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December 19, 2025, 5:25 AM
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Sara Fischer / Axios:
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 divest its U.S. entity to a joint venture controlled by American investors, per an internal memo seen by Axios.
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Memo: the TikTok US deal is set to close on Jan. 22; terms include retraining the recommendation algorithm on US user data and Oracle overseeing data protection  —  Abu Dhabi's state investment fund will also be a managing investor.  —  The TikTok sale is officially happening …
Suzanne Smalley / The Record:
Pennsylvania's Supreme Court rules that police can get Google search data without a warrant; an expert warns it may encourage warrantless searches nationwide  —  The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police did not need a warrant to obtain a convicted rapist's Google searches when investigating the crime.
Jake Kanter / Deadline:
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.
Lydia Beyoud / Bloomberg:
The US Senate confirms Trump pick Michael Selig as chairman of the CFTC, as lawmakers consider legislation to give the agency more control over digital assets  —  The US Senate on Thursday night confirmed Michael Selig as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Travis Hill …
Adamya Sharma / Android Authority:
Samsung unveils the Exynos 2600, the world's first smartphone SoC built on a 2nm Gate-All-Around process, expected to power some Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus models  —  Galaxy S26 could get Samsung's boldest chip yet: Meet the 2nm Exynos 2600.  —  •  —  TL;DR
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
Alex Heath / Sources:
Meta's head of Threads Connor Hayes says that fediverse compatibility isn't a priority for its current roadmap, but it is something that it's “maintaining”  —  Connor Hayes wants Meta's X rival to be “the place on the internet to talk about what's going on in the world.”
More: The Verge.  X: @alexeheath.  Bluesky: @pfrazee.com, @pfrazee.com, and @pfrazee.com
Threads: @technicallymims and @alexheath.  Mastodon: @thenexusofprivacy …
Mistral AI:
Mistral launches Mistral OCR 3, featuring improvements in processing forms, scanned documents, complex tables, and handwriting, priced at $2 per 1,000 pages  —  Overview  —  Mistral OCR 3 is designed to extract text and embedded images from a wide range of documents with exceptional fidelity.
Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg:
Sources: Riot Games is working on a major overhaul of League of Legends, internally called League Next, for 2027; Riot confirms a big update is in the works  —  A refreshed version being called ‘League Next’ is planned for 2027  —  Riot Games is working on a major overhaul of its flagship game League …
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.
Chris McGuire / Council on Foreign Relations:
US approving Nvidia H200 exports to China is based on the idea that Huawei is a viable competitor, but data shows the gap between Nvidia and Huawei is widening  —  Executive Summary  —  On December 8, the Trump administration announced plans to loosen U.S. export controls on artificial intelligence …
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 …
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
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 …
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,” …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:25 AM ET, December 19, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

Natalie Korach / @nataliekorach:
Sources: Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray spiked a story prepared by the newspaper's media desk covering the historic layoffs

The Guardian:
The UK raises the TV license fee, the BBC's main funding source, from £174.50 to £180 a year from April 1, saying it gives the BBC a “stable financial footing”

Corbin Bolies / The Wrap:
News Corp reports $242M in Q2 net income, down 21% YoY, rev. up 6% YoY to $2.36B vs. $2.30B est., digital-only WSJ subs up 13% to 4.3M, HarperCollins rev. up 6%

More News

Earlier Picks

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Luma AI launches Ray3 Modify, which allows users to modify existing footage by providing character reference images; users can also define start and end frames
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
Niko Gallogly / New York Times:
Stockholm-based AI 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
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
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
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
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
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