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December 15, 2025, 11:45 AM
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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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
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  —  Users report Copilot appearing after a recent software update, with no option to uninstall.  —  LG smart TV owners are reporting …
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.
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  —  The two chief executive officers of Netflix Inc. laid out the company's case for acquiring Warner Bros Discovery Inc. …
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 …
Natalie Alms / Nextgov/FCW:
The Trump administration launches 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 …
Dan Primack / Axios:
Source: Dragoneer raised $4.3B for its seventh VC fund and now has over $30B in AUM; it raised $3.8B for its sixth private fund in 2022  —  Dragoneer has raised $4.3 billion for its seventh venture capital fund, Axios has learned. … - The San Francisco-based firm raised $3.8 billion …
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  —  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.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:45 AM 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

Michael Savage / The Guardian:
The BBC names ex-Google executive Matt Brittin as its next director general, replacing Tim Davie, as the BBC negotiates its funding; Brittin left Google in 2025

Noor Ibrahim / Marie Claire:
Q&A with Wendy McMahon, who resigned last year as CEO and president of CBS News and Stations, on CBS under Bari Weiss, the pace of change for news, and more

Zoya Sheftalovich / Politico:
Internal email: Politico reviewed security after an off-the-record call between a reporter and an EU official was apparently intercepted and posted to YouTube

More News

Washington Post:
How David Sacks and AI adviser Sriram Krishnan overcame MAGA's opposition to Trump's AI executive order, talking to lawmakers and finally modifying its language

Earlier Picks

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
New York Times:
Investigation: after Trump returned to the White House, the SEC eased up on or dismissed 60%+ of ongoing crypto cases, including ones about Trump-tied companies
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