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December 11, 2025, 11:30 AM
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Top News

OpenAI:
Disney and OpenAI sign a three-year deal to bring 200+ Disney characters to Sora; Disney makes a $1B investment in OpenAI and will become a major OpenAI client  —  Agreement marks a significant step in setting meaningful standards for responsible AI in entertainment.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Disney sends Google a cease-and-desist, accusing Google of copyright infringement on a “massive scale” and using AI to “exploit and distribute” the content  —  Disney sends cease-and-desist letter to internet giant  —  As Disney has gone into business with OpenAI …
Courtney Rozen / Reuters:
US state AGs sent a letter to Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and nine others, warning that their chatbots' “delusional outputs” could be violating state laws  —  Microsoft, Meta, Google and Apple were among the 13 companies that received a warning from a bipartisan group …
Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:
Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based startup planning to launch a “Twitter.new” social network, petitions the USPTO to cancel X's trademarks over “abandonment”  —  A Virginia startup calling itself “Operation Bluebird” announced this week that it has filed a formal petition …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Oracle reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $16.06B, below $16.21B est., and raises its FY capex forecast to ~$50B, up from $35B as of September; ORCL drops 15%+  —  Oracle shares sank 11% in extended trading on Wednesday after the database software maker reported lower quarterly revenue …
Tim Dettmers:
An Ai2 research scientist says AGI may never emerge because such a concept ignores the physical realities and limits of computation, such as energy constraints  —  If you are reading this, you probably have strong opinions about AGI, superintelligence, and the future of AI.
Clare Duffy / CNN:
Study: 15 TikTok accounts posting AI videos of sexualized underage girls have nearly 300K followers; TikTok says that 14 of the accounts don't violate its rules  —  TikTok AI  —  AI-generated videos showing what appear to be underage girls in sexualized clothing or positions have together racked …
Bluesky: @daniloc.xyz
Hayden Field / The Verge:
A look at the Model Context Protocol and how it went from a passion project from two Anthropic employees to an industry standard managed by the Linux Foundation  —  Over the past 18 months, the largest AI companies in the world have quietly settled on an approach to building the next generation …
Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times:
Google DeepMind plans to open its first “automated science laboratory” in the UK in 2026, focused on using AI tools to develop new materials for chips and more  —  Big Tech group will work with Sir Keir Starmer's government to enhance AI use across public sector
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify says it will test Prompted Playlist, which lets users describe what they want to hear and receive a unique set of songs based on their listening history  —  Spotify announced on Wednesday that, for the first time, it's giving users more control over the streaming service's algorithm.
Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk:
a16z crypto expands to Asia, opens a Seoul office, hires Monad's Sungmo Park as its Asia head, and calls South Korea the world's second-largest crypto market  —  What to know: … A16z crypto, a venture capital fund of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), said it is expanding into Asia …
Julie Jargon / Wall Street Journal:
OpenAI faces a wrongful death lawsuit from the estate of an 83-year-old woman killed by her son, who had engaged in delusion-filled conversations with ChatGPT  —  The estate of victim Suzanne Eberson Adams is suing OpenAI for wrongful death, and her grandson is speaking out for the first time
Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
Cursor launches Visual Editor, a vibe-coding product for designers that integrates professional design controls with natural language editing  —  The 300-person startup hopes bringing designers aboard will give it an edge in an increasingly competitive AI software market.
Alex Konrad / Upstarts Media:
Worktrace AI, founded by ex-OpenAI product lead Angela Jiang and researcher Deepak Vasisht, launches with a $9.3M seed, and unveils a workflow automation agent  —  Worktrace AI founders Angela Jiang and Deepak Vasisht are launching a workflow automation agent backed by $9M from Conviction, 8VC, OpenAI and prominent alumni.
Carlos Garcia / Fortune:
Berlin-based LI.FI, which provides businesses with price comparisons of crypto exchange rates and bridging fees, raised $29M, taking its total funding to ~$52M  —  When businesses decide to engage with crypto, they quickly discover the landscape is fragmented across numerous blockchains.
Julie Bort / TechCrunch:
Israeli startup Port, which offers a proprietary developer portal competitor to Spotify's open-source Backstage, raised a $100M Series C at an $800M valuation  —  Spotify may be synonymous with music streaming, but it's also got a wildly popular developer-tool side-hustle called “Backstage.”
More: Globes and Accel
Francisco Rodrigues / CoinDesk:
Sei partners with Xiaomi to preinstall its crypto wallet and discovery app on all new Xiaomi phones sold outside mainland China and the US, starting in 2026  —  The app will enable peer-to-peer payments, access to decentralized apps, and Web3 exploration, as well as stablecoin payments in retail stores.
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch:
Runware, which operates a developer tool platform that generates images, video, and audio in real-time, raised a $50M Series A, taking its total funding to $66M  —  Flaviu Radulesc started Runware in 2023 when he was testing a text-to-image company and realized that, though genAI tech was powerful, it was slow in generating images.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Blue Origin has worked for over a year on tech for orbital AI data centers; SpaceX plans to use upgraded Starlink satellites for AI computing payloads  —  Space companies backed by tech billionaires hope to move AI data centers off Earth  —  Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have raced …
Agnee Ghosh / Bloomberg:
Medra, which programs robots with AI to conduct and improve biological experiments, raised $52M led by Human Capital, taking its total funding to $63M  —  Medra, which programs robots with artificial intelligence to conduct and improve biological experiments, has raised $52 million to build …
Patrick O'Shaughnessy / Invest Like The Best on YouTube:
Q&A with investor Gavin Baker of Atreides Management on the economics of AI, data centers in space, mistakes SaaS companies are making in adopting AI, and more  —  In this episode of Invest Like The Best, Patrick O'Shaughnessy sits down with investor Gavin Baker to explore the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
The Information:
Sources: in recent months, Tencent aggressively hired AI researchers from ByteDance, including by offering to double their salaries, and reorganized its AI team  —  Throughout the past couple of years, as AI fever swept China's technology sector, one giant—Tencent—seemed to mostly be sitting on the sidelines.

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
 'The Daily' and 'The Opinions': How A.I. Is Changing Loneliness and Taste
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.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
 Writer's May Habib: Building AI Tools For Corporate 'Normal People' The Labs Leave Behind
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
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The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
 AI's Mythos Moment: Rishi Sunak on preparing governments for AI
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.
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From Mediagazer

Matthew Belloni / Puck:
Although sources suggest Paramount wouldn't sell CNN to appease state regulators overseeing the WBD deal, it may save the company from a protracted legal battle

Matthew Keys / TheDesk.net:
Two groups file a petition to deny FCC review of ABC's TV station licenses; they say they will seek revocations if stations restrict speech in trade for FCC OK

Washington Post:
The US Supreme Court paused a lower court order that would have forced ex-Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge to reveal a source or pay $800 a day in sanctions

More News

Daniel Kuhn / The Block:
The US CFTC grants crypto exchange Gemini a Designated Contract Market license, allowing it to launch its prediction markets betting platform Gemini Titan

Earlier Picks

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google rolls out Preferred Sources globally, letting users star Top Stories in Search, and Spotlighting, which highlights links from users' news subscriptions
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple says ChatGPT was 2025's most downloaded free app in the US App Store, up from fourth in 2024, followed by Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, and Instagram
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Google releases fully managed, remote MCP servers to help developers connect AI agents to services such as Maps, BigQuery, Compute Engine, and Kubernetes Engine
Financial Times:
Nick Clegg joins London-based VC firm Hiro Capital as a general partner, and Yann LeCun joins the firm as an adviser; sources say Hiro is raising a €500M+ fund
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