| Financial Times: |
Trump Media agrees to merge with Google-backed fusion energy company TAE in a $6B deal and build the “world's first utility-scale fusion power plant” in 2026 — Trump Media & Technology Group's shares rise 37% after deal with TAE Technologies — The Trump family media group … | Jay Peters / The Verge: |
Filing: Sony and Tencent reach a “confidential settlement” over Tencent's Light of Motiram, a game that Sony alleged was a “slavish clone” of its Horizon series — Sony and Tencent have reached a ‘confidential settlement,’ and Light of Motiram is no longer listed on Steam or the Epic Games Store.| Fanny Potkin / Reuters: |
Sources: China built a working prototype of an EUV machine in early 2025 with a team of former ASML engineers who reverse-engineered the company's EUV machines — In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent … | Rebekah Valentine / IGN: |
Circana: Xbox Series console sales fell 70% YoY to an all-time low in November, compared to the PS5's 40% YoY drop and Switch 1 and 2's combined 10% YoY fall — Down again. — This morning, we learned that November was a surprisingly bad month for video game spending across the board.| OpenAI: |
OpenAI releases GPT‑5.2-Codex, with improvements on long-horizon work through context compaction, stronger performance on large code changes, and more — The most advanced agentic coding model for professional software engineering and defensive cybersecurity. — Get started| Wall Street Journal: |
Sources: Armadin, launched by Mandiant's founder Kevin Mandia to fight AI hacking, raised a $24M seed and is in talks to raise $100M+ at a $600M+ valuation — As AI threatens to give advantage to attackers, man who built Google's $5.4 billion Mandiant business works to restore balance| Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic: |
| Juli Clover / MacRumors: |
| Niko Gallogly / New York Times: |
Stockholm-based vibe coding startup Lovable raised $330M led by CapitalG and Menlo Ventures at a $6.6B valuation, up from $1.8B after raising $200M in July — The Swedish company is now valued at $6.6 billion, more than triple its $1.8 billion valuation set by investors in July.| Financial Times: |
Sources: Yann LeCun is in early talks to raise €500M for his startup at a ~€3B valuation, and plans to name Alexandre LeBrun as CEO, ahead of a January launch — Turing award winner is in early talks to raise €500mn ahead of January launch — Meta's chief artificial … | Chance Miller / 9to5Mac: |
Apple says it will roll out more App Store ads in 2026 “to increase opportunity in search results”; Apple's website says 800M+ users visit the App Store weekly — Apple is expanding the number of ads that appear in App Store search results. In an update on its Apple Ads website today … | OpenAI: |
OpenAI opens app submissions for review and publication in ChatGPT, where users can discover or search for apps in a new app directory — We're opening app submissions for review and publication in ChatGPT, and users can discover apps in the app directory. — Earlier this year at DevDay, we introduced apps in ChatGPT.| Axios: |
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr tells a Senate committee the FCC “is not an independent agency”; the agency removed “independent agency” from its site as he testified — FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in his Wednesday Senate testimony that the agency he governs “is not an independent agency, formally speaking.”| Jake Bleiberg / Bloomberg: |
Amazon CSO Stephen Schmidt says subtle keystroke data lag, measuring 110ms instead of the expected tens of milliseconds, helped catch a North Korean IT worker — Security personnel tracked connections from a contractor. — An infinitesimal delay in the typed commands of a new IT worker provided … | Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat: |
Anthropic launches Agent Skills, which let AI assistants perform specialized tasks using modular instructions, and says Microsoft, Cursor, and others use them — Anthropic said on Wednesday it would release its Agent Skills technology as an open standard, a strategic bet that sharing … | Chainalysis: |
North Korean hackers stole a record $2.02B in crypto in 2025, a 51% YoY rise that takes its cumulative stolen total to $6.75B; individual wallet hacks hit 158K — TL;DR — North Korean hackers stole $2.02 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025, a 51% year-over-year increase … | The Information: |
Sources describe tensions between OpenAI's research and ChatGPT product groups, leading to the “code red”; OpenAI is set to beat its 2025 revenue goal of $13B — Over the past year, some OpenAI staffers noticed a concerning change in the way people who used ChatGPT were reacting to improvements in the chatbot.| Annie Palmer / CNBC: |
Instacart will pay $60M to settle FTC allegations that it used deceptive tactics in its subscription signup and “satisfaction guarantee” advertising — Instacart will pay $60 million to settle allegations by the Federal Trade Commission that it misled users with false advertising and deployed … | Jody Godoy / Reuters: |
| Courtney Subramanian / Bloomberg: |
Twenty-four companies, including Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, OpenAI, and AWS, join the US Genesis Mission to boost the use of AI for scientific discovery — Two dozen top artificial intelligence companies have signed on to join the federal government's “Genesis Mission,” … | Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News: |
Nirvana, which uses real-time driving telematics to build insurance policies for truckers, raised a $100M Series D at a $1.5B valuation, up from $830M in March — Nirvana Insurance, an AI-based commercial insurance platform for the trucking industry, has raised a $100 million Series D round … | Justine Calma / The Verge: |
Study: AI's 2025 power demand could hit 23GW, above 2024 Bitcoin mining levels, and AI carbon emissions could hit 32.6M to 79.7M tons, compared to NYC's 50M — A new study estimates the environmental impact of AI in 2025 and calls for more transparency from companies on their pollution and water consumption.| Todd Spangler / Variety: |
Netflix hires ESPN anchor Elle Duncan as its first on-air host for live sports and cultural events; she has appeared on SportsCenter, College GameDay, and more — Netflix execs used to dismiss the idea that they would acquire live sports rights. Now the world's biggest premium streamer … | Jeremy Kahn / Fortune: |
Endra, whose AI tools automate mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design for commercial buildings, raised a $20M seed led by Notion — Their startup just raised a $20 million seed funding round led by Notion Capital.PHOTO COURTESY OF ENDRA — When architects design a commercial building … | Shakeel Hashim / Transformer: |
UK AI Security Institute report: AI models are rapidly improving at potentially dangerous biological and chemical tasks, and show fast jumps in self-replication — AI models are rapidly improving at potentially dangerous biological and chemical tasks, and also showing fast increases … | Gavin Bonshor / More Than Moore: |
An in-depth look at a recent research paper that offered a roadmap to the viability of 3D HBM-on-GPU integration for improved AI performance and utilization — Five Things You Should Know Before Reading: — “3D HBM” Now Feasible: Offers improved AI performance and utilization.| Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch: |
Rivian launches Universal Hands-Free driving for second-generation R1 EVs, expanding coverage from 135,000 highway miles to 3.5M+ miles across the US and Canada — Rivian's new second-generation R1 EVs are receiving an update today that brings the new “Universal Hands-Free” driving software … | Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal: |
In an experiment, Claude ran a vending machine in the WSJ newsroom and lost $1,000+ after it dropped prices to zero, gave away a free PlayStation, and more — Anthropic's Claude ran a snack operation in the WSJ newsroom. It gave away a free PlayStation, ordered a live fish—and taught us lessons about the future of AI agents.| Todd Bishop / GeekWire: |
Amazon rolls out Alexa+ on the web to early access users, with chat functionality, smart home controls, file management, and cross-device conversations — Amazon is quietly rolling out the last big pillar of its AI-powered Alexa+ vision: the Alexa.com website, bridging the gap between its Echo devices … | Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune: |
Sources: Salient, which uses AI to automate loan servicing, raised $10M following a $60M Series A in June, pushing its valuation to ~$500M; its ARR hit $25M — In an industry where high churn is the norm, Salient has retained all of its customers.COURTESY OF MATRIX.VC
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| Issie Lapowsky / Rest of World: |
| Harry McCracken / Fast Company: |
| The Information: |
| MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: |