☕️ Meta cuts 8,000 jobs to fund AI spending

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In today's Techpresso:

🪓 Meta cuts 8,000 jobs to fund AI spending

💥 OpenAI unveils GPT-5.5

🎰 US soldier charged over $400,000 Maduro removal bets

💼 Microsoft offers buyouts to 7% of US workforce

📸 Instagram is rolling out a new app that's a mix of Snapchat and BeReal

🤖 DeepSeek launches V4 model

Plus: 🎁 14 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 3 papers.

🪓 Meta cuts 8,000 jobs to fund AI spending LINK

Meta is laying off around 8,000 employees, about 10% of its workforce, starting 20 May and cancelling 6,000 open roles to help pay for up to $135 billion in AI infrastructure spending this year.

The company is reorganising teams into AI-focused "pods" with new roles like "AI builder" and "AI pod lead," while a workplace surveillance programme captures keystrokes and screenshots to train AI agents.

Days before the cuts, Meta filed SEC disclosures showing executives could each earn up to $921 million in stock options tied to reaching a $9 trillion market cap by 2031.

💥 OpenAI unveils GPT-5.5 LINK

OpenAI has released GPT-5.5, a new AI model designed to complete work with less direction, as the company tries to keep up with competitors like Anthropic in attracting business customers.

The company says GPT-5.5 is better at aiding scientists, streamlining software development, and handling more complex tasks than its previous models, according to OpenAI's own claims.

The model can also act on a user's commands across tools like email, spreadsheets, and calendars, letting it carry out computer-based work more independently.

🎰 US soldier charged over $400,000 Maduro removal bets LINK

A U.S. soldier named Van Dyke has been indicted in Manhattan federal court for allegedly placing over $400,000 in bets on Polymarket about the capture of Venezuelan President Maduro using confidential government information.

Prosecutors said Van Dyke, stationed at Fort Bragg, was involved in the "planning and execution" of the Maduro capture and faced charges including commodities fraud, wire fraud, and unlawful use of classified information.

The case marks the first time the Justice Department has brought insider trading charges involving a prediction market, and Polymarket said it referred the matter to authorities, calling the arrest "proof the system works."

💼 Microsoft offers buyouts to 7% of US workforce LINK

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to about 7% of its U.S. workforce, marking the first time in the company's 51-year history that it has created a one-time retirement program.

The program is open to U.S. workers at the senior director level and below whose combined years of employment and age add up to 70 or higher, excluding those with sales incentive plans.

Microsoft is also changing how it distributes stock for annual rewards, decoupling stock from cash bonuses so managers have more flexibility, and simplifying pay options from nine choices down to five.

📸 Instagram is rolling out a new app that's a mix of Snapchat and BeReal LINK

Instagram is testing a new standalone app called Instants that lets users send disappearing photos to friends, with images viewable only once and accessible for up to 24 hours.

The app limits photos to those taken with its in-app camera — users cannot upload from their camera roll or edit images beyond adding text, pushing raw, real-time sharing.

Instants is currently available in select regions like Spain and Italy, and Instagram is testing it both as a standalone app and as a feature within the main app.

🤖 DeepSeek launches V4 model LINK

DeepSeek has released its V4 model in two editions, DeepSeek-V4-Pro and DeepSeek-V4-Flash, claiming strong performance against both open-source and closed-source competitors with a one million token context length.

The V4-Pro version has 1.6 trillion total parameters with 49 billion active, and includes a "maximum reasoning effort mode," while the Flash edition offers a smaller, more economical option at 284 billion total parameters.

DeepSeek did not say which chips were used to train V4 but confirmed its software works with Nvidia and Huawei chips, a notable detail given tightening U.S. semiconductor export restrictions targeting China.

Other news you might like

• Trump warns of ‘big tariff’ if UK doesn’t drop digital services tax on U.S. tech firmsLINK

• Intel soars on signs AI boom for CPUs is hereLINK

• US accuses China of “industrial-scale” AI theft. China says it’s “slander.”LINK

• Cohere to acquire German AI company Aleph Alpha as it looks to expand in EuropeLINK

• A group of users leaked Anthropic’s AI model Mythos by reportedly guessing where it was locatedLINK

• Anthropic confirms Claude Code problems and promises stricter quality controlsLINK

• Norway plans to ban social media use by children under 16LINK

• Xbox gets a new "north star" and a branding shift, exclusives also being reconsideredLINK

• In two Amazon units, 'builder' replaces traditional job titlesLINK

• Bob Iger rejoins Thrive Capital as advisor after Disney exitLINK

• 11th Moon mineral discovered in China’s first lunar meteorite sample studyLINK

• In another wild turn for AI chips, Meta signs deal for millions of Amazon AI CPUsLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Ask Product Hunt AI: instantly search and discover tech products, apps, and gadgets launched on Product Hunt without manually browsing through thousands of listings.LINK

Codex 3.0 by OpenAI: an autonomous coding agent that navigates browsers, interacts with web apps, generates docs, and tests workflows end-to-end without manual intervention.LINK

Beezi AI: orchestrates AI-driven development by routing tasks to optimal models, structuring tickets for better prompts, and tracking costs in real time.LINK

Spira AI: automates social media management by detecting trending content, drafting platform-specific posts, and publishing to TikTok, Instagram, and X autonomously.LINK

Mozart Studio 1.0: a prompt and voice-driven music creation tool that turns ideas into studio-quality tracks and music videos without technical expertise.LINK

Your Name in Landsat 🛰️: turns your name into a mosaic of real NASA/USGS satellite imagery, letting you visualize Earth's surface patterns letter by letter.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

Different AI language models independently learn the same internal number patterns with periods at T=2, 5, and 10, revealing convergent evolution in how diverse architectures represent numerical information from varied training data.LINK

Sophia, a new AI training optimizer, cuts the number of steps needed to train large language models in half compared to Adam, reaching the same quality with 50% fewer steps and less compute.LINK

Machine learning analysis of 107,875 historical astronomy images confirms that mysterious, short-lived light sources appearing in pre-Sputnik sky photos are real objects, not film defects, and cluster near nuclear test dates.LINK

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