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December 15, 2025, 10:00 PM
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Top News

Natalie Alms / Nextgov/FCW:
The Trump administration launches the US Tech Force to recruit ~1,000 staffers from Apple, Meta, xAI, and others for two-year stints to modernize the government  —  After pushing hundreds of thousands of government employees to leave their posts and dismantling many government technology units …
Reuters:
Internal docs: Meta earned $18B+ in annual ad sales from China in 2024, making up 10%+ of its global revenue, with $3B+ linked to fraudulent ads, like for scams  —  A Reuters investigation reveals the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp decided to accept high levels of fraudulent advertisements from China.
TechCrunch:
Ford plans to repurpose its US battery manufacturing capacity to launch a battery energy storage business for data centers, amid a shift away from large EVs  —  Amid Ford's shift away from making large electric vehicles, the automaker is adding a new product line to find a home for its batteries.
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Shares of Tesla closed at a 2025 high on Monday after the company confirmed it is testing driverless vehicles in Austin without a human safety operator  —  Nearly six months after launching a limited Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas with safety drivers in the car, the company …
Financial Times:
Sources: the UK government wants Apple, Google, and others to block explicit images at the OS level by default to protect kids and have adults verify their ages  —  Home Office expected to encourage companies to introduce controls  —  The UK government wants technology companies …
Arsheeya Bajwa / Reuters:
Nvidia acquires SchedMD, the developer of Slurm, an open-source AI workload management system, and says it will keep distributing Slurm on an open-source basis  —  Nvidia (NVDA.O) said on Monday it acquired AI software firm SchedMD, as the chip designer doubles down on open-source technology …
Emilia David / VentureBeat:
Allen Institute for AI launches Bolmo 7B and Bolmo 1B, claiming they are “the first fully open byte-level language models”, built on its Olmo 3 models  —  Enterprises that want tokenizer-free multilingual models are increasingly turning to byte-level language models to reduce brittleness in noisy or low-resource text.
Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal:
PayPal says it has filed applications to establish PayPal Bank to provide loans more efficiently to US small businesses and reduce its reliance on third parties  —  The payments company says it filed applications with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the FDIC to establish PayPal Bank
Reshmi Basu / Bloomberg:
Lidar manufacturer Luminar files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and says it reached a deal to sell its semiconductor subsidiary to Quantum Computing Inc. for $110M  —  Luminar Technologies Inc, which manufactures laser-based sensors for cars, filed for bankruptcy shortly after it lost a contract with Swedish carmaker Volvo Car AB.
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Intel names Robin Colwell, deputy assistant to President Trump, as its head of government affairs, and Pushkar Ranade, the CEO's chief of staff, as interim CTO  —  Intel (INTC.O) on Monday appointed an economic adviser to U.S. President Trump as its head of government affairs …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
GM is adding native Apple Music to select vehicles, and rolls out support for digital keys, after it started phasing out CarPlay in 2023  —  General Motors is racing to add more native apps to make up for its decision to block Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Google is shutting down its dark web monitoring tool, launched in 2024 to alert users when their personal info is detected on the dark web, on February 16, 2026  —  One of the lesser-known features that Google offers is a “Dark Web Report” monitoring tool, but it's about to shut down in early 2026.
Emilia David / VentureBeat:
Nvidia launches Nemotron 3, a family of AI models using a hybrid mixture-of-experts architecture and the Mamba-Transformer design, in 30B, 100B, and ~500B sizes  —  Nvidia launched the new version of its frontier models, Nemotron 3, by leaning in on a model architecture that the world's …
New York Times:
Sources: the US has paused a tech trade deal with the UK, signed in September, over disagreements about the UK's digital regulations and food safety rules  —  The U.S. government has paused a tech-focused trade pledge with Britain over broader disagreements about Britain's digital regulations and food safety rules.
Maxwell Zeff / Wired:NEW
OpenAI's chief communications officer Hannah Wong will leave in January; Wong joined in 2021 and led PR during Sam Altman's brief ouster and return in 2023  —  Hannah Wong told staff she is moving on to her “next chapter.”  The company will be running an executive search to find a replacement, according to a memo.
More: Axios.  LinkedIn: Hannah Wong
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare 2025 report: global internet traffic grew 19% in 2025, ChatGPT was the most popular AI service, global traffic from Starlink grew 2.3x, and more  —  Internet connectivity is critically important to everyday communication, commerce, entertainment, and transportation.
Bloomberg:
How crypto entrepreneur Bill Zanker helped Trump and Melania launch memecoins; as of December 10, $TRUMP was down 92% since its peak and $MELANIA was down 99%  —  No one wants to claim credit for helping the first couple launch cryptocurrencies that plummeted more than 90% from their peak.
More: Mother Jones.  X: @maxabelson.  Bluesky: @carnage4life, @kuromaku.com, and @petertl
Caroline Hyde / Bloomberg:
AI drug discovery startup Chai Discovery raised a $130M Series B led by Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst at a $1.3B valuation, taking its total funding to $225M  —  Chai Discovery, an artificial intelligence drug-discovery company backed by OpenAI, has raised $130 million to build a “computer-aided design suite” for molecules.
Shopify:
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26  —  Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
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Erin Griffith / New York Times:
Lightspeed raised $9B+ across six AI funds, including $3.3B to back breakout hits like Anthropic, xAI, and Mistral; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups  —  The artificial intelligence boom is expensive, prompting venture capital firms to raise enormous sums to keep up.
Ben Glickman / Wall Street Journal:
Teneo survey of 350+ public-company CEOs: 68% plan to spend more on AI in 2026 than in 2025, <50% of AI projects generated more returns than they cost, and more  —  Teneo's annual survey finds 68% of chief executives plan to increase AI spending in 2026  —  Chief executives …

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Newest

Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
OpenAI's chief communications officer Hannah Wong will leave in January; Wong joined in 2021 and led PR during Sam Altman's brief ouster and return in 2023Find
New
New York Times:
Sources: the US has paused a tech trade deal with the UK, signed in September, over disagreements about the UK's digital regulations and food safety rulesFind
1½ hours ago
Emilia David / VentureBeat:
Allen Institute for AI launches Bolmo 7B and Bolmo 1B, claiming they are “the first fully open byte-level language models”, built on its Olmo 3 modelsFind
2 hours ago
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Shares of Tesla closed at a 2025 high on Monday after the company confirmed it is testing driverless vehicles in Austin without a human safety operatorFind
3 hours ago
Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal:
PayPal says it has filed applications to establish PayPal Bank to provide loans more efficiently to US small businesses and reduce its reliance on third partiesFind
3½ hours ago
TechCrunch:
Ford plans to repurpose its US battery manufacturing capacity to launch a battery energy storage business for data centers, amid a shift away from large EVsFind
3½ hours ago
Ari Levy / CNBC:
Shares of Broadcom, CoreWeave, and Oracle, companies tied to the AI infrastructure buildout, extend last week's decline; ORCL is down 46%+ since September 10Find
4 hours ago
Full Time-Sorted List

From Mediagazer

Dan Mangan / CNBC:
President Trump files a $5B defamation lawsuit against the BBC, alleging it intentionally doctored a Panorama documentary to misrepresent his January 6 speech

Kanis Leung / Associated Press:
Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai is found guilty of colluding with foreign forces and conspiring to publish seditious articles, and faces a possible life sentence

Aidan Ryan / The Boston Globe:
The Boston Globe says Brian McGrory will return as editor, after Nancy Barnes' departure at the end of 2025; McGrory previously was editor from 2012 to 2023

More News

Luke James / Tom's Hardware:
LG smart TV owners say a webOS update pinned Microsoft Copilot to the home screen, with no apparent way to remove the app; LG unveiled an AI TV strategy at CES
Rose Henderson / Bloomberg:
Memo: Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos lay out Netflix's WBD offer, moving to quell concerns about job losses and the end of theater releases, after Paramount's bid
Anna Heim / TechCrunch:
Berlin-based Mirelo, whose AI models can interpret videos to add synced sound effects, raised a $41M seed led by Index Ventures and a16z, after a $3M pre-seed
Naomi Nix / Washington Post:
Tech whistleblowers like Yaël Eisenstat say coming forward has unexpectedly derailed their lives and careers; Meta is in litigation with Sarah Wynn-Williams

Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
DTCC: credit default swaps tied to a handful of US tech groups have climbed 90% since early September, as investors seek ways to protect against an AI debt bust
John Reynolds / Tech.eu:
London-based PolyAI, which makes call center AI voice assistants, raised an $86M Series D led by Georgian, Hedosophia, and Khosla, after raising $50M in 2024
Mike Baker / New York Times:
US volunteer fire departments are scrambling to find software amid shrinking options and higher costs, as companies backed by private equity dominate the market
Brian Merchant / Blood in the Machine:
Interviews with copywriters on generative AI's impact: their work used for training, layoffs, wages and rates in free fall, freelancers losing clients, and more
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