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Jun 26, 2025
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Happy Thursday! What to do if OpenAI achieves artificial general intelligence is a point of contention between the startup and Microsoft. Meta wins an AI copyright lawsuit against authors. Bumble cuts 30% of its staff.
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As OpenAI seeks Microsoft’s approval to restructure the startup’s for-profit unit so it can go public, the companies have discussed changes to clauses in their contract that would limit Microsoft’s exclusive access to OpenAI’s technology after the startup achieves what it calls artificial general intelligence, or AI on par with humans, The Information reported Wednesday. The companies’ current contract—which they signed in 2022 when Microsoft committed $10 billion to OpenAI—stipulates that OpenAI’s nonprofit board can determine that the startup has
achieved AGI. At that point, Microsoft would lose access to OpenAI’s most advanced technology. And if the board determines that the AGI “has the capability to generate” upwards of $130 billion in profits, Microsoft would lose its exclusive rights to use and sell any OpenAI’s technology, though Microsoft can contest the board’s decision and review it with outside financial experts. As the restructuring-related talks with Microsoft stalled, OpenAI has in recent months implied it could soon declare AGI. Microsoft executives have disagreed that the company is close to that point.
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Meta did not violate copyright law by training its Llama language models on copyrighted books, a U.S. district court for Northern California ruled Wednesday. Authors including Richard Kadrey, Ta-Nehisi Coates and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee had sued Meta for downloading their books and using them to train Llama. They argued that this violated copyright laws since Llama can reproduce sections of text from their books and Meta did not pay them to license their books. “Both of these arguments are clear losers,” wrote Judge Vince Chhabria. “Llama is not capable of generating enough text from the plaintiffs’ books to matter, and the plaintiffs are not entitled to the market for licensing their works as AI training data.” The stronger argument would
have been that Llama might flood the market with similar books, competing for the authors’ market share, but the authors failed to make this argument, wrote Chhabria. As a result, the scope of the court’s ruling is narrow, he concluded. It does not mean Meta’s use of copyrighted materials is legal, and the company is not off the hook for legal claims by other authors whose books contributed to training Llama models. The decision follows a ruling by a different judge in the same federal court earlier this week that Anthropic’s use of copyrighted books to train
its AI models was fair use. While Judge Chhabria reached a similar conclusion, he disagreed with the reasoning behind the Anthropic decision, writing that even if an LLM “transforms” the copyrighted book during training, that doesn’t excuse diluting the author’s market. A hearing is scheduled for July 11 to discuss a separate claim in the Meta case that the company unlawfully distributed the books when it downloaded them.
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Bumble said it would lay off 30% of its workforce as returning CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd tries to turn the dating app around. Bumble shares were up more than 20% Wednesday following the announcement. The cuts will impact around 240 roles, according to a securities filing, saving roughly $40 million per year. Bumble has struggled to navigate slowing growth following its 2021 initial public offering as interest from younger users has waned. Wolfe Herd, who founded the company in 2014, stepped down as CEO in 2024 hiring former Slack executive Lidiane Jones as her replacement. But Jones only lasted about a year in the role, and Wolfe Herd returned earlier this year. Bumble’s revenue dropped 7% in the first quarter from the same period a year earlier to $247.1 million.
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Only 17% of Americans said they had paid for news, either through subscribing or donating money, according to a survey by Pew Research Center. In other words, 83% of Americans said they had not paid for news in the past year. Most news outlets now have paywalls that require readers to pay to read a full artivcle. But only 1% of those surveyed said they pay for access when they encounter a paywall. More than half said they look for the information elsewhere, while about a third said they gave up on getting access to the information. Pew said that of the people who have not paid for news, about half said they can find plenty of other news articles for free. Another reason was that people say they’re not interested enough to pay.
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Data management software firm Rubrik is acquiring Predibase, a startup that helps companies train and fine-tune their artificial intelligence models. Predibase, which was founded in 2021 by former Google and Uber employees, had raised over $28 million from Felicis and Greylock. The terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed, but CNBC reports Rubrik will pay between $100 million and $500 million. The acquisition is among a broader effort by AI and cloud companies including Snowflake to expand their agentic AI
offerings. Predibase will allow Rubrk customers to build AI agents in a secure and more cost-efficient manner, the companies said.
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Kalshi, a New York-based prediction market, said it has raised $185 million in a new round led by Paradigm, a crypto venture fund, that valued the company at $2 billion after the investment. Other investors in the round include Multicoin Capital, Sequoia, and Citadel Securities CEO Peng Zhao. The round brings its total funding to $415 million, and Kalshi plans to use the money to expand its engineering team and add new partners. Rival firm Polymarket, the world’s biggest prediction market, is nearing a deal led by Founders Fund to raise more than $200
million at over $1 billion valuation, The Information reported Tuesday. Kalshi is available to U.S. users because it is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Polymarket doesn’t allow U.S. users under a 2022 settlement with the CFTC, but has said it wants to return to the U.S. market.
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