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Jun 17, 2025
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Happy Tuesday! The head of engineering for Google’s Gemini chatbot is leaving the company. WhatsApp will start showing ads for the first time in the coming months. OpenAI inks a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense.
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The head of engineering for Google’s Gemini chatbot, Amar Subramanya, is leaving the company, employees were told in a reorganization announced last week. Separately, Mat Velloso, the head of product for Google DeepMind’s AI developer platform, has also left Google, a Google spokesperson confirmed. Some teams that previously reported to Subramanya, including model training, data and evaluation infrastructure, compliance, and core infrastructure for the Gemini app, are now moving into the core generative AI group within Google DeepMind, the spokesperson said. Google is reorganizing the structure of its Gemini app team as it attempts to move faster, according to the spokesperson. While usage of Google’s Gemini chatbot has grown dramatically over the past six months to 35 million daily active users and 350 million
monthly active users as of March, it was still trailing ChatGPT, according to internal Google documents revealed in court. In April, Google replaced the team’s head, Sissie Hsiao, with Josh Woodward, the Google executive responsible for AI products like the NotebookLM research tool. Subramanya previously worked closely with Hsiao.
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WhatsApp will start showing ads and offering paid subscriptions in the coming months, Meta Platforms, its parent company, said in a blog post on Monday. These moves will open a new revenue stream for Meta. The ads will appear in a section of the app called updates, which is separate from a user’s private messages. About 1.5 billion people use that section daily, Meta said on Monday. Advertisers will also be able to offer monthly subscriptions to their channel on WhatsApp, where users such as brands, influencers and politicians
can share content with an unlimited number of people. They can also pay to promote their channel, so it is more prominently placed in the updates section. Meta will collect some data on its users to target ads on WhatsApp, including their location and language, but it will not use people’s private messages, the company said on Monday.
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The Department of Defense has awarded OpenAI a $200 million contract to develop AI that addresses “national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” the agency said in a press release. This is OpenAI’s first defense technology contract and the latest sign of deepening ties between tech companies and the U.S. government. The Department of Defense didn’t elaborate on how OpenAI will help it with “warfighting,” but the startup’s policies prohibit its technology from being used to build weapons. OpenAI explained in a blog post that it will be helping the Pentagon bolster its cybersecurity and administrative systems for service members. OpenAI in January 2024 removed a previous ban on using its AI for any military or warfare-related applications, and last December said it would team up with defense technology startup Anduril to jointly
develop AI for U.S. anti-drone systems. Last week, OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil and Bob McGrew, a former OpenAI chief research officer, announced they would join other technology industry executives to help the U.S. Army’s upgrade its technology systems.
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Before the Trump administration’s recent trade talks with Chinese officials in London, U.S. Commerce Department officials weighed new technology export restrictions against China, the Wall Street Journal reported. The officials ultimately didn’t announce the tougher restrictions after the U.S. and China agreed on a plan to get trade negotiations back on track. But if tensions between Washington and Beijing escalate again, U.S. officials could revisit the idea of the restrictions. Before the talks, U.S. officials considered broadening the scope of existing U.S. restrictions on sales of chip-manufacturing equipment to China, according to the newspaper. Such a move would have limited the export of equipment not only for advanced chips but also for more ordinary chips. The officials discussed the possibility of tougher restrictions as an option if the trade talks in London hadn’t gone well, according to the newspaper.
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Crypto billionaire Justin Sun’s Tron is set to go public in the U.S. through a reverse merger with Nasdaq-listed SRM Entertainment, The Financial Times reported. SRM Entertainment, a small Nasdaq-listed toy maker, said it entered an agreement to receive $100 million equity investment from an affiliate of Sun that will be used to acquire Tron’s TRX tokens. The company will also be renamed to Tron Inc., and Sun will join as an advisor. Shares of the company jumped 457% on the news, giving it a $140 million market cap. After Donald Trump’s election, Sun has closely aligned himself with the Trump family. He became a major investor and advisor of Trump’s crypto project World Liberty Financial. In February, the SEC halted its 2023 lawsuit against Sun and his companies, in which the SEC alleged they sold unregistered securities including TRX and manipulated the market. Sun also bought Trump memecoins and attended a dinner with Trump in May as a top holder. SRM’s transaction with Tron was advised by Dominari Securities, an investment bank that added Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump to its advisory board in February. Tron is the most popular blockchain for crypto transactions using stablecoin Tether. Last year, TRON, Tether and TRM Labs announced they are partnering up to combat illicit activity associated with the use of tether on the
Tron blockchain.
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By Miles Kruppa and Catherine Perloff
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