OpenAI says “GPT-5.5 matches GPT-5.4 per-token latency in real-world serving, while performing at a much higher level of intelligence”  —  A new class of intelligence for real work  —  We're releasing GPT-5.5, our smartest and most intuitive to use model yet …

Microsoft announces its first voluntary retirement program, for staff whose years of employment and age add up to 70+; source: 7% of US employees are eligible  —  Microsoft will offer voluntary buyouts to some U.S. employee, a first for the 51-year-old software giant, as the tech industry grapples …

Memo: Meta plans to cut 10% of workers, or ~8,000 jobs, on May 20 and won't fill 6,000 open roles, in an effort to offset its AI spending and boost efficiency  —  Meta Platforms Inc. plans to cut 10% of workers, or roughly 8,000 employees, in an effort to boost efficiency and offset its heavy spending on artificial intelligence.

At a town hall, Asha Sharma said Microsoft is returning to using Xbox for its gaming division, instead of Microsoft Gaming, as “Xbox needs to be our identity”  —  Xbox is Microsoft's gaming identity moving forward. … Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy week.

Intel reports Q1 revenue up 7% YoY to $13.58B, vs. $12.42B est., and forecasts Q2 revenue and adjusted EPS above estimates; INTC jumps 15%+ after hours  —  - Intel reported first-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street expectations … Intel reported first-quarter earnings Thursday …

Microsoft says Copilot's agentic features in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are now generally available and enabled by default for 365 Copilot and 365 Premium  —  Try Microsoft 365 Copilot  —  Available on desktop and mobile devices  —  Today, I am excited to share that agentic capabilities in Word …

Sources: Thoma Bravo prepares to hand over customer experience management company Medallia to creditors, leading to a ~$5.1B wipeout for Medallia's investors  —  Private equity firm Thoma Bravo is nearing an agreement to hand over software firm Medallia to its lenders, wrapping up months …

Anthropic says it has fixed three causes of recent Claude Code quality issues: reduced default reasoning, a caching bug, and a system prompt to reduce verbosity  —  We traced recent reports of Claude Code quality issues to three separate changes.  Here's what happened and what we're changing.

Internal memo: Amazon is replacing white-collar job titles at its Ring and Blink units with the designation “builder”, and “builder leaders” for managers  —  During Amazon's (AMZN.O) annual review season now under way, hundreds of employees will see their job titles stripped.

Apple fixes a bug that stored notifications for deleted messages on iPhone and iPad, following a report that police used it to extract deleted Signal messages  —  Apple released a software update on Wednesday for iPhones and iPads fixing a bug that allowed law enforcement to extract messages …

X says it is deprecating X Communities, giving members until May 30 to migrate to XChat, and plans to increase group chat limits to 1,000 in the next two weeks  —  Today we're announcing two product changes for organizing communities on X: 1. XChat now supports joinable links for groupchats. Create a public link & share direct to Timeline. With support for 350 members per chat (and growing), Groupchat Links are the fastest way to bring [image]

Instagram launches Instants, an app for sharing disappearing photos, in Italy and Spain, after rolling out an Instants feature in its main app in some regions  —  - Instagram launched a new app in Italy and Spain this week called “Instants.”  — A hodgepodge of apps like Snapchat, Locket …

SpaceX's S-1 excerpts list “manufacturing our own GPUs” among the “substantial capital expenditures” it is undertaking, with the size of the expenditure TBD  —  SpaceX may be tackling one of the biggest challenges in the chip business: manufacturing the keys …

Around 30K attend a Samsung union rally demanding 15% of operating profits for chip division staff amid the AI boom; the demand totals $27B or $400K+ per worker  —  Tens of thousands of people gathered outside Samsung Electronics Co.'s main chip hub to demand employees get a greater share of profits reaped from the AI boom.

Spotify celebrates its 20th anniversary with a first-ever list of its 20 most streamed artists, albums, songs, podcasts, and audiobooks  —  But who else made the cut? … It was 20 years ago today that Spotify began to play.  And to mark the streaming service's big anniversary …

Anthropic's valuation has hit $1T on Forge Global, a leading private marketplace exchange, surpassing OpenAI's valuation on the platform of $880B  —  - Anthropic's valuation now hovers at $1 trillion on Forge Global, a leading private marketplace exchange.  — That is a higher price than OpenAI …

Memo: White House says it has info indicating “foreign entities, principally based in China” are engaged in “industrial scale distillation” of American AI tech  —  Trump official Michael Kratsios says Chinese entities stealing from American labs

How Cash App founder Bob Lee's 2023 killing fed into a narrative pushed by tech leaders like Elon Musk about SF's decline until an acquaintance was convicted  —  The 2023 murder of a tech executive seemed to fit neatly into narratives about street crime in liberal cities, until it didn't.

Vercel says some customer accounts were compromised prior to its early-April breach, potentially through social engineering, malware, or other methods  —  App and website hosting giant Vercel on Thursdays said hackers had accessed some of its customers' data before the company discovered …

Shenzhen-based Pudu Robotics, which makes commercial service robots, raised ~$150M, bringing its total funding to $300M+, and says its valuation exceeds $1.5B  —  Pudu Technology Inc. today said it has it raised nearly $150 million in a new funding round.  Following this round …

GitHub says it has begun collecting pseudonymous client-side telemetry from command-line interface (CLI) users and enabled it by default  —  Opt-out instructions included if you're not keen on GitHub watching you in the name of product improvement  —  Users of GitHub's command-line interface (CLI) who value privacy, beware.

Music publishers including UMG, Warner Music, and Sony drop a copyright suit against Verizon following a SCOTUS decision limiting ISP liability in Cox's suit  —  Publishers representing the bulk of the music industry dropped a copyright lawsuit against Verizon Communications Inc. over music piracy …

Turkey's parliament passes a bill requiring social media and online game companies to restrict access for children under 15, following a school shooting  —  Turkish lawmakers passed a bill late Wednesday that includes restricting access to social media platforms for children under 15, state media reported.

A poll of 4,000 workers in the US and the UK finds that the highest-earning and most experienced workers are adopting AI in their jobs far faster than others  —  FT-Focaldata poll offers early evidence on how the technology is reshaping work and reinforcing gender and pay gaps

Joint statement: Apple, Amazon, and others push back on stricter emissions reporting rules proposed by climate body Greenhouse Gas Protocol to cut greenwashing  —  The tech giants and dozens more companies are resisting changes proposed by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a global standard-setter.