Techmeme
December 30, 2025, 8:50 PM

Top News

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
M.G. Siegler / Spyglass:
Nikkei Asia:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Elon Musk says xAI bought a third building called “MACROHARDRR”, reportedly adjacent to Colossus 2, that will take the company's training compute to almost 2GW  —  Elon Musk's xAI is planning an expansion of its massive data center complex in Memphis, and has purchased a third building …
CTech:
Sources: Nvidia is in advanced talks to acquire Tel Aviv-based AI21, which is building its own LLMs, for $2B to $3B; the deal would resemble an acquihire  —  EXCLUSIVE: The move would mark Nvidia's fourth major Israeli purchase and signal the limits of Israel's LLM ambitions.
SoftBank Group Corp.:
SoftBank says it has completed a $22.5B investment in OpenAI, finalizing its up to $40B investment commitment announced in March and taking its stake to ~11%  —  SoftBank Group Corp. ("SBG" or the “Company") today announced that it has completed an additional investment of $22.5 billion …
Themis Qi / South China Morning Post:
Z.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
Zak Killian / Tom's Hardware:
IDC expects shipments of PCs could shrink by up to 9% YoY in 2026 due to global memory shortages, as demand from AI data centers continues to outstrip supply  —  Memory shortages are expected to have a serious impact on the PC and smartphone market. … The International Data Corporation …
More: IDC, Engadget, TrendForce, PetaPixel, 9to5Mac, and Pocket-lint
LinkedIn: Bryan Ma.  Bluesky: @carnage4life.  Forums: r/technology
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 …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Two ex-staffers of cybersecurity incident response companies Sygnia and DigitalMint plead guilty to targeting US companies in 2023's BlackCat ransomware attacks  —  Two former employees of cybersecurity incident response companies Sygnia and DigitalMint have pleaded guilty to targeting U.S. companies …
Suzanne Smalley / The Record:
The US Treasury has lifted sanctions on three executives tied to spyware maker Intellexa, reversing a designation imposed by the Biden administration in 2024  —  The Treasury Department on Tuesday took three people closely affiliated with the holding company behind Predator spyware off of a sanctions list …
Zhengdong Wang:
A reflection on AI advances in the past decade and how scaling and time-horizon trends might point to far greater capabilities in the decade ahead  —  People love to predict the future.  Back in June, Peter Thiel recounted a conversation he had with Elon Musk.
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 …
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 …

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Earlier Picks

Vikki Blake / Eurogamer.net: