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Sources: Meta is buying Manus for $2B+, after approaching the startup during a fundraising at a $2B valuation; Manus CEO Xiao Hong will report to Javier Olivan (Wall Street Journal)

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Meta says Manus, initially based in Beijing and Wuhan, will cut Chinese investor ties after the deal and "will discontinue its services and operations in China" (Nikkei Asia)

Shares of Shenzhen-based OneRobotics opened flat in their HK debut after the Chinese home robotics maker raised $210M by selling 22M+ shares at about $9.50 each (Nikkei Asia)

Shares of Insilico rose 45% in their Hong Kong trading debut after the AI drug discovery startup raised $293M in an IPO; Insilico reported $85M+ in 2024 revenue (Bloomberg)

Samsung, up 125%, and SK Hynix, up 268%, accounted for nearly half of the 76% gain in South Korea's Kospi, the world's best-performing major stock index in 2025 (Youkyung Lee/Bloomberg)

Driven by the AI boom, chipmakers posted $400B+ in sales in 2025; FactSet projects revenue for Nvidia, Intel, Broadcom, AMD, and Qualcomm to reach $538B in 2026 (Wall Street Journal)

Meta says it will continue to operate and sell the Manus service, and Manus' talent will join Meta to deliver agents across Meta products, including Meta AI (Meta)

UK-based Octopus Energy reaches a deal to sell about $1B of equity in Kraken Technologies, its tech spin-off, at an $8.65B valuation to a syndicate of investors (Financial Times)

Meta agrees to acquire Singapore-based startup Manus, which makes an AI agent it sells to SMBs; Manus said in December its annual revenue run rate was $125M+ (Kurt Wagner/Bloomberg)

How diamonds are being converted to quantum sensors by inserting tiny imperfections, opening up potential uses in medicine, brain-computer interfaces, and more (Financial Times)

A look at the rift in the Democratic party over AI and data centers, as pro-business Democrats oppose the fiery, anti-AI politics of the progressive wing (Calder McHugh/Politico)

How Japan's viral horse racing game Umamusume, developed by Cygames, passed 30M downloads in Asia, spurring anime adaptations, concerts, and new racetrack fans (Katria Alampay/Bloomberg)

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Michał Kiciński, co-founder of CD Projekt and DRM-free digital games store GOG, has acquired 100% of the shares in GOG from CD Projekt (Vikki Blake/Eurogamer.net)

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China's SMIC plans to acquire the remaining 49% stake in its SMNC unit for ~$5.8B, making the unit wholly owned; SMNC focuses on 12" integrated circuit wafers (Reuters)

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Samsung and Google partner to bring Google Photos to TizenOS-powered TVs, launching in March 2026 and showing curated memories, ahead of CES 2026 (Rajesh Pandey/Android Police)

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SoftBank agrees to acquire NYSE-listed DigitalBridge, a PE firm that invests in data centers and digital infrastructure operators, for $4B, including debt (Bloomberg)

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Sources detail how JD Vance, David Sacks, and others brokered a fragile truce between President Trump and Elon Musk, who threatened to fund an America Party (Washington Post)

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ACCA, the world's largest accounting body, says it is ending remote exams to combat a rise in students cheating by using AI tools when taking tests (Ellesheva Kissin/Financial Times)

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SEC filing: Nvidia acquires Intel shares worth $5B, carrying out a transaction announced in September, buying 214.7M shares for $23.28 each (Arsheeya Bajwa/Reuters)

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China's central bank unveils an overhaul of its digital yuan framework, including saying that commercial banks will soon begin paying interest on holdings (Timmy Shen/The Block)

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Coupang says it is offering $1B+ in compensation to all 33.7M customers affected by South Korea's biggest-ever data breach, after an ex-staffer accessed data (Shinhye Kang/Bloomberg)

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Framework says it is raising DDR5 RAM prices to charge $10 per GB, after a price hike earlier in December due to "substantially higher costs" amid the AI boom (Emma Roth/The Verge)

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PitchBook: the biggest US private startups raised $150B in 2025, surpassing the previous high of $92B in 2021, boosted by large funding rounds by AI startups (George Hammond/Financial Times)

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A Kapwing study of the 15,000 top YouTube channels finds 278 of them have only posted AI-generated "slop" videos, amassing 63B+ views and 221M+ subscribers (Aisha Down/The Guardian)

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Sources: SoftBank is in advanced talks to buy NYSE-listed DigitalBridge, a private equity firm that invests in data centers and digital infrastructure operators (Bloomberg)

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Since the GENIUS Act's passage in July, the total value of stablecoins circulating rose from ~$250B to $300B+, as they become the "respectable" face of crypto (Joel Khalili/Wired)

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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)

In 2025, Big Tech got almost everything it wanted from President Trump, as he backs policies that let the industry 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)