Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News
Techmeme
December 19, 2025, 11:10 AM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

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.
Financial Times:
Memo: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew says ByteDance's US entities will retain direct control over core US revenue drivers, including ecommerce, ads, and marketing  —  Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX to invest in new data security joint venture as part of Trump-brokered deal
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
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 …
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.”
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
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Coinbase sues Connecticut, Illinois and Michigan over state attempts to regulate prediction markets, arguing that they fall under the jurisdiction of the CFTC  —  Coinbase Global Inc. said it is suing the US states of Michigan, Illinois and Connecticut over their attempts to regulate prediction markets.
Brock E.W. Turner / Axios:
Boston-based Neurable, which builds an OS for brain-computer interfaces, raised a $35M Series A led by Spectrum Moonshot Fund, bringing its total raised to $65M  —  Neurable, a neurotechnology company, raised a $35 million Series A round led by the Spectrum Moonshot Fund, CEO Ramses Alcaide tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Erin Woo / The Information:
Sources: Google has formed a new executive council to allocate computing capacity given a critical shortage; members include Thomas Kurian and Demis Hassabis  —  Earlier this year, Google convened a group of its top executives to address what some staffers see as an existential problem …
Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology:
Q&A with Sam Altman on OpenAI's “code red” call, enterprise strategy, product ambitions, IPO plans, ChatGPT's personalization plans, and more  —  OpenAI's CEO joins Big Technology for a candid discussion covering OpenAI's strategy, its product ambitions …
Vicky Ge Huang / Wall Street Journal:
The administrator winding down Do Kwon's Terraform Labs sues Jump Trading for $4B, alleging it unlawfully profited from and contributed to Terraform's collapse  —  Administrator winding down what remains of Terraform Labs is seeking $4 billion in damages  —  The administrator winding …
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.
Beatrice Nolan / Fortune:
Cursor-developer Anysphere acquires code review startup Graphite and says Graphite will continue operating as an independent product  —  The AI coding market is booming amid enterprise adoption.GRAPHITE  —  Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, is buying code review startup Graphite in a deal …
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 …
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
The US Senate confirms FDIC acting chairman Travis Hill to lead the agency, which regulates stablecoin issuers and impacts how the crypto industry is banked  —  In a package of confirmations, the U.S. Senate approved Mike Selig to lead the CFTC and Travis Hill to run the FDIC, both with major potential reach into crypto.
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
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.

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Build vs Buy Embedded Analytics: The Decision That Defines Your Product Roadmap  —  Every SaaS product team eventually hits the analytics wall.  Your customers want insights inside your app.  Your roadmap has no room to spare.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Access:
 The future of AI might be on your finger
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
 Axiom's Carina Hong: Solving Math's Hardest Problems With AI, And AI's Problems With Math
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.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
 Iran, Oil, and the US
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
 'Apple at 50', With John Siracusa
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Big Technology Podcast:
 OpenAI President Greg Brockman: AI Self-Improvement, The Superapp Bet, Path To AGI, Scaling Compute
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
 Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:10 AM ET, December 19, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

New York Times:
Sources: an Iranian-aligned militia in Iraq is seeking the release of several detained militia members in exchange for freeing journalist Shelly Kittleson

Heather Bushman / Indianapolis Star:
Circle City Broadcasting lays off what staffers call a significant share of WRTV's staff, after buying the Indianapolis station from Scripps under an FCC waiver

Rick Porter / The Hollywood Reporter:
Netflix averaged 3M viewers for its Opening Night MLB game March 25, a bit short of NBC and Peacock's MLB broadcast the next night, with 3.2M viewers

More News

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
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
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Instacart will pay $60M to settle FTC allegations that it used deceptive tactics in its subscription signup and “satisfaction guarantee” advertising

Earlier Picks

OpenAI:
OpenAI releases GPT‑5.2-Codex, with improvements on long-horizon work through context compaction, stronger performance on large code changes, and more
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
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
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
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter