Techmeme
December 22, 2025, 12:55 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Alphabet agrees to acquire data center company Intersect for $4.75B in cash, plus its existing debt, as part of its push to expand its AI data center footprint  —  Alphabet Inc. has agreed to buy clean energy developer Intersect Power LLC for $4.75 billion in cash, plus its existing debt …
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Italy's competition watchdog fines Apple €98.6M, saying the company's ATT rules are “disproportionate” and “harmful” to app developers and advertisers  —  Italy's Competition Authority (AGCM) has imposed a €98.6 million ($116 million) fine on Apple over its App Tracking Transparency feature.
Bloomberg:
Uber and Lyft partner with Baidu to trial driverless taxis in the UK in 2026; both companies plan to use Baidu's Apollo Go RT6 robotaxis  —  Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. are each teaming up with Baidu Inc. to trial driverless taxis in the UK, as ride-sharing companies race to deploy autonomous services around the world.
Financial Times:
Investigation: internal Binance files show it failed to stop hundreds of millions in crypto from flowing through suspicious accounts, even after a 2023 US deal  —  Leaked files show continued activity despite links to terror networks, failed ID checks and other red flags
Mitchell Peters / Billboard:
Sara Salinas / CNBC:
Paramount says Larry Ellison “agreed to provide an irrevocable personal guarantee of $40.4B” for its WBD bid, after WBD's board raised concerns about the offer  —  Paramount Skydance on Monday guaranteed the backing of billionaire Larry Ellison in an amended offer for Warner Bros. Discovery …
Chris Wack / Wall Street Journal:
Instacart scraps all item price tests after customer pushback, and won't charge different prices for the same items bought from the same store at the same time  —  Company says retailers will no longer be able to use Eversight technology to run item price tests on Instacart
Axios:
Sources: Erebor, Palmer Luckey's digital bank, raised $350M led by Lux Capital at a $4.35B post-money valuation; it secured FDIC approval last week  —  Erebor, a new digital bank co-founded by Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey, has quietly raised $350 million at a $4.35 billion post-money valuation, Axios has learned.
Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
Some experts in the human-computer interaction field say making AI chatbots act humanlike creates cognitive dissonance for users over how much to trust them  —  I first noticed how charming ChatGPT could be last year when I turned all my decision-making over to generative A.I. for a week.

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Featured Podcasts

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Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
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Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
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