Techmeme
December 23, 2025, 3:55 AM

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.
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Coinbase agrees to acquire prediction markets startup The Clearing Company for an undisclosed sum; the startup was founded in 2025 and raised a $15M seed  —  Partner offers  —  Quick Take  — Coinbase has agreed to acquire The Clearing Company, a prediction markets startup …
Bonny Chu / Fox News:
The Pentagon partners with xAI to embed the company's frontier AI systems, based on the Grok family of models, directly into GenAI.mil as soon as early 2026  —  Grok will be deployed across systems serving 3 million military and civilian personnel by early 2026
Financial Times:
Sources: ByteDance has made preliminary plans to spend ~$23B in AI capex in 2026, up from ~$21.3B in 2025, and has budgeted ~$12B for AI processors  —  ByteDance set to increase capital expenditure next year in effort to further build AI infrastructure  —  TikTok owner ByteDance is set …
More: Reuters
Z.ai:
Chinese AI startup Z.ai releases GLM-4.7, an open-weight model that Z.ai says delivers significant improvements in coding performance compared to GLM-4.6  —  - Core Coding: GLM-4.7 brings clear gains, compared to its predecessor GLM-4.6, in multilingual agentic coding and terminal-based tasks …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
OpenAI rolls out Your Year with ChatGPT, a Spotify Wrapped-like feature, to Free, Plus, and Pro users in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand  —  ChatGPT is releasing its own version of Spotify Wrapped.  That is, the OpenAI-owned chatbot is now rolling out an annual review feature called …
NBC Los Angeles:
Vince Zampella, head of EA-owned Respawn Entertainment, ex-CEO of Infinity Ward, and co-creator of Call of Duty, died on December 21 at 55 in a single-car crash  —  What to Know  — Prolific video game designer Vince Zampella and a passenger were killed in a crash Sunday on Angeles Crest Highway …
More: BBC, Los Angeles Times, Engadget, The Guardian, Comic Book, TheGamer, Windows Central, Le Monde, The US Sun, Neowin, TMZ.com, Kotaku, Ars Technica, ABC, Deadline, Moneycontrol, UPI, France 24, CBS News, The Game Business, Dexerto, PocketGamer.biz, VINnews, GamesBeat, Tech4Gamers, The Hollywood Gossip, GamesRadar, San Francisco Chronicle, E! Online, NDTV Profit, The A.V. Club, Screen Rant, Washington Post, Australian Financial Review, Associated Press, Watcher Guru, Mashable, NBC News, Game File, Push Square, Mirror, GamesIndustry.biz, The Daily Caller, The Verge, Pure Xbox, Nintendo Life, Polygon.com, Metro.co.uk, Destructoid, XboxEra, PC Gamer, Video Games Chronicle, Game Informer, Game Developer, Whittier Daily News, Nintendo World Report Updates, WCNC-TV, The Hollywood Reporter, New York Daily News, Variety, The Wrap, GameSpot, WAGA-TV, Just Jared, Blue's News, and Stevivor
Heather Somerville / Wall Street Journal:
The US FCC bans imports, marketing, and sales of new foreign-made drones and components, including from China's DJI and Autel, citing national security concerns  —  American customers hoarding products in anticipation of restrictions against popular Chinese manufacturer DJI and a smaller competitor, Autel Robotics
Financial Times:
Despite concerns, Labour MPs and other left-wing UK politicians stay active on X; the UK government says it stopped paid ads in 2024, after spending £9M in 2021  —  Despite concerns, politicians continue to use Elon Musk's platform in search of a ‘civilised debate’ with constituents

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