Techmeme
December 2, 2025, 9:20 AM

Top News

The Information:
Internal memo: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declares a “code red” to shift more resources to improve ChatGPT amid rising competition, delaying other plans, like ads  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday told employees he was declaring a “code red” to marshall more resources to improve ChatGPT …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Google, with its structural advantages, is a threat to both OpenAI and Nvidia; OpenAI has a meaningful moat with 800M+ ChatGPT users, but must monetize via ads  —  OpenAI and Nvidia are both under threat from Google; I like OpenAI's chances best, but they need an advertising model to beat Google as an Aggregator.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple says AI chief John Giannandrea is stepping down and will retire in spring 2026; ex-Microsoft CVP Amar Subramanya takes over, reporting to Craig Federighi  —  Apple AI chief John Giannandrea is stepping down from his position and retiring in spring 2026, Apple announced today.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Samsung unveils the Galaxy Z TriFold, with a 6.5" outer screen, a 10" inner screen, a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy SoC, and a 3.9mm body at its thinnest point  —  It's really called the TriFold and it's really coming to the US. … It'll launch first in Korea on December 12th, with a US launch planned for the first quarter of 2026.
Heekyong Yang / Reuters:
Reuters:
Sources: Apple doesn't plan to comply with India's mandate to preload a state-owned cyber safety app on iPhones and will raise its concerns with New Delhi  —  Apple (AAPL.O) does not plan to comply with a mandate to preload its smartphones with a state-owned cyber safety app and will convey …
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
AWS and Google Cloud announce a jointly-built multicloud networking solution and an open interoperability spec; AWS plans a rollout with Azure “later in 2026”  —  Outages at major web hosts can have huge impacts across society, as we see often such as with the recent Cloudflare outage.
Anthropic:
Study: using the SCONE-bench benchmark of 405 smart contracts, Claude Opus 4.5, Sonnet 4.5, and GPT-5 found and developed exploits collectively worth $4.6M  —  AI models are increasingly good at cyber tasks, as we've written about before.  But what is the economic impact of these capabilities?
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Marques Brownlee plans to shut down wallpaper app Panels on December 31; Appfigures: Panels had 900K downloads and $95K in user spending since its 2024 launch  —  Tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, or MKBHD, announced on Monday that his phone wallpaper app Panels is shutting down.
Matthew Gault / 404 Media:
Polymarket's Ukraine war betting, based on ISW's map, generated $1M+ in volume for “Will Russia capture Myrnohrad?”; an “unauthorized” map edit resolved the bet  —  A live map that tracks frontlines of the war in Ukraine was edited to show a fake Russian advance on the city of Myrnohrad on November 15.
Emily Graffeo / Bloomberg:
Vanguard now allows ETFs and mutual funds that primarily hold cryptocurrencies to be traded on its platform, reversing a longstanding position  —  Vanguard Group, the world's second-largest asset manager, has decided to allow ETFs and mutual funds that primarily hold cryptocurrencies …
Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:
CANI files a CA ballot measure to let an oversight board review and undo science and tech nonprofit conversions since January 2024, indirectly targeting OpenAI  —  The coalition backing the effort has appealed to Elon Musk for help funding the measure  —  A coalition that tried and failed …
Liana Baker / Bloomberg:
Vista Equity-backed infrastructure software company LogicMonitor acquires Catchpoint, which monitors user experiences across the internet, for $250M+ in cash  —  Vista Equity Partners-backed infrastructure software company LogicMonitor is acquiring the startup Catchpoint for more than $250 million in cash.
Ben Jiang / South China Morning Post:
Chinese short-video company Kuaishou launches Kling Video O1, saying it is the first multimodal AI model to unify video generation, editing, and post-production  —  Kuaishou expects the new model's abilities to drive its adoption by filmmakers, production studios, advertisers and influencers
Nicholas Kulish / New York Times:
Michael and Susan Dell say they will deposit $250 in individual investment accounts for 25M kids, totaling $6.25B, comparing the gift to Dell's direct model  —  The tech billionaire and his wife hope other philanthropists follow their $6 billion lead in expanding the reach of soon-to-be-created “Trump accounts.”
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
Discord now lets users buy, wishlist, and gift in-game cosmetic items directly within its platform, starting with a store within Marvel Rivals' Discord server  —  Starting with Marvel Rivals, users will be able to buy and gift in-game items without leaving Discord.
Wall Street Journal:
The Trump administration agrees to inject up to $150M in xLight, which develops lasers for EUV machines and has Pat Gelsinger on its board, for an equity stake  —  XLight to get up to $150 million to develop ultraprecise lasers for squeezing more circuits onto semiconductors
Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal:
A profile of Cursor CEO Michael Truell, a 25-year-old who started building the AI coding tool in 2023, as some question Cursor's reliance on third-party models  —  Cursor, which launched one of the fastest-growing AI tools of all time, is at the center of the boom-or-bust debate in Silicon Valley

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26  —  Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Zoho:
The best time to become a Zoho Partner  —  The business world is not only changing but it is being rebuilt.  Customers want connected ecosystems that will help them automate, unify their data, and do more with less.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's 2026 Priority, Disney's AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Access:
Why the next AI frontier is phone calls, with Beside CEO Maxime Germain
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Great Chat:
So what happens after AGI?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He's a Must-Read Media Gossip.
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:20 AM ET, December 2, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Neil J Kanatt / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Alex Heath / Sources:
Stephen Alpher / CoinDesk:
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: