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Techmeme
December 15, 2025, 7:55 AM
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Bloomberg:
iRobot files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after reaching a restructuring agreement to hand control to secured lender and key Chinese supplier Shenzhen Picea  —  iRobot Corp., the company that revolutionized robot vacuum cleaners in the early 2000s with its Roomba model, filed for bankruptcy …
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:
A look at iRobot, founded in 1990, and its slow collapse after US regulatory pressure killed Amazon's $1.7B deal in 2024 amid increased 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 …
Brian Merchant / Blood in the Machine:
Interviews with copywriters on generative AI's impact: job losses to AI, work used for training, falling wages and rates, 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:
US volunteer fire departments are scrambling to find software amid shrinking options and higher costs, as companies backed by private equity dominate the market  —  Rural departments have long relied on cheap software solutions to keep their operations running.
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 …
Bloomberg:
Analysis: Tata, Infosys, and Cognizant are set to bear the brunt of Trump's $100K H-1B fee; from 2020 to 2024, 93% of Infosys' H-1B hires would have had to pay  —  Follow Bloomberg India on WhatsApp for exclusive content and analysis on what billionaires, businesses and markets are doing.  Sign up here.
More: @amuse
Caroline Hyde / Bloomberg:
AI drug discovery startup Chai Discovery raised a $130M Series B led by Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst at a $1.3B valuation, taking its total funding to $225M  —  Chai Discovery, an artificial intelligence drug-discovery company backed by OpenAI, has raised $130 million to build a “computer-aided design suite” for molecules.
Anna Heim / TechCrunch:
Berlin-based Mirelo, whose AI models can interpret video content to add matching sound effects, raised a $41M seed led by Index and a16z, after a $3M pre-seed  —  AI lets anyone create videos, but many AI video creation tools lack support for audio.  Mirelo is building AI that adds soundtracks to match the video's action.
Washington Post:
How David Sacks and AI adviser Sriram Krishnan overcame the opposition to Trump's AI EO, reaching out to lawmakers and finally modifying the text of the order  —  President Trump's executive order limiting states' power to regulate AI split his supporters and highlighted Silicon Valley's growing influence over his agenda.
Naomi Nix / Washington Post:
Tech whistleblowers like Yaël Eisenstat say coming forward has unexpectedly derailed their lives and careers; Meta is in litigation with Sarah Wynn-Williams  —  By exposing the harms of Big Tech, many whistleblowers say they faced poorer job prospects and professional exile in Silicon Valley.

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:55 AM ET, December 15, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

Chris Morris / Variety:
Acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele Singer were found dead in their home; LAPD is investigating the deaths as a homicide

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Major brands were replaced by direct-response advertisers during commercial breaks of CBS News' December 13 town hall with Erika Kirk, moderated by Bari Weiss

Max Tani / Semafor:
Internal tests show WaPo launched its AI podcast feature despite 68%+ of generated scripts failed its standards, saying it would “iterate through” the issues

More News

New York Times:
Investigation: after Trump's return to office, the SEC eased up on or dismissed 60%+ of ongoing crypto cases, including ones involving Trump-linked companies

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