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Crypto casinos have become online gambling havens for teens and problem gamblers, propped up by operators who turn social media influencers into recruiters (New York Times)

21m

Esusu, which offers a rent reporting API to Zillow, banks, and others to help renters build credit scores, raised a $50M Series C at a $1.2B valuation (Krysta Escobar/CNBC)

27m

Prime Security, which develops AI agents that help with security design during software development, raised a $20M Series A led by Scale Venture Partners (Chris Metinko/Axios)

42m

SuperCircle, which offers an AI-powered reverse logistics and recycling management service for retail brands, raised a $24M+ Series A led by Foundry Group (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)

52m

Amazon rolls out Ask This Book to the Kindle iOS app, letting readers ask questions about plot or characters; authors can't opt out (Will McCurdy/PCMag)

Qargo, which offers a cloud-based transport management service for carriers, freight forwarders, and third-party logistics, raised a $33M Series B led by Sofina (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)

Outset, which develops AI agents that help Microsoft and other companies conduct customer research and surveys, raised a $30M Series B led by Radical Ventures (Chris Metinko/Axios)

Sources: OpenAI told staff it was ending the six-month "vesting cliff" that required new employees to work for at least six months before their equity vests (Wall Street Journal)

Sources: ServiceNow is in advanced talks to buy Armis, which helps businesses secure and manage IoT devices, in a deal that may value Armis at as much as $7B (Bloomberg)

The US CFTC withdraws its 2020 guidance on the "actual delivery" of a digital asset, aiming to support broader access to regulated crypto markets (Micah Zimmerman/Bitcoin Magazine)

Q&A with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman on defining superintelligence, its application in the medical field, universal basic income, regulation, and more (Mishal Husain/Bloomberg)

Despite talk of an existential US-China AI race, the Chinese state and its major companies are spending more to dominate other domains, such as EVs and robotics (Tim Wu/Financial Times)

To build more powerful AI systems, some AI leaders are focusing on pursuing an approach called continual learning, which mimics how people learn over time (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)

A University of Cambridge analysis reveals how cheap SMS text message verification to create online accounts fuels global influence and manipulation campaigns (Clive Cookson/Financial Times)

10h

The AI boom is delaying US municipal projects, as ~$4T in AI infra spending through 2030 shifts skilled construction workers to AI data centers (Brooke Sutherland/Bloomberg)

11h

How Oracle's massive Stargate deal with OpenAI has pushed Oracle to the center of the AI boom, turning its market cap into a barometer on AI sentiment (Bloomberg)

11h

Blowback over posts about the death of Charlie Kirk has prompted companies to be more aggressive about monitoring employees' social media activity (Taylor Telford/Washington Post)

13h

A look at Netflix House in Philadelphia, a new 100K sq. ft. location for in-person experiences, which resembles a Disneyland attraction and a Dave & Buster's (Sarah Holder/Bloomberg)

14h

Sources: The Trump administration is drafting a new cyber strategy that would enlist private companies to mount offensive cyberattacks on foreign adversaries (Jamie Tarabay/Bloomberg)

15h

Sources: private capital giant Apollo Global has shorted loans and rapidly cut exposure to the enterprise software sector in 2025 amid concerns over AI threat (Financial Times)

17h

A profile of Nex, which makes the $249 Nex Playground motion-based gaming system targeted toward kids and projects more than $150M of sales this year (Ben Cohen/Wall Street Journal)

20h

OpenAI hopes the Disney deal boosts Sora, which has high costs and limited traction; Sensor Tower: users average 13 minutes per day on Sora vs. 90 on TikTok (Financial Times)

23h

Broadcom's shares fell 11% on December 12, their biggest single-day drop since January, after the company's AI sales outlook fell short of investor expectations (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)

Indian IT giant TCS agrees to acquire Coastal Cloud, a Florida-based Salesforce consulting partner, for $700M, in a bid to boost its AI and US customer business (Mark Haranas/CRN)

Cisco's stock touched a new record high of $80.25 on December 10, surpassing its previous split-adjusted high of $80.06 on March 27, 2000; CSCO is up 31.64% YTD (Robin Wigglesworth/Financial Times)

Seagate and Western Digital, with stocks each up 200%+ in 2025, will join Nasdaq 100 before the December 22 market open; GlobalFoundries will leave the index (Isabelle Lee/Bloomberg)

In a letter to the Trump administration, the GOP Senatorial Committee Chair Sen. Tim Scott said the Netflix-WBD deal raises "significant antitrust problems" (Semafor)

Google has removed dozens of AI videos from YouTube that depicted Disney characters, after Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter flagging the links (Gene Maddaus/Variety)

Microsoft expands its bug bounty program so that any critical vulnerability, including in third-party code, impacting its online services is eligible for awards (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)

OpenAI quietly adopted Anthropic's "skills" mechanism in ChatGPT and Codex; ChatGPT's skills include creating and modifying spreadsheets, docx files, and PDFs (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog)

Internal message: SpaceX has authorized an insider share sale at $421/share, valuing the company at ~$800B, and said it's preparing for a possible IPO in 2026 (Loren Grush/Bloomberg)

Singapore-based ChemLex raised a $45M funding round led by Granite Asia to build an AI-powered, automated chemistry lab to accelerate drug discovery (Rachyl Jones/Semafor)

Sources: Intel is in advanced talks to acquire AI chip startup SambaNova for about $1.6B including debt; the deal could come together as soon as next month (Bloomberg)

Automated digital wealth management company Wealthfront's stock closed up 1.36% in its Nasdaq debut, valuing it at ~$2.7B, after raising $486M in its IPO (Andrew Welsch/Barron's Online)

Shares of data center real estate company Fermi closed down 34% after a tenant terminated a $150M agreement to help fund an AI campus in West Texas (Financial Times)

Tether submits an all-cash offer to acquire a 65.4% stake in Italian soccer club Juventus, says it will invest €1B in the club if the acquisition is completed (Reuters)

Source: OpenEvidence, which offers an AI chatbot for doctors, is raising $250M at a $12B valuation, up from $6B in Oct., and has $150M in annualized ad revenue (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)

Zoom says its "federated AI" model, combining its SLM with open- and closed-source models, got 48.1% on Humanity's Last Exam vs. 45.8% for Gemini 3 Pro w/ tools (Xuedong Huang/Zoom)

David Sacks says China is rejecting Nvidia's H200 AI chips, because the country wants "semiconductor independence" and to "prop up and subsidize Huawei" (Maggie Eastland/Bloomberg)

Amazon Prime Video pulls its AI recaps, which it began testing in November, for Fallout, Bosch, and other shows after users noticed errors in the Fallout recaps (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab makes Tinker, its API for fine-tuning language models, generally available, adds support for Kimi K2 Thinking, and more (Thinking Machines Lab)

David Sacks says Trump's AI EO aims to ease companies' compliance burden and that the administration is working with Congress on a common AI oversight standard (Bloomberg)

Google expands Google Translate's live speech translation from Pixel Buds to any headphones, supporting 70+ languages, in beta on compatible Android phones (Stevie Bonifield/The Verge)

Policymakers behind key state AI bills scoff at Trump's EO; some GOP governors are pushing ahead with their own AI bills; Steve Bannon says Sacks misled Trump (Axios)

Sources: X reported $752M in Q3 revenue, up 17% YoY, a net loss of $577.4M, and EBITDA of ~$454M, up 16%; revenue for the first nine months of 2025 was $2B+ (Carmen Arroyo/Bloomberg)

Source: livestream shopping app Whatnot nears ~$1B in revenue for 2025; Whatnot says it has passed $6B in gross sales this year, more than doubling 2024's sales (Ann Gehan/The Information)

Companies are updating insider trading policies to cover prediction markets; Kalshi and others are pushing for federal oversight, including of insider trading (Rocket Drew/The Information)

Sources: Oracle has delayed completion of some OpenAI data centers from 2027 to 2028, largely due to labor and material shortages; Oracle denies delays (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)

Kalshi integrates its event trading platform into the popular crypto wallet Phantom; Dune: in November, Kalshi's trading volume hit $5.8B vs. Polymarket's $3.7B (Nina Bambysheva/Forbes)