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December 30, 2025, 11:35 AM
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| Wall Street Journal: |
Sources: Meta is buying Manus for $2B+; Manus was raising at a $2B valuation when Meta approached it; Manus CEO Xiao Hong will report to Meta COO Javier Olivan — The deal for more than $2 billion is one of the first in which a major U.S. tech company has bought a startup with Chinese roots| Bloomberg: |
Meta agrees to acquire Singapore-based startup Manus, which makes an AI agent for SMBs; Manus said earlier in December its annual revenue run rate was $125M+ — Meta Platforms Inc. has agreed to buy Manus, a popular Singapore-based artificial intelligence agent with Chinese roots …
More: Reuters, Benzinga, Associated Press, Fortune, Engadget, Investor's Business Daily, The Register, Investing.com, Proactive, Taipei Times, Yahoo Finance, Barron's Online, Nairametrics, Ukrainian National News, Business Insider, EasternEye, The Decoder, Hong Kong Free Press HKFP, Ghacks, Nikkei Asia, COINOTAG, DigiTimes, Implicator.ai, Financial Times, Mercury News, Moneycontrol, SiliconANGLE, BSS, Benzinga, The Information, TestingCatalog, MarketWatch, and Bloomberg Law
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LinkedIn: Tim Roper and Mukund Mohan
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| Meta: |
Meta says it will continue to operate and sell the Manus service, and Manus' talent will join Meta to deliver agents across Meta products, including Meta AI — We are excited to announce that Manus is joining Meta to bring a leading agent to billions of people and unlock opportunities for businesses across our products.
More: Manus, eWeek, Reuters, CNBC, Constellation Research, Tech in Asia, Business Standard, Digital Trends, International Business Times, Yahoo Finance, and Neowin. Bluesky: @caseynewton
| M.G. Siegler / Spyglass: |
Meta just bought into the enterprise market with its Manus deal, which may eventually help it expand into cloud offerings like those of its Big Tech peers — Between Apple and Meta, I think it was a pretty close call in terms of which Big Tech company had the worse 2025 when it came to AI.| Nikkei Asia: |
Meta says Manus, initially based in Beijing and Wuhan, will cut Chinese investor ties after the deal and “will discontinue its services and operations in China” — PALO ALTO, California/HONG KONG — Meta says it will acquire AI startup Manus and that the Singapore-based company … | Samantha Subin / CNBC: |
Sources: SoftBank has completed its $40B investment in OpenAI — SoftBank has completed its $40 billion investment commitment to OpenAI, sources told CNBC's David Faber. — The Japanese investment giant sent over a final $22 billion to $22.5 billion last week, according to sources familiar …
More: Reuters, iPhone in Canada, and Sherwood News
| Osmond Chia / BBC: |
China's draft AI rules have measures to protect kids, like time limits and parental consent, ban gambling promotion content, and add suicide chats restrictions — China has proposed strict new rules for artificial intelligence (AI) to provide safeguards for children and prevent chatbots …
More: Ars Technica, CNBC, France 24, Forbes, Neowin, and Tech in Asia
Forums: r/technology, r/stupidpol, r/technology, and Slashdot
| Rafe Rosner-Uddin / Financial Times: |
Sources: Satya Nadella is focused on the increasing AI competition from Amazon and Google; Microsoft Deputy CTO Dee Templeton says Nadella is in “founder mode” — Software giant faces intense competition from Alphabet, Amazon and start-ups — Satya Nadella has overhauled … | Reuters: |
Sources: China is requiring chipmakers to use at least 50% domestically made equipment for adding new capacity, in a rule that is not publicly documented — China is requiring chipmakers to use at least 50% domestically made equipment for adding new capacity, three people familiar with the matter said …
More: The Information, Tom's Hardware, Benzinga, and DigiTimes
| Youkyung Lee / Bloomberg: |
Samsung, up 125%, and SK Hynix, up 268%, accounted for nearly half of the 76% gain in South Korea's Kospi, the world's best-performing major stock index in 2025 — South Korea's stock market renaissance in 2025 was one for the history books. Buoyed by world-beating gains in arms exporters …
More: Bloomberg
| Themis Qi / South China Morning Post: |
Zhipu AI launches a share sale to raise ~$560M in a Hong Kong IPO at a valuation of ~$6.6B, which would make it the first LLM developer listed in Hong Kong — The company, marketed overseas as Z.ai, eyes US$6.6 billion valuation with Hong Kong's first large language model listing| Natallie Rocha / New York Times: |
Sources, PitchBook data, and news reports: the founders of Perplexity, Figure AI, Safe Superintelligence, Harvey, and others joined the nine-figure club in 2025 — Just like past tech booms, the latest frenzy has produced a group of billionaires — at least on paper — from smaller start-ups.
More: The Indian Express
| Bloomberg: |
AI drug discovery startup Insilico rose 45% in its Hong Kong trading debut after raising $293M in an IPO; Insilico reported $85M+ in 2024 revenue — Insilico Medicine Cayman TopCo shares rose on their trading debut in Hong Kong after raising $293 million in an initial public offering.| Hyunjoo Jin / Reuters: |
Sources: the US has granted an annual license to Samsung and SK Hynix to ship their chip manufacturing equipment to their facilities in China for 2026 — The U.S. government has granted an annual licence to Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK Hynix (000660.KS) to bring in chip manufacturing equipment …
More: Benzinga, eeNews Europe, Korea Joongang Daily, DigiTimes, Foreign Affairs, Tech in Asia, Asia Times, SammyGuru, SamMobile, and Reuters
| Bloomberg: |
Fast delivery apps like Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy are expanding into India's Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, driven by rising incomes and cheap smartphones and data — Cheap data, new logistics and mobile-first platforms are expanding consumption far beyond India's urban elite.Sponsor Posts
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Zoho:
Celebrating 10 years of Zoho Marketplace — 30 Zoho products,2,900+ extensions and integrations,1 million+ users, and2 million installations.Zoho Marketplace celebrates a decade-long journey of adding timeless value …
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Hard Fork:
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