☕️ OpenAI shuts down Sora after 6 months

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In today's Techpresso:

🎬 OpenAI shuts down Sora after 6 months

📱 Apple is testing a standalone app for the new Siri

💥 Arm releases first in-house chip, with Meta as debut customer

💰 Meta ordered to pay $375 million in child safety case

🤖 Amazon acquires 'approachable' humanoid maker Fauna Robotics

🏛️ Trump appoints tech CEOs to White House council

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

🎬 OpenAI shuts down Sora after 6 months LINK

OpenAI said on Tuesday it is shutting down its TikTok-like Sora social video app after just six months, without giving a reason or a timeline for when it will officially be discontinued.

The app peaked at about 3,332,200 downloads in November but dropped to 1,128,700 by February, earning only around $2.1 million from in-app purchases during its entire lifetime.

The shutdown also kills a $1 billion Disney licensing deal that would have let Sora generate videos featuring Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters, though no money apparently changed hands.

📱 Apple is testing a standalone app for the new Siri LINK

Apple is internally testing a dedicated Siri app and a systemwide "Ask Siri" button as part of a larger AI overhaul planned for iOS 27 and macOS 27 this year.

The standalone Siri app will show past conversations in a list or grid, let users pin favorite chats, search old interactions, upload attachments for analysis, and switch between text and voice.

Apple is also replacing Spotlight search with a unified Siri interface inside the Dynamic Island, offering web summaries, images, bullet points, and deeper access to personal data through Personal Context.

💥 Arm releases first in-house chip, with Meta as debut customer LINK

Arm Holdings has released its first in-house chip, the Arm AGI CPU, after nearly 36 years of only licensing its designs to companies like Nvidia and Apple, with Meta as its debut customer.

The Arm AGI CPU is a production-ready processor built for running inference in AI data centers, developed using the Arm Neoverse family of CPU IP cores through a partnership with Meta.

Arm started developing the chips back in 2023, and they are already ready to order, marking a historic shift from exclusively licensing designs to now competing alongside many of its partners.

💰 Meta ordered to pay $375 million in child safety case LINK

A New Mexico jury found Meta liable on every count in a child safety case, ordering the company to pay $375 million for endangering children and concealing sexual exploitation on Instagram and Facebook.

Attorney General Raul Torrez framed the case as a products-liability claim, arguing the platforms were defective — a legal strategy that sidesteps Section 230 and gives 40-plus state attorneys general a tested courtroom playbook.

A bench trial expected in May will not ask how much Meta should pay but what it must change, including age verification, predator removal, and modifications to encrypted messaging across multiple states.

🤖 Amazon acquires 'approachable' humanoid maker Fauna Robotics LINK

Amazon has acquired Fauna Robotics, a startup that makes "approachable" humanoid robots designed for consumers and businesses, though the companies did not share the financial terms of the deal.

Fauna Robotics was founded in 2024 by former Meta and Google engineers and earlier this year launched Sprout, a $50,000 bipedal robot standing 3.5 feet tall and weighing 50 lbs.

Fauna's roughly 50 employees will join Amazon in New York City, and the company will continue to operate as Fauna Robotics under Amazon, according to CEO Rob Cochran.

🏛️ Trump appoints tech CEOs to White House council LINK

President Trump has appointed CEOs from Meta, NVIDIA, Dell, Oracle, and AMD, along with Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, to a White House science and technology advisory council.

The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology currently has 13 members, co-chaired by White House AI and cryptocurrency czar David Sacks and Trump's science advisor Michael Kratsios, with room to grow to 24.

Several of these tech leaders have direct financial ties to Trump, including donations to his inauguration, funding construction of his White House ballroom, and business deals like Oracle's backing of the TikTok takeover.

Other news you might like

• U.S. Government’s Ban on Anthropic Looks Like Punishment, Judge SaysLINK

• OpenAI’s plans to make ChatGPT more like Amazon aren’t going so wellLINK

• Honda cancels the two electric vehicles it was developing with SonyLINK

• Apple begins age checks in the UK with latest iOS updateLINK

• Meta makes 'big bet' on top leaders with stock options as pressure builds to catch up in AILINK

• Spotify tests new tool to stop AI slop from being attributed to real artistsLINK

• Meta Executive Will Spearhead Push to Get Employees Using More AILINK

• Neuralink's Brain Chip Can Now Translate Brain Activity Into Audible WordsLINK

• Auto mode for Claude CodeLINK

• Mozilla dev introduces cq, a "Stack Overflow for agents"LINK

🧰 Trending tools

Agentplace AI Agents: builds and deploys specialized AI agents for automating workflows and tasks, functioning as customizable AI teammates for your projects.LINK

Auto Mode by Claude Code: enables Claude to autonomously execute multi-step coding tasks by chaining commands, file edits, and terminal operations without constant user approval.LINK

TurboQuant: advanced quantization algorithms that compress large language models and vector databases while maintaining accuracy through theoretically grounded compression techniques.LINK

Omma: a multi-agent platform that generates code, 3D assets, and media simultaneously using LLMs to build interactive apps and websites faster.LINK

Flowershow: converts Markdown files into hosted websites for documentation and knowledge bases without requiring coding, deployment setup, or proprietary formats.LINK

Gridland: a runtime that enables terminal applications to run both in native terminals and web browsers using OpenTUI and canvas rendering.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

DeepSeek's conditional memory system retrieves relevant information from massive lookup tables during inference, achieving 10x memory capacity compared to standard transformer models while maintaining accuracy on knowledge intensive tasks.LINK

A GPU visualization tool reveals execution patterns at the instruction level across thousands of threads, helping developers identify performance bottlenecks in parallel code that traditional profilers miss.LINK

AI personality simulation trained on 10,000 real interview transcripts generates responses matching individual communication styles, letting researchers test psychological theories at scale without recruiting thousands of participants.LINK

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