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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 (Lydia Wheeler/Wall Street Journal)

Big Tech got almost everything it wanted from President Trump, as he backs policies that allow the industry to grow unfettered, worrying some conservatives (Cecilia Kang/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 (Noam Scheiber/New York 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 (Stephanie Stacey/Financial Times)

10h

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 (Patrick Oster/Bloomberg)

13h

How executives at humanoid robot startups like Agility Robotics and Weave Robotics are managing safety risks and tempering expectations for the technology (Sean McLain/Wall Street Journal)

16h

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 (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

20h

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 (Martha Muir/Financial 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 (Pranav Mukul/The Economic Times)

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 (Lawrence Abrams/BleepingComputer)

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" (Cheyenne MacDonald/Engadget)

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 (Dan Primack/Axios)

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 (Washington Post)

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 (Bloomberg)

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 (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)

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 (New York 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 (Eleanor Olcott/Financial Times)

A study finds that foreign direct investment accounts for 98% of Vietnam's electronics exports, "signaling limited technology spillovers" to the local economy (Lien Hoang/Nikkei Asia)

The European Commission claims €80B of €120B in post-EU Chips Act investments remain on track, despite the stalled GlobalFoundries-STMicro project in France (Virginie Malingre/Le Monde)

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 (New York Times)

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 (Gavin Baker/@gavinsbaker)

ServiceNow has spent $12B+ on acquisitions and investments in 2025 amid concerns about revenue growth, projected to fall below 20% in 2026 without acquisitions (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)

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 (Manish Singh/India Dispatch)

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 (Alex Harring/CNBC)

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 (Andre Revilla/Engadget)

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 (M.G. Siegler/Spyglass)

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 (Reuters)

Five FaZe Clan influencers exit after failed contract talks with new management; Matt Kalish, who invested $10M, calls FaZe's current structure "unsustainable" (Cecilia D'Anastasio/Bloomberg)

Governor Hochul signs law for mental health warnings on addictive social media features (Felix Day/WRGB)

Coinbase says a former customer service agent was arrested in India, following a May breach where hackers bribed contractors to access sensitive customer data (Muyao Shen/Bloomberg)

Federal records show ICE has increased its surveillance tech spending to $300M+ under Trump, as the White House lowered privacy guardrails around citizens' data (Alfred Ng/Politico)

Refinitiv: AI infrastructure companies borrowed $100B+ in 2025; small companies face higher interest rates given investor wariness over unproven AI businesses (Joe Rennison/New York Times)

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 (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

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 (Pranshu Verma/Washington Post)

Government data: shipments of foreign-branded mobile phones in China, primarily iPhones, rose 128.4% YoY in November 2025 to 6.93M units (Reuters)

Internal documents show Instagram's aggressive campaign to win back teens, including by boosting teen-friendly influencers, adjusting its algorithm, and more (Naomi Nix/Washington Post)

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 (Ben Schoon/9to5Google)

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 (Rafe Rosner-Uddin/Financial Times)

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 (Reuters)

Cursor CEO Michael Truell warns that "vibe coding" advanced projects may create "shaky foundations" and eventually "things start to kind of crumble" (Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez/Fortune)

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 (Annie Palmer/CNBC)

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 (Aishvarya Kavi/New York Times)

An interview with Citizen Lab founder Ronald Deibert about the US adopting authoritarian digital practices, the research group's accomplishments, and more (Finian Hazen/MIT Technology Review)

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 (Hartley Charlton/MacRumors)

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 (Siddharth/GSMArena.com)

AI sector minted 50+ new billionaires in 2025; Crunchbase: investors poured $200B+ into AI startups in 2025, or about 50% of global funding, up from 34% in 2024 (Alicia Park/Forbes)

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 (Jack Ewing/New York Times)

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 (Lisa Bonos/Washington Post)

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 (Paresh Dave/Wired)

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 (Nikou Asgari/Financial Times)