← Back to news

T

Techmeme RSS Feed

Google announces system "autospatialization" for Android XR, an AI feature to turn 2D content, including games streamed from a PC, into 3D, arriving in 2026 (David Heaney/UploadVR)

After rallying early in 2025, Netflix shares have fallen 28% since the end of June amid concerns about its growth outlook and its costly pursuit of WBD (Bloomberg)

The US CFTC launches a pilot program allowing BTC, ETH, and USDC to be used as collateral in US derivatives markets (CoinDesk)

The CTO of Amazon's Zoox says the company plans to start charging for rides in Las Vegas in early 2026 and is focused on transporting people, not deliveries (Amanda Gerut/Fortune)

Trump says the US will allow Nvidia to ship H200 chips to "approved customers" in China and elsewhere, and 25% of the chip sales will be paid to the US (Kevin Breuninger/CNBC)

TikTok announces Shared Collection, to organize and share saved videos, and plans to launch Shared Feed, a daily curated selection of 15 videos, globally (Lawrence Bonk/Engadget)

Letterboxd plans to launch its Video Store film rental platform on December 10, offering curated indie titles in 23 countries, including the US, UK, and France (Todd Spangler/Variety)

Anthropic launches a Slack integration for Claude Code, expanding on the existing Claude app for Slack, launching in beta as a research preview (Kyt Dotson/SiliconANGLE)

Google details steps it is taking to secure Chrome's upcoming agentic browsing features, including a "User Alignment Critic" model that vets AI agent's actions (Abner Li/9to5Google)

Uber launches Uber Intelligence, an insights platform that lets advertisers tap into Uber's data about customer trips and deliveries (Lara O'Reilly/Business Insider)

OpenAI and Instacart launch a grocery shopping experience inside of ChatGPT, letting customers brainstorm meal ideas and check out via OpenAI Instant Checkout (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)

Apple and Google say they've developed new features that streamline the process of moving data between iOS and Android as part of a joint collaboration (Abner Li/9to5Google)

Samsung's Galaxy XR gets beta support for Google's realistic avatar system for video calls, a Travel Mode, and a built-in PC remote desktop feature (David Heaney/UploadVR)

An Airwallex executive warned in 2023 that China staff were pushing to access client data; Keith Rabois accuses Airwallex of enabling Chinese access to US data (Lucas Baird/Australian Financial Review)

Hands-on with Xreal's Project Aura prototype glasses: they feel like VR shrunken to a far smaller form, the 70° FoV is small but enough for immersion, and more (Scott Stein/CNET)

Google says it's working to create two different categories of AI-powered smart glasses: one with screens launching in 2026 and another that's audio-focused (Chris Welch/Bloomberg)

Source: the US Department of Commerce plans to allow the export of Nvidia's old H200 chips to China, seeking a compromise over controlling exports to China (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)

Sources: Google has told advertisers that it plans to bring ads to Gemini in 2026; Google's VP of Global Ads says there are no plans for ads in the Gemini app (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)

NextEra Energy expands its partnership with Google Cloud to develop data center campuses across the US and secures 2.5GW+ of clean energy contracts from Meta (Vallari Srivastava/Reuters)

Leaked letter: Tiger Global launches Private Investment Partners 17, a fund targeting raising $2.2B, signaling a pivot from megafunds to more discipline (CNBC)

Internal memo: Johny Srouji, who oversees Apple's chip division, tells his employees that "I don't plan on leaving anytime soon" (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Sources: Skild AI, which develops a foundation model for robots, is in talks to raise $1B+ from SoftBank and Nvidia at a ~$14B valuation, up from $4.7B in July (Reuters)

ICEBlock's developer sues the Trump administration in federal court for violating the First Amendment, after Apple removed its app under White House pressure (Bobby Allyn/NPR)

Unconventional AI raised a $475M seed led by a16z and Lightspeed at a $4.5B valuation to build a more energy-efficient AI computer, part of an up to $1B round (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg)

Michael Saylor's Strategy acquired 10,624 bitcoin for $962.7M between December 1 and 7, its largest BTC purchase since July; MSTR is down ~40% so far in 2025 (James Hunt/The Block)

Paramount launches a hostile bid to acquire WBD, offering WBD shareholders $30/share in a $108.4B all-cash deal; sources say WBD rejected the same bid last week (CNBC)

India's Tata Electronics signs up Intel as a prospective customer for its upcoming chip facilities; Tata is investing ~$14B to build fabs in Gujarat and Assam (Nandan Mandayam/Reuters)

President Trump says he will sign "a ONE RULE" EO on AI "this week" and "you can't expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something" (Bloomberg)

OpenAI survey of 9,000 workers at 100 companies: its tools save workers ~40-60 minutes daily on average for professional tasks; OpenAI has 1M+ business clients (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)

Netflix changed movie distribution, and its executives now think that licensing shows leaves money on the table; YouTube may help Netflix's WBD antitrust case (Ben Thompson/Stratechery)

The European Commission says Meta agreed to change its "pay or consent" model, including ad-light Instagram and Facebook versions, but "the case is not closed" (Barbara Moens/Financial Times)

Big Tech's AI data center plans, which are set to need an estimated 44GW of additional capacity by 2028, face a power crunch that could deflate the AI "bubble" (Financial Times)

Users of ByteDance's agentic AI phone Nubia M153 report that its Doubao assistant is blocked or limited by Tencent's WeChat, Alibaba's Taobao, and other apps (Cissy Zhou/Nikkei Asia)

Singapore-based banking and payments startup Airwallex raised $330M at an $8B valuation, after raising $300M at a $6.2B valuation in May, and plans a US HQ (Laith Al-Khalaf/Financial Times)

Binance receives three licenses from Abu Dhabi's financial regulator, allowing comprehensive operations across its exchange, clearing, and brokerage arms (Alex Dooler/Bloomberg)

Police in Edmonton, Canada partner with Axon to test body cameras with AI facial recognition, and say the results will be verified by human officers (Associated Press)

Google says Gemini 3 Pro sets new vision AI benchmark records, including in complex visual reasoning, beating Claude Opus 4.5 and GPT-5.1 in some categories (Rohan Doshi/The Keyword)

Interviews with 10 Kenyan AI annotators show Chinese companies hire data labelers via opaque middleman networks and WhatsApp groups to avoid accountability (Rest of World)

Coinbase reopens app registrations in India after an over-two-year pause, letting users make crypto-to-crypto trades, and plans to open up crypto buying in 2026 (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Inside the creation of AI actress Tilly Norwood, which included 2,000 iterations; Particle6, its creator, says it has ~60 NDAs for projects involving Tilly (Ellen Gamerman/Wall Street Journal)

How Pathway, a startup developing an alternative to the transformer, aims to use its Dragon Hatchling architecture to create a new class of adaptive AI systems (Steven Rosenbush/Wall Street Journal)

How "cash to crypto" swaps allow users everywhere to convert national currencies to stablecoins and then debit cards, avoiding financial oversight and sanctions (Aaron Krolik/New York Times)

IBM agrees to acquire data streaming software maker Confluent for ~$11B in cash, above its ~$8B market value as of its December 5 close, paying $31 per share (Lauren Thomas/Wall Street Journal)

A look at an "etiquette camp" for young founders in San Francisco, which teaches them how to dress, act, and talk, amid shifting expectations for tech founders (Lisa Bonos/Washington Post)

Impressions from a London test ride in a car using Wayve's self-driving tech; Wayve has raised $1.3B since its launch and is testing cars with Level 2+ autonomy (John Thornhill/Financial Times)

President Trump says Netflix's planned acquisition of WBD will have "to go through a process" and he will be personally involved in the decision-making process (Bloomberg)

An interview with Headspace CEO Tom Pickett on its AI chatbot Ebb, which he insists isn't for serious mental health issues, Ebb's upgrade to voice, and more (Emma Jacobs/Financial Times)

Sources: Aaru, which uses AI to simulate user behavior, raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures at multiple valuation tiers, including a $1B valuation tier (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

Sources: Ted Sarandos met with President Trump in November, and both agreed WBD should go to the highest bidder; Sarandos argued that Netflix wasn't a monopoly (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg)

Essential AI, whose CEO co-wrote Google's Attention Is All You Need paper, unveils Rnj-1, an 8B-parameter open model with SWE-bench performance close to GPT-4o (Ashish Vaswani/Essential AI)