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December 15, 2025, 8:25 AM
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memeorandum
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| 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 …
More: Engadget, The Register, 9to5Mac, International Business Times, PCMag, iRobot MediaKit, Benzinga, The Boston Globe, Yahoo Finance, Silicon Republic, Telegraph, BBC, BGR, Blockonomi, iPhone in Canada, Tech in Asia, Cord Cutters News, Reuters, The Verge, crypto.news, Tom's Guide, Business Insider, New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Android Authority, Mashable, Business Today, Wall Street Journal, Tech Times, Moneycontrol, Newsweek, Dow Jones Newswires, TechNode, and BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
Bluesky: @carnage4life, @tyleraking.com, @heridesbikes.com, and @curvenomics
Forums: r/homeassistant, r/robotics, r/roomba, r/RobotVacuums, and r/technology
| 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.
More: TechRadar, The Verge, and Financial Times
X: @oliviasolon, @joecarlsonshow, @bryanrbeal, @volvoshine, @radbackwards, @ljkawa, and @compound248. Bluesky: @pyperkub. Forums: r/gadgets
| Financial Times: |
DTCC: credit default swaps tied to a handful of US tech groups have climbed 90% since early September, as investors seek ways to protect against an AI debt bust — Trading in insurance-like products that protect against tech company defaults is booming — Trading in products that pay … | 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 …
More: DatacenterDynamics, eWeek, TechRadar, CNBC, and The Irish Times
X: @thetranscript_ and @luxalgo
Bluesky: @edzitron.com and @edzitron.com
| 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.
More: Simon Willison's Weblog. Bluesky: @jessimckenzi, @carnage4life, and @bcmerchant
Mastodon: @peter@thepit.social, @baldur@toot.cafe, and @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org. Forums: Hacker News
| 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.
More: DroneXL.co and NBC Bay Area
X: @pourmecoffee, @mattkahn1966, and @thesidetrack
Forums: Hacker News, r/technology, and r/ABoringDystopia
| 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.
More: Endpoints News
| 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.| 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 … | Rose Henderson / Bloomberg: |
Memo: Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos lay out Netflix's WBD case, moving to quell concerns about job losses and the end of theater releases, after Paramount's bid — The two chief executive officers of Netflix Inc. laid out the company's case for acquiring Warner Bros Discovery Inc. …
Bluesky: @mgsiegler.com
| 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.
More: Index Ventures
| Ben Glickman / Wall Street Journal: |
Teneo survey of 350 public-company CEOs: 68% plan to spend more on AI in 2026 than in 2025, <50% of AI projects generated more returns than their cost, and more — Teneo's annual survey finds 68% of chief executives plan to increase AI spending in 2026 — Chief executives … | 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.
More: Semafor, Wall Street Journal, and New Republic
Bluesky: @climatebrad.hillheat.com and @carnage4life
Mastodon: @BrideOfLinux@mastodon … and @PrivacyDigest@mas.to
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