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Techmeme

Kalshi and Polymarket have partnered with social media accounts purporting to be breaking news reporters, some of which have repeatedly posted false information (Jordy Fee-Platt/The Athletic)

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Sources: ByteDance plans to spend about $14B on Nvidia's AI chips in 2026, an increase of about 18% from 2025 (Wency Chen/South China Morning Post)

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SoftBank says it has completed a $22.5B investment in OpenAI, finalizing its up to $40B investment commitment announced in March and taking its stake to ~11% (SoftBank Group Corp.)

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Filing: Chinese AI startup MiniMax seeks to raise up to ~$538.5M in a Hong Kong IPO, offering 25.4M shares at a price range of ~$19.40 to ~$21.20 per share (Shivangi Lahiri/Reuters)

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The US Treasury has lifted sanctions on three executives tied to spyware maker Intellexa, reversing a designation imposed by the Biden administration in 2024 (Suzanne Smalley/The Record)

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Elon Musk says xAI bought a third building called "MACROHARDRR", reportedly adjacent to Colossus 2, that will take the company's training compute to almost 2GW (Kurt Wagner/Bloomberg)

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A reflection on AI advances in the past decade and how scaling and time-horizon trends might point to far greater capabilities in the decade ahead (Zhengdong Wang)

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Review of Samsung's Galaxy Z TriFold: sturdy but poor camera performance and has some unique design flaws that make it even less polished than regular foldables (Vlad Savov/Bloomberg)

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IDC expects shipments of PCs could shrink by up to 9% YoY in 2026 due to global memory shortages, as demand from AI data centers continues to outstrip supply (Zak Killian/Tom's Hardware)

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Two ex-staffers of cybersecurity incident response companies Sygnia and DigitalMint plead guilty to targeting US companies in 2023's BlackCat ransomware attacks (Sergiu Gatlan/BleepingComputer)

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Sources: Nvidia is in advanced talks to acquire Tel Aviv-based AI21, which is building its own LLMs, for $2B to $3B; the deal would resemble an acquihire (CTech)

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Z.ai launches a share sale to raise ~$560M in a Hong Kong IPO at a valuation of ~$6.6B, which would make it the first LLM developer listed in Hong Kong (Themis Qi/South China Morning Post)

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Meta just bought into the enterprise market with its Manus deal, which may eventually help it expand into cloud offerings like those of its Big Tech peers (M.G. Siegler/Spyglass)

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Sources: SoftBank has completed its $40B investment in OpenAI (Samantha Subin/CNBC)

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China's draft AI rules have measures to protect kids, like time limits and parental consent, ban gambling promotion content, and add suicide chats restrictions (Osmond Chia/BBC)

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Sources: MiniMax has secured backing from Alibaba and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, among others, for its upcoming Hong Kong IPO in January (Bloomberg)

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Sources: China is requiring chipmakers to use at least 50% domestically made equipment for adding new capacity, in a rule that is not publicly documented (Reuters)

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Sources, PitchBook data, and news reports show the AI boom has produced new billionaires from smaller startups, including Perplexity, Figure AI, and SSI (Natallie Rocha/New York Times)

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Sources: Satya Nadella has overhauled Microsoft's senior leadership this year as the company faces intense competition from Google, Amazon, and others (Rafe Rosner-Uddin/Financial Times)

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Fast delivery apps like Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy are expanding into India's Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, driven by rising incomes and cheap smartphones and data (Bloomberg)

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Sources: the US has granted an annual license to Samsung and SK Hynix to ship their chip manufacturing equipment to their facilities in China for 2026 (Hyunjoo Jin/Reuters)

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Sources: Meta is buying Manus for $2B+; Manus was raising at a $2B valuation when Meta approached it; Manus CEO Xiao Hong will report to Meta COO 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)

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

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

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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

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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)

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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)

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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, acquires 100% ownership of GOG from CD Projekt and signs a distribution deal (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)

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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)

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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)

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