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Techmeme

Filings: Meta has hired Bill McGinley, a veteran Republican operative and the former top lawyer for DOGE, as a lobbyist (Emily Birnbaum/Bloomberg)

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Snowflake agrees to acquire Observe, an observability platform built on Snowflake databases; the deal was previously reported to be valued at around $1B (Rebecca Szkutak/TechCrunch)

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Sources: Strava, the fitness app founded in 2009, filed confidentially for an IPO; its revenue grew more than 50% YoY in 2025 but was still less than $500M (The Information)

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Sources: UK-based cloud provider Nscale is in talks to raise about $2B, after raising more than $1.5B across a pair of rounds in September and October (Bailey Lipschultz/Bloomberg)

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OpenAI is rolling out a HIPAA-compliant version of ChatGPT for clinicians to assist with medical reasoning and administrative tasks, at Cedars-Sinai and others (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)

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OpenAI VP of research Jerry Tworek is leaving, sources say after OpenAI sided with Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki in a dispute over its research direction (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)

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Statcounter: four months after its release, iOS 26 is in use by only about 15% of iPhone users; in January 2025, about 63% of users were on iOS 18 (Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac)

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Sources: Google, Meta, Netflix, Microsoft, and Amazon will be subject only to a voluntary framework rather than binding rules under EU's Digital Networks Act (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

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Source: a few weeks before Grok started "digitally undressing" people, Elon Musk expressed frustration over guardrails on Grok's image and video generator (Hadas Gold/CNN)

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Are people updating to iOS 26? Here's what the data reportedly shows (Ryan Christoffel/9to5Mac)

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NetBlocks says internet connectivity in Iran has fallen on multiple providers as protests hit 100+ cities; Cloudflare says IPv6 traffic has dropped sharply (Cody Combs/The National)

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Sources: OpenAI has been slow to expand in-app checkouts for ChatGPT as the startup and its partners Shopify and Stripe struggle to standardize merchant data (Ann Gehan/The Information)

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Tailwind CSS lays off three of its four engineers after Google traffic to its documentation fell ~40% from early 2023 due to AI, causing an ~80% drop in revenue (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Roundtable)

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ThreatModeler, which helps developers identify vulnerabilities in their applications, acquires IriusRisk, its largest competitor, a source says for $100M+ (Leo Schwartz/Fortune)

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A profile of Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering John Ternus; sources: Ternus is seen as the front-runner to succeed Tim Cook, who wants to reduce his workload (New York Times)

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FIFA says that parts of 2026 World Cup matches will be broadcast live on TikTok and select creators will get access to press conferences and training sessions (Jessica Hopkins/The Athletic)

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Chinese AI startup MiniMax raises ~$619M in its Hong Kong IPO, at the top of its marketed range; sources: its institutional offering was oversubscribed by 70x+ (Dave Sebastian/Bloomberg)

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CrowdStrike acquires identity management startup SGNL, in a deal valued at nearly $740M, to bolster identity security defenses on its flagship Falcon platform (Samantha Subin/CNBC)

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Microsoft debuts Copilot Checkout in the US, enabling in-chat purchases via PayPal, Shopify, Stripe, and more; Shopify merchants will be automatically enrolled (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Land)

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NYC-based Pomelo Care, which offers 24/7 virtual care for women by using data to flag pregnancy risks and more, raised $92M led by Stripes at a $1.7B valuation (Amy Feldman/Forbes)

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Illicit crypto addresses received a record $154B in 2025, up 162% YoY, driven by sanctions evasion; Russia's A7A5 token transacted $93.3B+ in less than one year (Chainalysis)

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Protege, which offers an AI data platform to access high-quality, proprietary training data at scale, raised $30M from a16z, extending its $25M Series A (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)

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The European Commission orders X to retain all internal docs and data relating to Grok until the end of 2026, after criticizing Grok's nonconsensual images (Louise Breusch Rasmussen/Reuters)

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Google makes Help Me Write, AI email summaries, and Suggested Replies free to all Gmail users, after previously requiring a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription (Abner Li/9to5Google)

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Google rolls out an AI Inbox view for Gmail that shows users to-dos and summaries of topics rather than a traditional email list, first for US "trusted testers" (Jay Peters/The Verge)

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Israeli data security startup Cyera raised a $400M Series F led by Blackstone Growth at a $9B valuation, up from $6B after raising $540M in June 2025 (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune)

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Sources: China is considering how to build fences around its AI know-how amid the AI race and is identifying standout companies to add to an export control list (Wall Street Journal)

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Sources and US tax lawyers: the IRS' planned audit of private equity and VC firms is faltering under President Trump; nearly all the project's leaders have left (Jesse Drucker/New York Times)

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Lego says its Smart Brick is "here to stay" but "does not mean that we're leaving our core proposition behind", after criticism it's abandoning non-digital play (Tom Phillips/IGN)

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Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood predicts "we'll see the first 100% AI-generated hit movie" within three years and discusses Roku's new $3/month Howdy service (Jennifer Maas/Variety)

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Sources: wealthy Californians are quietly mobilizing on WhatsApp chats and calls in a long-shot bid to oust Representative Ro Khanna, who supports a wealth tax (Theodore Schleifer/New York Times)

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Sources: China's Salt Typhoon accessed the emails of staff on powerful US House committees, detected last December, and intercepted senior US officials' calls (Demetri Sevastopulo/Financial Times)

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A profile of VC firm Index Ventures, which saw billions in gains from exits in 2025, including Figma, Scale AI, and Dream Games, as it looks ahead to succession (Bloomberg)

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A profile of Replit co-founder Amjad Masad, who was shunned in investor circles for his criticism of Israel's war in Gaza before Replit's AI agent took off (Margaux MacColl/The San Francisco ...)

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China says it will investigate Meta's $2B Manus acquisition to assess compliance with laws on export controls, tech import and export, and overseas investment (CNBC)

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Sources: China plans to approve some imports of Nvidia's H200 chips as soon as Q1 2026 while still barring them from military use and critical infrastructure (John Liu/Bloomberg)

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Big US hospital systems have become a proving ground for AI adoption; a survey finds that 27% of health systems are paying for commercial AI licenses (Wall Street Journal)

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Chinese local governments are funding dozens of "robot training centers", where human trainers mimic movements like folding clothes to teach the robots (Rest of World)

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The US FCC exempts some new models of foreign-made drones and critical components from an import ban, announced in December 2025, until the end of 2026 (David Shepardson/Reuters)

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Samsung says Ballie, a robot announced six years ago but never released, is an "active innovation platform" within the company helping inform other products (Chris Welch/Bloomberg)

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Sources: to hedge against Beijing approval risk, Nvidia is requiring Chinese customers to pay upfront for H200 chips, with no cancellations, refunds, or changes (Reuters)

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Ubisoft closes its mobile-focused Halifax studio weeks after majority of the workers voted to unionize, as CWA Canada says it is "demanding information" (Chris Kerr/Game Developer)

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Microsoft Chief Scientific Officer Eric Horvitz warns that the US' cuts to academic research funding could push talent abroad and hand rivals an edge in AI (Financial Times)

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Grok's website and app are being used to produce extremely graphic, sometimes violent, sexual imagery of adults that is far more explicit than images on X (Wired)

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Chinese AI company Zhipu opened up 3.3% in its Hong Kong trading debut after raising ~$558M in its IPO at a ~$6.55B valuation, amid a flurry of AI startup IPOs (Yantoultra Ngui/Reuters)

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Sources: OpenAI last fall set aside RSUs worth 10% of the company, which was valued in October 2025 at $500B; OpenAI has already awarded ~$80B in vested equity (Sri Muppidi/The Information)

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Cyera researchers detail Ni8mare, a critical RCE flaw that lets hackers access local instances of the n8n workflow automation platform, impacting ~100K servers (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)

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Ford plans to launch an AI voice assistant on its apps this year before expanding to its vehicles in 2027, and aims to debut Level 3 autonomous driving in 2028 (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)

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Arm creates a "Physical AI" unit to focus on robotics and automotive sectors, as part of a reorganization that includes "Cloud and AI" and "Edge" business units (Reuters)

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Samsung expects Q4 operating profit up 208% YoY to ~$13.8B, vs. ~$12.3B est., and revenue up 23% YoY to ~$64.2B, as AI server demand lifts memory chip prices (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg)

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