Techmeme
December 11, 2025, 10:00 AM

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 …
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
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 …
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 …
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.
Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times:
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 …
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 …
Tim Dettmers:
An Ai2 research scientist argues that AGI, as commonly conceived, will not emerge because it ignores, among other things, the physical realities of computation  —  If you are reading this, you probably have strong opinions about AGI, superintelligence, and the future of AI.
X: @sriramk, @tim_dettmers, and @tim_dettmers
LinkedIn: Ryan Iyengar and Ali Minai
Bluesky: @alexcampolo and @sungkimForums: Hacker News
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple says ChatGPT was 2025's most downloaded free app in the US App Store, up from 4th in 2024, followed by Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, and Instagram  —  Apple on Wednesday released its annual list of the most downloaded apps and games for the year.
Francisco Rodrigues / CoinDesk:
Sei partners with Xiaomi to pre-install 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.
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 …
Clare Duffy / CNN:
Study: 15 TikTok accounts posting AI videos of sexualized underage girls have nearly 300K followers and 2M+ likes; TikTok says 14 accounts don't violate rules  —  TikTok AI  —  AI-generated videos showing what appear to be underage girls in sexualized clothing or positions have together racked …
Bluesky: @daniloc.xyz
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 …
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
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.
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.

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Featured Podcasts

The Social Radars:
Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Star Catcher's Andrew Rush: Harnessing The Sun To Build The First Energy Grid In Space
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The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
Why Countries Go to War
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
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Great Chat:
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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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The Talk Show With John Gruber:
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The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Everybody Goes Home: How technology is helping prevent wildfires from spreading
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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More News

Ben Elgin / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Daniel Kuhn / The Block:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Ina Fried / Axios:
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Bloomberg:
Stevie Bonifield / The Verge: