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December 15, 2025, 9:45 PM
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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 …
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  —  A Reuters investigation reveals the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp decided to accept high levels of fraudulent advertisements from China.
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.
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 …
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Shares of Tesla closed at a 2025 high on Monday 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 …
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 …
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.
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
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  —  Luminar Technologies Inc, which manufactures laser-based sensors for cars, filed for bankruptcy shortly after it lost a contract with Swedish carmaker Volvo Car AB.
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.
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 …
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  —  One of the lesser-known features that Google offers is a “Dark Web Report” monitoring tool, but it's about to shut down in early 2026.
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 …
New York Times:
Sources: the US has paused a tech trade deal with the UK, signed in September, over disagreements about the UK's digital regulations and food safety rules  —  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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare 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.
Bloomberg:
How crypto entrepreneur Bill Zanker helped Trump and Melania launch memecoins; as of December 10, $TRUMP was down 92% since its peak and $MELANIA was down 99%  —  No one wants to claim credit for helping the first couple launch cryptocurrencies that plummeted more than 90% from their peak.
More: Mother Jones.  X: @maxabelson.  Bluesky: @carnage4life, @kuromaku.com, and @petertl
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.
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  —  The artificial intelligence boom is expensive, prompting venture capital firms to raise enormous sums to keep up.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:45 PM ET, December 15, 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.

From Mediagazer

Dan Mangan / CNBC:
President Trump files a $10B defamation lawsuit against the BBC, alleging it intentionally doctored a Panorama documentary to misrepresent his January 6 speech

Jem Bartholomew / Columbia Journalism Review:
US Press Freedom Tracker: 32 journalists arrested or charged in 2025, vs. 50 in 2024, and 170 assaulted, nearly as many as the previous three years combined

Byron Tau / Associated Press:
Sources: Bay Area radio station KCBS-AM, which faced MAGA backlash over ICE coverage, scaled back political reporting after Brendan Carr's threats of a probe

More News

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
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
Anna Heim / TechCrunch:
Berlin-based Mirelo, whose AI models can interpret videos to add synced sound effects, raised a $41M seed led by Index Ventures and a16z, after a $3M pre-seed
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

Earlier Picks

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
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
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
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
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