Techmeme
December 29, 2025, 3:45 AM
 

December 29, 2025

12:05 AM  •
Lydia Wheeler / Wall Street Journal:  Sources and a memo: the US DOJ is using a novel reading of a federal anti-fraud law to probe contractors, including Google and Verizon, over their DEI programs

December 28, 2025

10:50 PM  •
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:  Big Tech got almost everything it wanted from President Trump, as he backs policies that allow the industry to grow unfettered, worrying some conservatives
7:00 PM  •
Noam Scheiber / New York Times:  How tech worker activism has grown more cautious as companies crack down and once-privileged workers realize they don't have much leverage
3:55 PM  •
Stephanie Stacey / Financial Times:  Global hotel groups are intensifying efforts to get customers to book directly, as they seek to save on online platform commissions and prepare for AI agents
1:00 PM  •
Patrick Oster / Bloomberg:  Lou Gerstner, a former IBM CEO and chairman credited with turning the company around, died at 83; IBM's market value rose from $29B to ~$168B during his tenure
10:15 AM  •
Sean McLain / Wall Street Journal:  How executives at humanoid robot startups like Agility Robotics and Weave Robotics are managing safety risks and tempering expectations for the technology
6:15 AM  •
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:  Tracxn: VC funding for Indian startups fell 17%+ YoY to $10.5B in 2025 across 1,518 deals, down ~39% YoY; AI startups raised $643M, up 4% YoY, across 100 deals
2:15 AM  •
Martha Muir / Financial Times:  US data center developers, facing grid access wait times of up to seven years, are turning to aeroderivative turbines and diesel generators to power the AI boom
2:00 AM  •
Pranav Mukul / The Economic Times:  Bengaluru-based quick grocery delivery startup Zepto confidentially files for a ~$1.3B India IPO; Zepto raised $450M at a $7B valuation in October 2025
1:55 AM  •
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:  Ubisoft reopens Rainbow Six Siege after shutting down the server amid a breach exploiting the game's internal systems, and says the Marketplace remains closed
1:00 AM  •
Cheyenne MacDonald / Engadget:  Sam Altman says OpenAI is seeking a new Head of Preparedness, noting “the potential impact of models on mental health was something we saw a preview of in 2025”
12:40 AM  •
Dan Primack / Axios:  Sources: ~90% of Groq employees will join Nvidia and be paid cash for all vested shares; most shareholders will get per-share payouts tied to the $20B valuation
12:00 AM  •
Washington Post:  ChatGPT told a teen who died by suicide to call for help 74 times over months but also used words like “hanging” and “suicide” very often, say family's lawyers

December 27, 2025

11:05 PM  •
Bloomberg:  China's draft rules on the use of human-like AI would require companies to inform users they are dealing with AI when they log on and at two-hour intervals
5:15 PM  •
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:  A profile of the Digital Security Helpline, run by Access Now, which gives 24/7 help to reporters and others who suspect they are victims of government spyware
3:45 PM  •
New York Times:  Q&A with Edison Scientific CEO Sam Rodriques about Kosmos, Edison's AI tool for scientific research, why AI probably won't cure diseases anytime soon, and more
2:30 PM  •
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times:  A look at Chinese food delivery giant Meituan's subsidy war with Alibaba and JD.com, leading Meituan to a big Q3 loss and internal debate over global expansion
11:40 AM  •
Lien Hoang / Nikkei Asia:  A study finds that foreign direct investment accounts for 98% of Vietnam's electronics exports, “signaling limited technology spillovers” to the local economy
9:40 AM  •
Virginie Malingre / Le Monde:  The European Commission claims €80B of €120B in post-EU Chips Act investments remain on track, despite the stalled GlobalFoundries-STMicro project in France
6:40 AM  •
New York Times:  Sources: Peter Thiel and Larry Page may leave CA over a proposed ballot measure, opposed by Newsom, that levies a one-time 5% tax on those with $1B+ in assets
2:35 AM  •
Gavin Baker / @gavinsbaker:  As inference splits into prefill and decode, Nvidia's Groq deal could enable a “Rubin SRAM” variant optimized for ultra-low latency agentic reasoning workloads
2:15 AM  •
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:  ServiceNow has spent $12B+ on acquisitions and investments in 2025 amid concerns about revenue growth, projected to fall below 20% in 2026 without acquisitions
1:55 AM  •
Manish Singh / India Dispatch:  Facing disruption from GenAI, the $250B Indian IT industry has adapted by focusing on preparatory work AI requires, such as data cleanup and system integration
12:40 AM  •
Alex Harring / CNBC:  Despite Palantir's high trailing P/E ratio of ~450, retail traders have poured billions of dollars into the stock, which is up ~3,000% in the past three years

December 26, 2025

10:05 PM  •
Andre Revilla / Engadget:  NY Gov. Kathy Hochul signs a law requiring social platforms with features like addictive feeds to show warning labels about mental health impacts on young users
9:00 PM  •
M.G. Siegler / Spyglass:  The Groq deal secures key talent for Nvidia, including CEO Jonathan Ross, creator of the TPU, and keeps them from companies that may try to make their own chips
7:15 PM  •
Reuters:  Indian IT services provider Coforge agrees to acquire Encora, which offers AI tools for product, cloud, and data engineering, at an enterprise value of $2.35B
5:50 PM  •
Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg:  Five FaZe Clan influencers exit after failed contract talks with new management; Matt Kalish, who invested $10M, calls FaZe's current structure “unsustainable”
4:15 PM  •
Felix Day / WRGB:  Governor Hochul signs law for mental health warnings on addictive social media features
3:05 PM  •
Muyao Shen / Bloomberg:  Coinbase says a former customer service agent was arrested in India, following a May breach where hackers bribed contractors to access sensitive customer data
1:50 PM  •
Alfred Ng / Politico:  Federal records show ICE has increased its surveillance tech spending to $300M+ under Trump, as the White House lowered privacy guardrails around citizens' data
11:55 AM  •
Joe Rennison / New York Times:  Refinitiv: AI infrastructure companies borrowed $100B+ in 2025; small companies face higher interest rates given investor wariness over unproven AI businesses
10:25 AM  •
Jordan Novet / CNBC:  Oracle stock fell 30% this quarter, its steepest drop since Q3 2001, when it slid ~34%, amid skepticism about its ability to open more data centers for OpenAI
9:05 AM  •
Pranshu Verma / Washington Post:  Amazon, Microsoft, and Google pledged a combined $67.5B in Indian investments since October, 80% of those in December, as part of an AI spending frenzy in India
8:05 AM  •
Reuters:  Government data: shipments of foreign-branded mobile phones in China, primarily iPhones, rose 128.4% YoY in November 2025 to 6.93M units
6:25 AM  •
Naomi Nix / Washington Post:  Internal documents show Instagram's aggressive campaign to win back teens, including by boosting teen-friendly influencers, adjusting its algorithm, and more
5:55 AM  •
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:  A Google support page in Hindi says the company is rolling out an option to let users change their Gmail addresses while retaining all data and services
2:00 AM  •
Rafe Rosner-Uddin / Financial Times:  The top 10 US tech billionaires collectively added $550B+ to their combined net worth in 2025, reaching $2.5T by December 24, up from $1.9T at the year's start
12:55 AM  •
Reuters:  Chinese state media: China launches three VC funds of $7.1B+ each to back early-stage “hard technology” startups valued below ¥500M, or about $71M
12:05 AM  •
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez / Fortune:  Cursor CEO Michael Truell warns that “vibe coding” advanced projects may create “shaky foundations” and eventually “things start to kind of crumble”

December 25, 2025

9:45 PM  •
Annie Palmer / CNBC:  As startups flood the market with AI shopping agents, Amazon is playing defense by blocking agents' access to its site and investing heavily in its own tools
7:05 PM  •
Aishvarya Kavi / New York Times:  A US judge temporarily blocks the Trump administration from detaining CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed, one of the Europeans the US barred on claims of promoting censorship
6:00 PM  •
Finian Hazen / MIT Technology Review:  An interview with Citizen Lab founder Ronald Deibert about the US adopting authoritarian digital practices, the research group's accomplishments, and more
4:20 PM  •
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors:  Apple settles with a Brazilian regulator to allow alternative app stores; report: Apple will charge a 5% fee for alt app stores and 15% on App Store link-outs
2:40 PM  •
Siddharth / GSMArena.com:  Xiaomi unveils the $995+ Xiaomi 17 Ultra in China with a 200MP periscope camera, a 50MP 1" sensor, and an ultrawide; Leica edition gets a mechanical zoom ring
12:50 PM  •
Alicia Park / Forbes:  The AI sector minted 50+ new billionaires in 2025; Crunchbase: investors poured $200B+ into AI startups in 2025, or ~50% of global funding, up from 34% in 2024
10:30 AM  •
Jack Ewing / New York Times:  Tesla's robotaxi service in Austin significantly trails Waymo, deploying an estimated 30 cars with safety drivers, vs. Waymo's 200 cars without human monitors
8:25 AM  •
Lisa Bonos / Washington Post:  A look at the humans employed to rescue robotaxis; Waymo uses the Honk app to pay $20 to $24 to manually close robotaxi doors and $60 to $80 to tow its cars
6:50 AM  •
Paresh Dave / Wired:  A look at Detroit's Apple Developer Academy, launched after the BLM protests, which spends $20K per student, nearly 2x the budget of local community colleges
4:05 AM  •
Nikou Asgari / Financial Times:  PitchBook: crypto M&A hit $8.6B across 267 deals in 2025 vs. $2.17B in 2024; 11 crypto IPOs raised $14.6B worldwide, up from $310M from four IPOs in 2024
2:00 AM  •
Theodore Schleifer / New York Times:  How Larry Ellison is helping his son David build a media empire, including making the case to Trump for why Paramount, not Netflix, should acquire WBD
1:00 AM  •
The Information:  Sources: Nvidia's licensing deal with Groq, which has raised ~$1.8B, includes payouts to Groq's key execs and investors, including BlackRock and Tiger Global
12:05 AM  •
Takehiro Hasegawa / Nikkei Asia:  A teardown of Huawei's Mate 70 Pro and Pura 80 Pro shows 57% of components were made in China; similarly priced Huawei phones in 2023 had 32% Chinese components

December 24, 2025

9:40 PM  •
Sandro Iannaccone / Wired:  Q&A with Google DeepMind VP of Research Pushmeet Kohli on launching AlphaFold 2 five years ago, hallucinations, building an “AI co-scientist”, and more
7:50 PM  •
Eudora Wang / DealStreetAsia:  Chinese humanoid robot startup Galbot raised over $300M led by China Mobile's industry investment fund at a $3B valuation, bringing its total funding to $800M
5:15 PM  •
Ian King / Bloomberg:  Nvidia agrees to a licensing deal with Groq; CEO Jonathan Ross and other top executives will join Nvidia; Groq says it will continue operating independently
4:02 PM  •
David Faber / CNBC:  Disruptive CEO Alex Davis says Nvidia has agreed to buy assets from Groq for $20B in cash; leaked email: Jensen Huang says Nvidia is not acquiring Groq
2:35 PM  •
Tabby Kinder / Financial Times:  Analysis: Oracle has moved $66B of debt for building AI data centers off its balance sheet using SPVs; Meta has moved $30B, xAI moved $20B, and CoreWeave $2.6B
12:05 PM  •
Adam Satariano / New York Times:  The Trump administration's travel ban on five Europeans includes researchers working to tackle online disinformation and abuse, like CCDH founder Imran Ahmed
11:20 AM  •
Eunice Xu / South China Morning Post:  Beijing-based DP Technology, which develops AI tools used by researchers for tasks like computer-aided drug design and battery design, raised a ~$114M Series C
9:20 AM  •
The Information:  Sources: OpenAI staff discussed prioritizing sponsored content in ChatGPT when users ask relevant queries and created mockups with ads in sidebars or as pop-ups
8:30 AM  •
Lorne Cook / Associated Press:  The EU warns of possible action after the US imposes travel bans on five Europeans, saying it will defend its “regulatory autonomy against unjustified measures”
6:50 AM  •
Reuters:  How CEO Lip-Bu Tan gave Intel a lifeline after meeting with Trump in August; sources say Nvidia tested Intel's 18A to make chips but stopped moving forward
6:20 AM  •
Sana Pashankar / Bloomberg:  AST launches its largest-ever satellite from India, hosting the BlueBird Block-2, the first in a series of deployments to challenge SpaceX in satellite internet
5:45 AM  •
Elvira Pollina / Reuters:  Italy's antitrust authority orders Meta to suspend contractual terms that bar rival AI chatbots from WhatsApp; Meta calls the decision “fundamentally flawed”
5:15 AM  •
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:  Chainalysis and TRM Labs estimate that $2.7B was stolen in crypto in 2025 in total, up from $2.2B in 2024; the biggest hack was the $1.4B breach at Bybit
4:30 AM  •
Kiran Rathee / The Economic Times:  Sources: India raises concerns about the misuse of Indian phone numbers on WhatsApp, which banned 9.8M Indian accounts per month on average in 2025 to October
4:00 AM  •
New York Times:  A look at the growing reliance of US data centers and the Pentagon on Chinese batteries, a dependence increasingly viewed as a national security threat

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