Techmeme
December 16, 2025, 9:10 AM

Top News

Robbie Whelan / Wall Street Journal:
CoreWeave lost $33B in market value in six weeks amid construction delays at its Denton, Texas AI data center, criticism from short seller Jim Chanos, and more  —  The data-center provider's terrible six-week slide picked up speed when a famous short seller piled concerns on top of delays
New York Times:
Sources: the US has paused its Tech Prosperity Deal with the UK, signed in September, over frustrations about UK online safety rules and digital services taxes  —  The U.S. government has paused a tech-focused trade pledge with Britain over broader disagreements about Britain's digital regulations and food safety rules.
Counterpoint Research:
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Tesla's shares closed at a 2025 high on December 15, after the company confirmed it is testing its driverless vehicles in Austin without a human safety operator  —  Nearly six months after launching a limited Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas with safety drivers in the car …
Natalie Alms / Nextgov/FCW:
The Trump administration launches the US Tech Force to recruit ~1,000 staffers from Apple, Meta, xAI, and others for two-year stints to modernize the government  —  After pushing hundreds of thousands of government employees to leave their posts and dismantling many government technology units …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Adobe updates Firefly's app to add a prompt-based video editor using Runway's Aleph model, and adds image and video models from Black Forest Labs and others  —  Adobe is updating its AI video-generation app, Firefly, with a new video editor that supports precise prompt-based edits …
More: SiliconANGLE
Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal:
PayPal says it has filed applications to establish PayPal Bank to provide loans more efficiently to US small businesses and reduce its reliance on third parties  —  The payments company says it filed applications with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the FDIC to establish PayPal Bank
Gregory Schmidt / New York Times:
VW plans to end vehicle production at its Dresden plant, which opened in 2001, and convert it into a research hub focused on AI, robotics, and chip design  —  The auto giant stopped making cars at the plant in Dresden, which opened in 2001, as it faces weaker demand and steep U.S. tariffs.
Forums: r/neoliberal
Benoit Berthelot / Bloomberg:
Sources and a memo: Amazon plans to cut 370 jobs, or ~8.5% of its 4,370 employees, at its European HQ in Luxembourg, the country's biggest layoffs in 20 years  —  Amazon.com Inc.'s decision earlier this year to ax 14,000 employees around the globe is reverberating at the company's European headquarters in Luxembourg.
More: GeekWire

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Automate your scheduling workflows with Zoho Calendar  —  Your calendar can do more than schedule meetings Creating a calendar event takes only a few seconds.  But scheduling is rarely just about creating the event.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord's product chief | Peter Sellis
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
AI Doom Backlash Arrives, Anthropic & OpenAI IPO Outlook, Frontier Business Momentum Slows
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Invest Like the Best:
Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Sources:
Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:10 AM ET, December 16, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Emilia David / VentureBeat:
TechCrunch:
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Cloudflare:
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Reshmi Basu / Bloomberg:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Arsheeya Bajwa / Reuters: