Techmeme
December 12, 2025, 9:40 PM

Top News

Axios:
Policymakers behind key state AI bills scoff at Trump's EO; some GOP governors are pushing ahead with their own AI bills; Steve Bannon says Sacks misled Trump  —  States are forging ahead with AI laws despite President Trump's new executive order aimed at reining them in.
Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post:
Trump's AI executive order directs federal agencies to look into withholding federal funding from states passing “the most onerous and excessive laws” around AI  —  The new executive order comes as a growing group of Republicans criticize Trump's staunch support of the tech industry's ambitions for artificial intelligence.
Bloomberg:
David Sacks says Trump's AI EO aims to ease companies' compliance burden and that the administration is working with Congress on a common AI oversight standard  —  White House AI czar David Sacks defended President Donald Trump's push to rein in state-level regulation of artificial intelligence …
Reuters:
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Sources: Oracle has delayed completion of some OpenAI data centers from 2027 to 2028, largely due to labor and material shortages; Oracle denies delays  —  Oracle Corp. has pushed back the completion dates for some of the data centers it's developing for the artificial intelligence model developer OpenAI …
Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE:
Microsoft expands its bug bounty program so that any critical vulnerability, including in third-party code, impacting its online services is eligible for awards  —  Microsoft Corp. announced today that it is expanding its bug bounty program with a new policy that brings all of its online services …
Stevie Bonifield / The Verge:
Google expands Google Translate's live speech translation from Pixel Buds to any headphones, supporting 70+ languages, in beta on compatible Android phones  —  Live speech translations were once only on the Pixel Buds. … Google Translate's latest update brings live speech translations …
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
OpenAI quietly adopted Anthropic's “skills” mechanism in ChatGPT and Codex; ChatGPT's skills include creating and modifying spreadsheets, docx files, and PDFs  —  One of the things that most excited me about Anthropic's new Skills mechanism back in October is how easy it looked for other platforms to implement.
Reuters:
Tether submits an all-cash offer to acquire a 65.4% stake in Italian soccer club Juventus, says it will invest €1B in the club if the acquisition is completed  —  Crypto group Tether said on Friday it has submitted an all-cash proposal to the holding company of the Agnelli family to buy …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Amazon Prime Video pulls its AI recaps, which it began testing in November, for Fallout, Bosch, and other shows after users noticed errors in the Fallout recaps  —  Fallout's season one recap wrongly stated that The Ghoul's flashback takes place in the 1950s, rather than the year 2077.
Thinking Machines Lab:
Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab makes Tinker, its API for fine-tuning language models, generally available, adds support for Kimi K2 Thinking, and more  —  Today we are announcing four updates to Tinker:  — No more waitlist  — New reasoning model: Kimi K2 Thinking
Lucas Ropek / TechCrunch:
Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity updates World to make it a “super app” with encrypted chat integration and a Venmo-like tool for sending and requesting crypto  —  World, the biometric ID verification project co-founded by Sam Altman, released the newest version of its app today …
Nina Bambysheva / Forbes:
Kalshi integrates its event trading platform into the popular crypto wallet Phantom; Dune: in November, Kalshi's trading volume hit $5.8B vs. Polymarket's $3.7B  —  As Kalshi's trading volume surpasses Polymarket's, it will now offer prediction market access to Phantom's 15 million users on Solana.
Rachyl Jones / Semafor:
Singapore-based ChemLex raised a $45M funding round led by Granite Asia to build an AI-powered, automated chemistry lab to accelerate drug discovery  —  Singapore-based ChemLex raised $45 million to build out its autonomous chemistry lab with hopes it can speed drug discovery and therapy development …
More: ChemLex
Ben Weiss / Fortune:
YouTube launches an option for US-based creators to receive payouts in PayPal's stablecoin, PYUSD  —  Big Tech continues to tiptoe into crypto.  The latest example is a move by YouTube to let creators on the video platform choose to receive payouts in PayPal's stablecoin.
John Liu / Bloomberg:
Sources: China is considering a ~$28B-to-$70B incentives package, which would be separate from the $50B Big Fund III plan, to support its chipmaking industry  —  China is considering a package of incentives worth as much as $70 billion to bankroll and support its chipmaking industry …

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More News

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Earlier Picks

Reuters:
Alex Heath / Sources:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Reuters:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Axios: