Internal memo: TikTok has signed a deal to sell its US unit; Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX will collectively own 45% of the US entity, and ByteDance will retain ~20%  —  TikTok has signed a deal to sell its U.S. entity to a joint venture controlled by American investors, per an internal memo seen by Axios.

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 …

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.

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

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.

France charges a crew member of an Italian passenger ferry for allegedly infecting the ship with a remote access tool on behalf of a foreign power  —  French authorities arrested two crew members of an Italian passenger ferry suspected of infecting the ship with malware that could have enabled them to remotely control the vessel.

YouTube terminates Screen Culture and KH Studio, two large channels that used AI to create fake movie trailers; the platform earlier suspended the channels' ads  —  The Google-owned video giant has switched off Screen Culture and KH Studio, which together boasted well over 2 million subscribers and more than a billion views.

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

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 …

Anthropic launches Agent Skills as an open standard with a specification and SDK, and says VS Code, GitHub, Cursor, Goose, and others already support the format  —  Anthropic said on Wednesday it would release its Agent Skills technology as an open standard, a strategic bet that sharing …

Tim Sweeney says Fortnite will not return to iOS in Japan in 2025, as Apple is “charging a competition-crushing 21% junk fee on third-party in-app payments”  —  Sadly, Fortnite will not return to iOS in Japan in 2025 as promised. Apple was required to open up iOS to competing stores today, and instead of doing so honestly, they have launched another travesty of obstruction and lawbreaking in gross disrespect to the government and people [image]

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.

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 …

Sources: Meta is developing a new image and video-focused AI model codenamed Mango, expected to be released in H1 2026 along with its new LLM dubbed Avocado  —  Alexandr Wang, the company's AI chief, said the new model will debut soon, along with a large language model dubbed Avocado

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

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.”

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Netflix hires ESPN anchor Elle Duncan as its first on-air sports host in a multiyear deal; Duncan will also cover other live events for the company  —  Netflix execs used to dismiss the idea that they would acquire live sports rights.  Now the world's biggest premium streamer …

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.

Sources: OpenAI's new fundraising round could value it at as much as $830B; it aims to raise up to $100B and complete the round by the end of Q1 at the earliest  —  Concerns about an AI bubble have weighed on many publicly traded tech-related companies  —  OpenAI is aiming to raise …

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

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 …

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 …

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,” …