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Filing: Reddit says in its lawsuit against Australia's social media ban that it is "a collection of public fora" and social interaction isn't its "sole purpose" (Lauren Edmonds/Business Insider)

US volunteer fire departments are scrambling to find software amid shrinking options and higher costs, as companies backed by private equity dominate the market (Mike Baker/New York Times)

How David Sacks and AI adviser Sriram Krishnan overcame the opposition to Trump's AI EO, reaching out to lawmakers and finally modifying the text of the order (Washington Post)

Interviews with copywriters on generative AI's impact: their work used for training, layoffs, wages and rates in free fall, freelancers losing clients, and more (Brian Merchant/Blood in the Machine)

AI image generators like Nano Banana have increased realism by mimicking phone camera traits in contrast, exposure, and sharpening to avoid the uncanny valley (Allison Johnson/The Verge)

How Nvidia's lobbying efforts grew after Howard Lutnick brokered Jensen Huang's access to Trump, ending with the president's approval of the H200 sales to China (Financial Times)

Filing: Oracle signed ~$150B of data center leases in the three months ending November 30, raising its total data center and cloud capacity commitments to $248B (Martin Peers/The Information)

A look at iRobot, founded in 1990, and its slow collapse after US regulatory pressure killed Amazon's $1.7B deal in 2024 amid increased Chinese competition (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)

Investigation: after Trump's return to office, the SEC eased up on or dismissed 60%+ of ongoing crypto cases, including ones involving Trump-linked companies (New York Times)

How the UAE's growing interest in crypto drew Michael Saylor, Changpeng Zhao, and other executives to Abu Dhabi, hoping to secure deals with Emirati investors (Angus Berwick/Wall Street Journal)

An interview with Marcos Galperin, CEO of MercadoLibre, which has a $105B market cap, on his upcoming resignation, MercadoLibre's rivalry with Amazon, and more (Bloomberg)

iRobot files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after reaching a restructuring agreement to hand control to secured lender and key Chinese supplier Shenzhen Picea (Bloomberg)

How Skövde, a small Swedish city of 58,000, built a local video game ecosystem via a degree for game developers at University of Skövde and a startup incubator (Ralph Jones/The Guardian)

A look at the efforts to open private markets, where shares of startups like OpenAI trade, to small investors, and the opportunities and risks they bring (Corrie Driebusch/Wall Street Journal)

Delivery Hero Chair Kristin Skogen Lund backs CEO Niklas Östberg as the group explores asset sales amid shareholder pressure over its falling stock price (Kieran Smith/Financial Times)

Exor rejects Tether's all-cash offer for its 65.4% controlling stake in Juventus, which valued the Italian soccer club at €1.1B (Zack Abrams/The Block)

Solve Intelligence, which offers generative AI tools to law firms for IP and patent law work, raised a $40M Series B, bringing its total funding to $55M (Mike Butcher/Pathfounders)

A look at Trump's AI Executive Order and how its interstate commerce argument could backfire by invalidating laws in GOP states targeting "Big Tech censorship" (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)

A profile of ASML, Europe's most valuable company, as it prepares for a transition to High NA EUV, with high-volume manufacturing expected in 2027 and 2028 (Bloomberg)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)