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December 16, 2025, 4:05 AM
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Top News

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 …
William Sandlund / Financial Times:
Shares in Chinese companies critical to AI infrastructure surged in 2025, with CATL up 45% and Sungrow up 130%, as exports boost margins despite Trump's tariffs  —  Companies such as battery maker CATL earn big margins on export sales despite US tariffs  —  Shares in Chinese makers of batteries …
New York Times:
Sources: the US pauses a tech trade deal with the UK, signed in September, over disagreements about the UK's 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.
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Tesla's shares closed at a 2025 high on December 15 after the company confirmed it is testing 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, the company …
TechCrunch:
Ford plans to repurpose its US battery manufacturing capacity to launch a battery energy storage business for data centers, amid a shift away from large EVs  —  Amid Ford's shift away from making large electric vehicles, the automaker is adding a new product line to find a home for its batteries.
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
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
GM is adding native Apple Music to select vehicles, and rolls out support for digital keys, after it started phasing out CarPlay in 2023  —  General Motors is racing to add more native apps to make up for its decision to block Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
Emilia David / VentureBeat:
Allen Institute for AI launches Bolmo 7B and Bolmo 1B, claiming they are “the first fully open byte-level language models”, built on its Olmo 3 models  —  Enterprises that want tokenizer-free multilingual models are increasingly turning to byte-level language models to reduce brittleness in noisy or low-resource text.
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Intel names Robin Colwell, deputy assistant to President Trump, as its head of government affairs, and Pushkar Ranade, the CEO's chief of staff, as interim CTO  —  Intel (INTC.O) on Monday appointed an economic adviser to U.S. President Trump as its head of government affairs …
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare's 2025 report: global internet traffic grew 19% in 2025, ChatGPT was the most popular AI service, global traffic from Starlink grew 2.3x, and more  —  Internet connectivity is critically important to everyday communication, commerce, entertainment, and transportation.
Financial Times:
Sources: Monzo CEO TS Anil, who announced his exit and handover to ex-Googler Diana Layfield in October, was pushed out by the board over an IPO timing clash  —  Timing for fintech's planned listing was a key aspect of ructions ahead of TS Anil's surprise departure
Arsheeya Bajwa / Reuters:
Nvidia acquires SchedMD, the developer of Slurm, an open-source AI workload management system, and says it will keep distributing Slurm on an open-source basis  —  Nvidia (NVDA.O) said on Monday it acquired AI software firm SchedMD, as the chip designer doubles down on open-source technology …

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From Mediagazer

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Paramount completes its $110B acquisition of WBD, creating Skydance and putting David Ellison in control of Hollywood studios, streamers, and cable networks

Michael Schneider / Variety:
Amazon's Prime Video acquires exclusive global rights to the Primetime Emmys under a six-year deal from 2027; sources say Prime Video will pay ~$15M per year

New York Times:
Disney is seeking an injunction in US District Court to block the FCC from conducting an unusual, early review of eight ABC-owned station licenses

More News

Reshmi Basu / Bloomberg:
Lidar manufacturer Luminar files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and says it reached a deal to sell its semiconductor subsidiary to Quantum Computing Inc. for $110M
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Google is shutting down its dark web monitoring tool, launched in 2024 to alert users when their personal info is detected on the dark web, on February 16, 2026

Earlier Picks

Luke James / Tom's Hardware:
LG smart TV owners say a webOS update pinned Microsoft Copilot to the home screen, with no apparent way to remove the app; LG unveiled an AI TV strategy at CES
Reuters:
Internal docs: 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 for scams
Erin Griffith / New York Times:
Lightspeed raised $9B+ across six AI funds, including $3.3B to back breakout hits like Anthropic, xAI, and Mistral; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups
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
Rose Henderson / Bloomberg:
Memo: Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos lay out Netflix's WBD offer, moving to quell concerns about job losses and the end of theater releases, after Paramount's bid
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
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 they cost, and more
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
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