catalyst, respectively (Colin Demarest/Axios)

T

OpenAI expands group chats in ChatGPT globally to all logged-in users on Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans, after piloting the feature in select regions (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

T

Profluent, which wants to use AI for protein design in drug discovery, raised $106M led by Bezos Expeditions and Altimeter, bringing its total funding to $150M (Amy Feldman/Forbes)

T

OpenAI says GPT-5 has demonstrated the ability to accelerate scientific research workflows but can't run projects or solve scientific problems autonomously (Radhika Rajkumar/ZDNET)

T

Source: Twenty, which uses AI to help hackers for the US military penetrate adversary computer networks, raised a $38M Series A led by Caffeinated Capital (Margi Murphy/Bloomberg)

T

Allen Institute for AI, or Ai2, unveils Olmo 3 models that it says outperform open models like Stanford's Marin and commercial open-weight models like Llama 3.1 (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)

T

The FCC votes along party lines to repeal a Biden-era cybersecurity rule aimed at preventing intrusions like Salt Typhoon, calling it an ineffective measure (Kelcee Griffis/Bloomberg)

T

Numeric, which automates accounting workflows, raised a $51M Series B led by IVP, bringing its total funding to $89M, and says OpenAI and Brex are clients (Ryan Lawler/Axios)

T

Google updates Quick Share to work with Apple's AirDrop to make file transfers between iPhones and Android devices easier, starting with the Pixel 10 family (The Keyword)

T

Sources: AI robotics startup Physical Intelligence raised $600M led by CapitalG at a $5.6B valuation, with participation from Jeff Bezos, Lux, Thrive, and more (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)

T

Nvidia and Google launch the GeForce Now Fast Pass to let Chromebook owners stream over 2,000 games directly from an existing PC game library without ads (Dominic Preston/The Verge)

T

AI workplace agents startup Genspark raised a $275M Series B at a $1.25B valuation and says it hit $50M in annualized revenue after pivoting from AI search (Anna Tong/Forbes)

T

Nano Banana Pro is great at following instructions, generates interim "thought images", and makes full infographics with well-rendered text from a short prompt (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog)

T

Paradromics says it received FDA approval for a human trial of its Connexus brain implant, aimed at restoring speech to those with severe motor impairments (Emily Mullin/Wired)

T

Stuut, which connects to CRM and other systems to automate management of accounts receivable, raised a $29.5M Series A led by a16z (Charlie Fink/Forbes)

T

AI voice dictation startup Wispr Flow raised $25M led by Notable Capital, after raising a $30M Series A in June, taking its total funding to $81M (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

T

Google says the Gemini app is now able to detect images created or edited by Google AI, and that it plans to roll out verification of video and audio "soon" (Dominic Preston/The Verge)

T

Google launches Gemini 3 Pro Image, aka Nano Banana Pro, with more control, improved text rendering, and enhanced world knowledge, for free in the Gemini app (Abner Li/9to5Google)

T

Sunday Robotics unveils Memo, a fully autonomous home robot capable of tasks like making espresso and loading a dishwasher, and plans to launch in beta in 2026 (Will Knight/Wired)

T

Circana: EA's Battlefield 6 became 2025's best-selling US game less than a month after its October 10 debut; Pokémon is 2025's fastest-selling physical game (Vlad Savov/Bloomberg)

T

IAB: ad spend in the creator ecosystem in 2025 is expected to rise 26% YoY to $37B, or four times faster than ad spend in media overall, set to grow 5.7% YoY (Kayla Cobb/The Wrap)

T

Sources: SoftBank plans to invest up to $3B to remodel an EV plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that will produce equipment for OpenAI's forthcoming US data centers (Sri Muppidi/The Information)

T

The CSA says that Matter 1.5 will add support for video cameras; Samsung has pledged its support, but Amazon and Google have not committed to interoperability (Chris Welch/Bloomberg)

T

Internal memo: Verizon CEO Dan Schulman says the company will begin notifying the 13,000+ employees impacted by its largest-ever round of layoffs (Patience Haggin/Wall Street Journal)

T

Pornhub parent company Aylo sent letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft urging that they adopt device-based age verification across their app stores and OSes (Jason Parham/Wired)

T

Cornell University researchers: Grokipedia cites sources deemed "generally unreliable" or "blacklisted" by Wikipedia, like neo-Nazi sites Stormfront and VDare (David Ingram/NBC News)

T

Investigation: as US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pushes AI data centers, including by pressuring US allies, his companies and sons are profiting from them (New York Times)

T

Uber plans to launch sidewalk robot deliveries in Europe via a partnership with Starship, starting in UK cities Leeds and Sheffield in December (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg)

T

Microsoft and Qualcomm release Windows updates to improve gaming on ARM, including a refreshed Xbox app; Qualcomm's new Snapdragon Control Panel optimizes games (Tom Warren/The Verge)

T

A study of mental health conversations with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Meta AI: they often failed to recognize signs of conditions and offered general advice (Georgia Wells/Wall Street Journal)

T

A Spanish court orders Meta to pay €479M to 87 Spanish digital media outlets for its unfair competition practices and infringing EU data protection regulations (Reuters)

T

Analysis: YouTube's top conservative podcasters drive a boom in host-read ads targeting right-wing audiences; nearly 91% of 876 episodes had political ads (Bloomberg)

T

The US DOE accelerates its approach to equipping national labs with AI supercomputers by working with Nvidia, AMD, and Oracle, which will pay some of the costs (Don Clark/New York Times)

T

Josh Hawley, Ron DeSantis, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and other Republicans publicly oppose President Trump's proposal to restrict US states from regulating AI (Joe Miller/Financial Times)

T

As OpenAI committed to spending ~$1.4T on data centers, it hasn't disclosed its auditor nor used an independent accountant to compile its financial statements (Louis Ashworth/Financial Times)

T

An overview of macro tech trends for 2026, as "AI eats the world": bubbles, the AI platform shift, Big Tech FOMO, capex, Nvidia, US power backlogs, and more (Benedict Evans)

T

Letterboxd plans to launch the Letterboxd Video Store, a curated rental platform with undistributed festival standouts, restorations, and more, in December 2025 (Letterboxd)

T

Sources: Chinese investment firm Capital Today bought ByteDance shares at a $480B valuation after a bidding war; ByteDance had a $330B valuation in September (Dong Cao/Bloomberg)

T

Sources: Salesforce's Slack tells customers in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan that they must migrate their accounts to partner Alibaba before February 2026 (The Information)

T

How AI is pressuring Poland's economy, Europe's top location for global business services, as companies lay off staff in Krakow, the country's hub for BPO jobs (Bloomberg)

T

How scientists are exploring the use of quantum sensors, developed by startups like Q-CTRL, as a secure GPS alternative with military and civilian applications (Mike Cherney/Wall Street Journal)

T

Q&A with former Xbox boss Peter Moore on the Xbox 360 launch, his new book Game Changer, competition with Sony, the origins of the modern console war, and more (Robert Purchese/Eurogamer.net)

T

China's transport, logistics, and ride-hailing sectors are accelerating the mass adoption of autonomous vehicles, threatening the jobs of millions of drivers (Edward White/Financial Times)

T

How the AI Act became a case study for critics who say the EU puts regulation ahead of innovation, as the European Commission postpones a key part of the law (Financial Times)

T

Google DeepMind hires former Boston Dynamics CTO Aaron Saunders as VP of hardware engineering, as Demis Hassabis envisions Gemini to become a sort of robot OS (Will Knight/Wired)

T