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Techmeme

The EU opens investigations into Temu and airport scanner maker Nuctech to assess whether they unfairly penetrated the EU market thanks to Beijing subsidies (Francesca Micheletti/Politico)

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Runware, which operates a developer tool platform that generates images, video, and audio in real-time, raised a $50M Series A, taking its total funding to $66M (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)

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Israeli startup Port, which offers a proprietary developer portal competitor to Spotify's open-source Backstage, raised a $100M Series C at an $800M valuation (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

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Harness, which uses AI to automate code testing, verification, security, and governance, raised a $240M Series E led by Goldman Sachs at a $5.5B valuation (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

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OpenAI faces a wrongful death lawsuit from the estate of an 83-year-old woman killed by her son, who had engaged in delusion-filled conversations with ChatGPT (Julie Jargon/Wall Street Journal)

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An Ai2 research scientist argues that AGI, as commonly conceived, will not emerge because it ignores, among other things, the physical realities of computation (Tim Dettmers)

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Q&A with investor Gavin Baker of Atreides Management on the economics of AI, data centers in space, mistakes SaaS companies are making in adopting AI, and more (Patrick O'Shaughnessy/Invest Like The Best on YouTube)

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Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal says the Indian edtech startup's valuation has fallen from its $3.5B peak three years ago to less than $500M, and confirms M&A talks (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

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A look at the Model Context Protocol and how it went from a passion project made by Anthropic employees to an industry standard managed by the Linux Foundation (Hayden Field/The Verge)

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China's power grid, the world's largest, gives it an edge in the global AI contest, helping Chinese companies develop AI models more cheaply than US competitors (Wall Street Journal)

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a16z crypto says it is expanding to Asia and opening an office in Seoul, calling South Korea the world's second-largest crypto market (Sam Reynolds/CoinDesk)

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Uber launches its B2B logistics service Uber Direct in India with ONDC integration, starting in Bengaluru with grocery deliveries for Zepto and KPN Farm Fresh (The Economic Times)

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US investors are boosting Chinese AI-related tech stocks and adding cash to ETFs tracking China's tech sector, as US lawmakers push for tighter capital curbs (Wall Street Journal)

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Uber discontinues monthly EV bonuses as it scales back key climate efforts after embracing Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, which slashed clean-energy incentives (Ben Elgin/Bloomberg)

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JD.com's JingDong Industrials, a supply chain tech and services provider, opened down 7.8% after the company raised ~$383M in its Hong Kong IPO (Reuters)

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Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based startup planning to launch a "Twitter.new" social network, petitions the USPTO to cancel X Corp.'s "abandoned" trademarks (Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica)

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A Microsoft analysis of 37.5M Copilot conversations from January to September 2025 finds health, career, and relationship topics dominated users' questions (Megan Morrone/Axios)

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Google DeepMind plans to open its "first automated science laboratory" in the UK in 2026, focused on using AI tools to develop new materials for chips and more (Melissa Heikkilä/Financial Times)

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Sources: the US is working on a settlement that could see ZTE pay $1B+ over alleged foreign bribery from 2018 and earlier; a deal would require China's approval (Reuters)

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Sei partners with Xiaomi to pre-install its crypto wallet and discovery app on all new Xiaomi phones sold outside mainland China and the US, starting in 2026 (Francisco Rodrigues/CoinDesk)

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A group of state AGs sent a letter to Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others warning their chatbots' "delusional outputs" could be violating state laws (Courtney Rozen/Reuters)

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The US CFTC grants crypto exchange Gemini a DCM license, allowing it to launch its prediction markets platform Gemini Titan (Daniel Kuhn/The Block)

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Google tests AI-powered overviews on some publications' Google News pages; publishers like Der Spiegel, El País, and WaPo in commercial partnerships get paid (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

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Spotify will begin testing a feature that lets a user write a prompt for a playlist and receive a unique set of songs based on the user's earlier behavior (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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Internal memo: Google is naming Amin Vahdat, who leads the company's AI and infrastructure team, to the new role of chief technologist for AI infrastructure (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)

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Amazon now offers same-day perishable grocery delivery in 2,300+ US markets and has expanded the service's grocery offerings by 30%+ since its August launch (Peyton Bigora/Grocery Dive)

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Google rolls out Preferred Sources globally, letting users customize "top stories" in Search, and launches highlighted links from users' news subscriptions (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Land)

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ChatGPT was 2025's most downloaded free app in the US iOS App Store, up from No. 4 in 2024, followed by Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, and Instagram (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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Adobe reports Q4 revenue up 10% YoY to $6.19B, Digital Media revenue up 11% to $4.62B, and forecasts FY 2026 revenue above estimates (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)

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Oracle reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $16.06B, vs. $16.21B est., raises FY capex forecast to ~$50B, up from $35B as of September; ORCL drops 11%+ after hours (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

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Reddit starts a limited test of verified profiles, an opt-in feature that places a gray checkmark beside the usernames of notable people or businesses (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)

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Sources: Google is set to be hit with a potentially large EU fine in Q1 2026 if it does not do more to ensure Google Play complies with EU competition rules (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

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OpenAI says the capabilities of its frontier AI models are accelerating and warns that upcoming models are likely to pose a "high" cybersecurity risk (Ina Fried/Axios)

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Google releases fully managed, remote MCP servers to help developers connect AI agents to services such as Maps, BigQuery, Compute Engine, and Kubernetes Engine (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)

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Sources: Blue Origin has worked for over a year on tech for orbital AI data centers; SpaceX plans to use upgraded Starlink satellites for AI computing payloads (Wall Street Journal)

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Sources: ByteDance and Alibaba have asked Nvidia about placing large orders for H200 chips after Trump's export approval, as they remain concerned about supply (Reuters)

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Sources: EU competition watchdogs raided Temu's European headquarters in Dublin last week, amid suspicions Temu may have received unfair subsidies from Beijing (Peter Chapman/Bloomberg)

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Tim Cook met with US lawmakers in a closed-door meeting to lobby against provisions in pending legislation that would require app stores to verify users' ages (Bloomberg)

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Nick Clegg joins London-based VC firm Hiro Capital as a general partner, and Yann LeCun joins the firm as an adviser; sources: Hiro looks to raise a €500M+ fund (Financial Times)

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Google unveils Emergency Live Video, similar to iOS' Emergency SOS Live Video, letting US users on Android 8 or later to share live video with 911 responders (Stevie Bonifield/The Verge)

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Dropbox says its CFO Timothy Regan will step down after five years in the role and will be succeeded by Avalara president Ross Tennenbaum; DBX drops 5%+ (Anhata Rooprai/Reuters)

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TikTok launches a podcast series called TikTok in the Mix, featuring four 30-minute episodes streamed live on TikTok; the first episode stars Demi Lovato (Jem Aswad/Variety)

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Amazon plans to let authors offer their DRM-free ebooks in the EPUB and PDF formats through Kindle Direct Publishing, starting January 20, 2026 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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YouTube TV plans to launch over 10 genre-specific, cheaper YouTube TV Plans in early 2026, including a Sports Plan featuring ESPN Unlimited and Fox Sports 1 (Todd Spangler/Variety)

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Shopify launches Product Network, an ad tool that lets merchants recommend and advertise products on other merchants' storefronts (Lauren Johnson/Adweek)

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Geothermal energy company Fervo, which aims to power data centers and more, raised $462M from Google and others, taking its total funding to $1.5B since 2017 (Benoît Morenne/Wall Street Journal)

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Starcloud, which launched a satellite with a Nvidia H100 chip in November, says the satellite is running and querying responses from Google's Gemma (Pia Singh/CNBC)

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In a series of lawsuits, Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, and Berkshire were accused of failing to keep their tech out of Russian-made weapons used in Ukraine (Bloomberg)

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Nvidia says that it hasn't seen "substantiation or received tips" about chip smuggling via data centers outside of China, after The Information's DeepSeek story (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)

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Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: the $630 pen-enabled e-reader is a tough sell for most people, even with its big 11" display and productivity features (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg)

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