| |  | Aug 25, 2025 | | | | | | Welcome back! Apple is in talks with Google about using Gemini to power an improved version of Siri. Meta Platforms and Midjourney announce a partnership. President Donald Trump announces that the U.S. will take a 10% stake in Intel.
| | | | Apple is in discussions with Google about using its Gemini artificial intelligence model to power an improved version of Siri. Google has begun training an AI model that could run on Apple's servers, Bloomberg reported. The Information previously reported that Apple was evaluating outside models from Google, along with OpenAI and Anthropic, to power a new version of Siri. The company's efforts to revamp Siri have been plagued by setbacks, which forced Apple to delay the release of the new assistant earlier this year. The problems also prompted it to reorganize the group overseeing Siri. Apple is several weeks away from deciding whether or not to outsource the AI model for an overhauled Siri, according to Bloomberg. | | | | Meta Platforms and Midjourney, a startup that develops artificial intelligence models for generating images and videos, on Friday announced a partnership. As part of the arrangement, Meta will license Midjourney's technology for its future models and products, Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang said in a post on X. "This technical collaboration between our research teams is part of our effort to team up with the best companies in the industry whose work and expertise complements our own," Wang said on X. Meta in recent months has pursued acquisitions, partnerships and licensing deals with other startups working on AI-generated video, The Information previously reported. Those startups include Runway, Pika and Higgsfield. Midjourney, which was founded in 2021 by David Holz, has no outside investors and makes money through subscriptions to its image and video generators. Its advisors include former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, who now leads AI products and applied research at Meta, according to its website. | | | | President Donald Trump and Intel said Friday that the U.S. would take a 10% in the company at a slight discount to its recent share price, becoming the struggling chipmaker's largest shareholder. The U.S. is making the $9 billion investment by converting funds that Intel would have received from the Biden Administration's Chips Act designed to encourage domestic semiconductor production. The government is receiving 433.3 million shares of non-voting stock at $20.47 each, which is less than Friday's closing price of $24.80 and the $23 per share SoftBank paid when it recently bought a $2 billion stake in the company. The investment reflects a remarkable recovery in the relationship between the Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Trump, who had recently said Tan should be fired for alleged ties to China. But after the executive visited the White House last week, Trump changed his views. On Friday he called Tan a "highly respected" CEO. "This is a great Deal for America and, also, a great Deal for INTEL," said Trump in a post on Truth Social. The U.S. government has rarely bought shares of private companies, though the Obama Administration took a a majority stake in GM to help save the automaker during the 2007 to 2008 financial crisis. | | | | Snap, the parent of social media app Snapchat, is discussing raising money from outside investors for its augmented reality glasses, known as Spectacles, The Information reported Friday. It hasn't started the formal fundraising process yet but Snap may tap sovereign wealth funds with which it already has existing relationships for the outside capital. The company has even discussed spinning off Spectacles, which Snap began developing in 2014. Such an extreme response could complicate its social media business, which uses the augmented reality technology powering Spectacles. These discussions come as competition heats up among big tech players—including Meta, Google and Samsung—looking to win over the nascent smart glasses market. Raising outside money would help plug a huge resources gap between Snap and its competitors. At the same time, senior leaders at Snap are worried about an emerging trend: Snap's youngest users don't seem to be adopting the app in the same way as previous generations. | | | | Cloud security firm Netskope, the latest enterprise software firm to prepare a public offering, showed sales that grew 31% to $171 million in the quarter that ended in July. The newly unveiled IPO filing showed a net loss of $90 million in the same quarter. The company, founded in 2012, spends about half of the revenue it generates on sales and marketing. Its largest investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Iconiq Capital and Accel, the filing shows. Netskope competes with Broadcom, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler. It was last valued at $7.5 billion in 2021 and later raised convertible debt. | | | | The European Union is speeding up plans for a digital euro, ramping up the push following the passage of stablecoin legislation in the U.S., the Financial Times reported. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged to a traditional currency, in most cases the U.S. dollar, and backed by assets such as government bonds. The EU doesn't want the dollar to dominate the stablecoin market. Discussions in Europe are centered on putting a digital euro on a public blockchain like solana or ethereum, rather than a private one, which had been considered due to privacy concerns, the FT reported. Stablecoins already use these two public blockchains. A digital euro could be used across the continent to speed transactions and promote the use of the currency globally. It could also be used for trade outside of the eurozone, which the dollar already dominates. | | | | OnlyFans' revenue is still growing, but not at the same rapid pace as recent years. Revenue rose 9% to $1.4 billion for the year ending in November 2024 compared to the prior year, according to a U.K. filing from the adult content site's parent company, Fenix International, on Friday. In the prior fiscal year, revenue rose about 20% year over year, and revenue soared 160% in 2021, driven by lockdowns during the pandemic. The number of creator accounts increased 13% to 4.6 million in the year ended November 2024, while the number of fan accounts rose by 24% to 377.5 million. Fenix is reportedly in discussions to sell the subscription platform to an investor group at a valuation of about $8 billion. The startup is continuing to try to broaden its focus beyond pornography, including through a streaming app called OFTV that doesn't include explicit videos, which CEO Keily Blair said "has opened new avenues for growth and audience engagement." OnlyFans' owner Leonid Radvinsky earned $701 million in dividends last year. | | | | TikTok is planning to lay off hundreds of staff in London working on content moderation and security as it outsources more of these efforts to artificial intelligence, The Financial Times reported. U.K. employees in the ByteDance-owned company's trust and safety department received an email on Friday morning saying it is "considering that moderation and quality assurance work would no longer be carried out at our London site" as it looks to automate more of that work using artificial intelligence. Earlier this month, TikTok employees in Germany went on strike over mass layoffs on the company's trust and safety team. TikTok is planning to shut down its content moderation team in Berlin and outsource the work to AI and contractors, The Guardian reported. These moves join other cuts earlier this year, including multiple rounds in its TikTok Shop division and other trust and safety roles globally. "We are continuing a reorganisation that we started last year," a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement, adding that this includes "concentrating our operations in fewer locations globally to ensure that we maximize effectiveness." | | | Popular articles By Natasha Mascarenhas, Kalley Huang and Valida Pau
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