This Week in Tech (Week Ending Sept 19, 2025)
TL;DR - 📉 Rate cuts; 🤓Meta's glasses; 🤝Nvidia and Intel
Hey folks!
Happy Friday! 😎 Tech news below.
TL;DR -
📉The Fed announced the first rate cut in 9 months
🌊Making waves: ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off air "indefinitely" last night in response to monologue comments the late-night host made about Charlie Kirk's assassination.
Apple's iOS 26 with the new Liquid Glass design is now available.
👓 Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta's newest AI-powered smart glasses include a tiny display, and can be controlled by a neural wristband
⭐️Nvidia is investing $5bn in Intel - the companies will jointly develop data-center and personal-computing products
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
📉The Fed announced the first rate cut in 9 months, and signaled more reductions to come. The Fed said its decision was based on the need to support a weakening job market.
👩⚖️The House Oversight Committee has requested that the CEOs of Discord, gaming platform Steam, Twitch, and Reddit testify on October 8th about online radicalization.
📰 American media appears to be steering more conservative. Driving the news: ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off air "indefinitely" last night in response to monologue comments the late-night host made about Charlie Kirk's assassination. Plus: the NYTimes is getting sued by Trump for $15bn
🗓️President Trump suggested earlier this week that U.S. public companies should be required to report earnings on a six-month schedule instead of quarterly. Why it matters: The potential shift could have huge implications for Wall Street, financial markets, traders and companies. Many CEOs would prefer not to deal with analysts and investors four times a year. Public markets could benefit, according to Dimon and Buffett, who argued that the pressure of quarterly earnings discourages firms from going public sooner.
🇨🇳The U.S. and China have reached consensus on TikTok’s U.S. operations that include licensing of ByteDance’s algorithms and other intellectual property rights.
⚱️Gold’s rally: Gold hasn’t rallied this much since 1979 - the run-up to record prices stems in part from the White House, with investors big and small rushing to shield themselves from an uncertain outlook for the U.S. economy and its role in the world.
Your next investment? Pokémon cards are outpacing the S&P 500, with a cumulative return of 3,821% since 2004, compared to the index’s 483%, making them a particularly hot investment for a new generation of traders.
The share of Americans who say college is "very important" has plummeted over the past decade:
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
Apple's iOS 26 with the new Liquid Glass design is now available. Tips from the WSJ on how to use the new iOS - it’s a playfully unhinged review.
👓 Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta's newest AI-powered smart glasses include a tiny display, and can be controlled by a neural wristband using "barely perceptible movements”. Why it matters: The Meta founder, chair and CEO evangelizes glasses as the next step in human-computer interactions — beyond keyboards, touch screens or a mouse.
Google said it would spend 5 billion pounds in the U.K. over the next two years, investing in AI, research and development and related engineering, creating more than 8,000 jobs a year in the U.K.
Youtube announced a number of new tools: YouTube is bringing a custom version of Google's text-to-video generative AI model, Veo 3, to Shorts, along with a new remixing tool, an 'Edit with AI' feature, and more. Youtube also rolled out Studio updates, 'likeness' detection, lip synced dubs, creator collabs and more. Plus: Youtube Live got an update, Youtube Music launched new tools for artists to reward fans.
Several xAI executives left after clashing with two of Elon Musk’s closest advisers over concerns about the startup’s management and financial health.
How Beli ate Yelp: “For Gen Z and young millennials, Beli has quickly become the go-to app for sharing restaurant experiences: over 80% of its users are under 35, and the app has racked up 75 million ratings in just four years, outpacing Yelp’s 52 million over two decades.”
Airbuds, a music social app aimed at Gen Z, raises $5M as the app reaches 5 million monthly users
Elon Musk bought $1 billion worth of Tesla shares on Friday.
Bumble BFF's revamped app introduces a new groups feature to help users connect with new friends beyond one-on-one matching. The app is built on Geneva, the community-focused social platform Bumble acquired last year.
Layoffs: xAI reportedly lays off 500 workers from data annotation team
🤖 AI News
🚺 OpenAI usage: Women are now using ChatGPT slightly more than men, vs the first few weeks after ChatGPT’s release when OpenAI estimated that as many as 80% of users were male. 80% of usage fell into three categories: practical guidance, information search and writing help.
OpenAI said that it would add restrictions to its chatbot for users under 18, such as refusing to flirt or talk about suicide even in hypothetical or creative-writing contexts. If an under-18 user is sharing thoughts of suicide, OpenAI said it will attempt to contact the users’ parents.
Amazon unveiled a range of new artificial intelligence-powered tools for sellers, including a tool that will allow merchants to create ads through a conversational chatbot.
Disney, NBCU, Warner Brothers are suing Chinese AI firm MiniMax. Why it matters: It's the second major AI lawsuit from the firms this year, suggesting Hollywood is starting to take a more aggressive stance in protecting its intellectual property.
“I think it is both true that AI will transform the economy, and I think it will, like the internet, create huge amounts of economic value in the future. I think we’re also in a bubble, and a lot of people will lose a lot of money. I think both are absolutely true at the same time, and there’s a lot of historical precedent for both of those things being true at the same time.” — Bret Taylor, OpenAI board chair
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
Workday announced that it had acquired Sana, a developer of enterprise AI software, for $1.1 billion.
Alden Global increased its takeover offer for Dallas Morning News publisher DallasNews to $20 per share, topping a $16.50-per-share proposal from Hearst.
Apollo Global Management is in talks to possibly sell AOL. Why it matters: AOL still drives hundreds of millions of dollars of free cash flow.
Atlassian acquires DX, a developer productivity platform, for $1B.
Fundraising
If I were a scammer, this is what I’d name my startup: Nothing, a smartphone startup, has raised a $200M Series C to develop AI-first devices. The company plans to expand AI features and build a personalized operating system.
Figure robotics raised more than $1 billion in a Series C round, reaching a $39bn valuation
Invisible Technologies, a data labeling firm, is raising $100 million in funding at a $2 billion-plus valuation
Groq, a chip maker, raised $750 million in new funding at a $6.9 billion post-money valuation
Druid AI, which develops AI assistants to automate tasks for businesses, raised $31 million in a Series C funding round
IPO
Navan, the travel software startup, is planning to make public its initial public offering paperwork later this week.
StubHub, the ticket exchange, raised $800 million in its I.P.O. after pricing its shares at $23.50, in the middle of its expected range. Shares closed at $22 on the first day.
Netskope, a cloud security startup, has priced its planned initial public offering at $19 per share
Partnerships
⭐️Nvidia is investing $5bn in Intel - the companies will jointly develop data-center and personal-computing products
Scale AI has signed a 5-year deal with the Department of Defense worth up to $100 million, starting with a $40.7 million commitment to provide AI data services.
Nvidia agreed to purchase $6.3 billion of cloud computing capacity from CoreWeave, the latest example of the chip company striking a deal to rent its own chips from a third-party cloud business. Under the agreement, Nvidia will purchase cloud capacity that CoreWeave isn’t able to sell to other customers through 2032. Nvidia is also one of CoreWeave’s largest shareholders.
Lyft and Waymo are partnering to bring robotaxis to Nashville.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
RIP Robert Redford, who passed away this week at 89. My fav movie of his: The Sting, with Paul Newman - it’s such a good heist movie!
🎁To gift your daughter / niece: This Lululemon keychain is a must have for teen girls apparently
The Emmys were last weekend:
Let’s start with the losers: which was the Boys and Girls Club of America. Host Nate Bargatze pledged $100,000 to the charity, but deducted $1,000 for every second winners went over their 45-second acceptance speech limit. By night's end, the donation counter had swung into the red (lame!) as winners struggled to squeeze their thank-yous into such a tight window. In the end, CBS and Bargatze made sure the charity still walked away with $350,000.
Best drama: The Pitt - Noah Wyle finally won Lead Actor in a Drama after 7 previous noms.
Best comedy: “The Studio”
Best actress in a drama: Britt Lower, for “Severance.”
Best talk series: “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” which CBS recently canceled.
Best limited series: “Adolescence.”
Platform wins: Netflix and Apple won big with 30 and 22 Emmy wins, beating out HBO
🎶Justin Bieber is headlining Coachella
For those who didn’t get enough: The Summer I turned Pretty is getting its own movie
Finally, a Christmas movie worth watching!
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