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NY-based Octane, which offers "instant" financing for large recreational and lifestyle purchases, raised a $100M Series F at a post-money valuation of $1.3B (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)

Nvidia acquires SchedMD, the developer of Slurm, an open-source AI workload management system, and says it will keep distributing Slurm on an open-source basis (Arsheeya Bajwa/Reuters)

The Trump administration launches US Tech Force to recruit ~1,000 staffers from Apple, Meta, xAI, and others for two-year stints to modernize the government (Natalie Alms/Nextgov/FCW)

Source: Dragoneer raised $4.3B for its seventh VC fund and now has over $30B in AUM; it raised $3.8B for its sixth private fund in 2022 (Dan Primack/Axios)

Thrive Holdings announces it has hired Palantir CIO Jim Siders to serve as CEO of Shield Technology Partners, a newly created business focused on IT services (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)

LG smart TV owners say a webOS update pinned Microsoft Copilot to the home screen, with no apparent way to remove the app; LG unveiled an AI TV strategy at CES (Luke James/Tom's Hardware)

Internal docs: Meta earned $18B+ in annual ad sales from China in 2024, making up 10%+ of its global revenue, with $3B+ linked to fraudulent ads, like for scams (Reuters)

Lightspeed raised $9B+ across six AI funds, including $3.3B to back breakout hits like Anthropic, xAI, and Mistral; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups (Erin Griffith/New York Times)

Nvidia launches Nemotron 3, a family of AI models using a hybrid mixture-of-experts architecture and the Mamba-Transformer design, in 30B, 100B, and ~500B sizes (Emilia David/VentureBeat)

Memo: Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos lay out Netflix's WBD offer, moving to quell concerns about job losses and the end of theater releases, after Paramount's bid (Rose Henderson/Bloomberg)

Berlin-based Mirelo, whose AI models can interpret videos to add synced sound effects, raised a $41M seed led by Index Ventures and a16z, after a $3M pre-seed (Anna Heim/TechCrunch)

Tech whistleblowers like Yaël Eisenstat say coming forward has unexpectedly derailed their lives and careers; Meta is in litigation with Sarah Wynn-Williams (Naomi Nix/Washington Post)

AI drug discovery startup Chai Discovery raised a $130M Series B led by Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst at a $1.3B valuation, taking its total funding to $225M (Caroline Hyde/Bloomberg)

Teneo survey of 350+ public-company CEOs: 68% plan to spend more on AI in 2026 than in 2025, <50% of AI projects generated more returns than they cost, and more (Ben Glickman/Wall Street Journal)

Analysis: Tata, Infosys, and Cognizant are set to bear the brunt of Trump's $100K H-1B fee; from 2020 to 2024, 93% of Infosys' H-1B hires would have had to pay (Bloomberg)

Sources: the UK government wants Apple, Google, and others to block explicit images at the OS level by default to protect kids and have adults verify their ages (Financial Times)

AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon's rivalry is moving beyond ads, with explicit customer poaching efforts and lawsuits; AT&T blocked T-Mobile's Easy Switch tool twice (Patience Haggin/Wall Street Journal)

DTCC: credit default swaps tied to a handful of US tech groups have climbed 90% since early September, as investors seek ways to protect against an AI debt bust (Financial Times)

London-based PolyAI, which makes call center AI voice assistants, raised an $86M Series D led by Georgian, Hedosophia, and Khosla, after raising $50M in 2024 (John Reynolds/Tech.eu)

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)