Techmeme
December 15, 2025, 9:50 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
iRobot files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reaches a restructuring agreement to hand over control to its secured lender and main Chinese supplier Shenzhen Picea  —  iRobot Corp., the company that revolutionized robot vacuum cleaners in the early 2000s with its Roomba model …
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:
A look at iRobot, founded in 1990, and its slow collapse after US and EU regulatory pressure killed Amazon's $1.7B deal in 2024 amid growing Chinese competition  —  There's something painfully American about the arc of iRobot, the company that taught your vacuum to navigate around the furniture.
Martin Peers / The Information:
Filing: Oracle signed ~$150B of data center leases in the three months ending November 30, raising its total data center and cloud capacity commitments to $248B  —  Oracle struck about $150 billion worth of lease commitments on data centers in the three months ending November …
Emilia David / VentureBeat:
Nvidia launches Nemotron 3, a family of AI models using a hybrid mixture-of-experts architecture and the Mamba-Transformer design, in 30B, 100B, and ~500B sizes  —  Nvidia launched the new version of its frontier models, Nemotron 3, by leaning in on a model architecture that the world's …
Financial Times:
Sources: the UK government wants Apple, Google, and others to block explicit images at the OS level by default to protect kids and have adults verify their ages  —  Home Office expected to encourage companies to introduce controls  —  The UK government wants technology companies …
Brian Merchant / Blood in the Machine:
Interviews with copywriters on generative AI's impact: their work used for training, layoffs, wages and rates in free fall, freelancers losing clients, and more  —  Copywriters were one of the first to have their jobs targeted by AI firms.  These are their stories, three years into the AI era.
Mike Baker / New York Times:
Reuters:
Internal documents: Meta earned $18B+ in annual ad sales from China in 2024, making up 10%+ of its global revenue, with $3B+ linked to fraudulent ads like scams  —  A Reuters investigation reveals the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp decided to accept high levels of fraudulent advertisements from China.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
AI image generators like Nano Banana have increased realism by mimicking phone camera traits in contrast, exposure, and sharpening to avoid the uncanny valley  —  Remember the early days of AI image generation?  Oh how we laughed when our prompts resulted in people with too many fingers …
Erin Griffith / New York Times:
Lightspeed raised a record $9B across six funds to invest in AI, with $3.3B to back breakout companies like Anthropic; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups  —  The artificial intelligence boom is expensive, prompting venture capital firms to raise enormous sums to keep up.

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Featured Podcasts

The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Perp Walk for Selfies', With Jason Snell
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
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Vlad Barbalat - Investing $120 Billion in Permanent Capital
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Big Technology Podcast:
The Fable Ban's Unintended Consequences + AI's New Economics — With Aaron Levie
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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Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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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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