Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
Sources: Aaru, which uses AI to simulate user behavior, has raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures at multiple valuation tiers, including a $1B tier  —  Aaru, a startup that provides near-instant customer research by using AI to simulate user behavior, has raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures …

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Sources: Ted Sarandos met with President Trump in November, and both agreed WBD should go to the highest bidder; Sarandos argued that Netflix wasn't a monopoly  —  Netflix Inc. co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos ventured to the White House in mid-November for a meeting with President Donald Trump.

Ashish Vaswani / Essential AI:
Essential AI, whose CEO co-wrote Google's Attention Is All You Need paper, unveils Rnj-1, an 8B-parameter open model with SWE-bench performance close to GPT-4o  —  The long-term advancement and equitable diffusion of AI technologies crucially depend on their development in the Open.

Bjarke Smith-Meyer / Politico:
Nikita Bier accuses the European Commission of trying to deceptively amplify the reach of its post about the €120M fine on X; X terminates the EC's ad account  —  Nikita Bier, X's head of product, accused the EU executive of trying to amplify its own social media post about the fine on X by trying …

Sally Ward-Foxton / EE Times:
Lemurian Labs, which aims to develop hardware-agnostic portability software for AI workloads, raised a $28M Series A co-led by Pebblebed Ventures and Hexagon  —  AI software startup Lemurian Labs has pivoted away from AI hardware, having raised a $28-million series A to build its AI software stack.

Bloomberg:
India's digital transformation has exposed citizens to scams like “digital arrests”, where victims are coerced into transferring funds under false accusations  —  She races into her bedroom, shuts the door behind her, then falls to the checkered-tile floor.  The only place to hide is beneath the bed.

Julie Bort / TechCrunch:
Simular, which is building AI agents for Mac and Windows PCs, raised a $21.5M Series A led by Felicis; Simular has released its 1.0 version for macOS  —  Simular, a startup building AI agents for Mac OS and Windows, has raised a $21.5 million Series A led by Felicis, with existing seed investors NVentures …

Aayushi Pratap / Chemical & Engineering News:
Excelsior Sciences, which aims to use AI and robots for small-molecule drug discovery and development, raised a $70M Series A from Khosla Ventures and others  —  Excelsior Sciences cofounders say the company will make new molecules using robots and artificial intelligence

Reuters:
South Korea says it has signed an MOU with Arm to strengthen its chip and AI sectors, including a program to train ~1,400 high-level chip design specialists  —  South Korea's industry ministry and SoftBank's (9984.T) chip unit, Arm Holdings, have signed an agreement to strengthen …

Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes:
PermitFlow, which develops AI-powered workflow software for construction permitting, raised a $54M Series B led by Accel, a source says at a ~$500M valuation  —  This week's edition of The Prompt newsletter covers Warner Music Group's settlement with Suno, why Decagon has a competitive streak …

Financial Times:
Chinese smartphone makers are promoting apps to help users switch from iOS in a race for market share, as Apple struggles to roll out AI features in China  —  Manufacturers tout apps that help users switch from iPhones  —  William Langley in Guangzhou and Gloria Li in Hong Kong

Lora Kelley / New York Times:
In recent months, several companies like Airtable, Handshake, and Opendoor have announced that they are “refounding”, as they scramble to add new AI features  —  In the age of artificial intelligence, some company leaders are framing new business lines as radical reboots.

Monique Mulima / Bloomberg:
Digital asset treasuries, one of the hottest trends in public markets in H1 2025, saw a dramatic reversal in H2; SharpLink stock has fallen 86% from its peak  —  What began the year as one of the best trades in the stock market has, in a matter of months, turned into one of the worst.

John Pavlus / Fast Company:
A profile of Byron Cook, a VP at Amazon who is leading the company's effort to reduce AI hallucinations with a feature called Automated Reasoning Checks  —  Byron Cook, a VP and distinguished scientist at Amazon, is helping the company use an obscure type of AI to minimize artificial intelligence's worst side effect.

Matthias Bastian / The Decoder:
ChatGPT head says screenshots of ChatGPT ads are “either not real or not ads”; OpenAI's research chief says “anything that feels like an ad” is now turned off  —  Paid ChatGPT users recently reported seeing a prompt labeled “Shop for home and groceries.

SemiAnalysis:
A technical deep dive into Amazon's Trainium3 accelerator, including its server SKUs' specifications, silicon design, power budget, and bill of materials  —  Step-Function Software & System Improvements, “Amazon Basics” GB200 NVL36x2, NL72x2/NL32x2 Scale Up Rack Architecture, Optimized Perf per TCO, Trainium4

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's chip chief Johny Srouji told Tim Cook that he is seriously considering leaving soon; some execs floated elevating him to the CTO role  —  Apple Inc., long the model of stability in Silicon Valley, is suddenly undergoing its biggest personnel shake-up in decades …

Kat Tenbarge / Wired:
Some Reddit moderators say a surge of AI slop on the site is eroding its authenticity and could lead to a feedback loop of AI models training on AI content  —  Reddit is considered one of the most human spaces left on the internet, but mods and users are overwhelmed with slop posts in the most popular subreddits.

Andy Greenberg / Wired:
A look at Phreeli, a privacy-focused phone carrier that lets users sign up with only a ZIP code and uses an encryption system based on “zero-knowledge proofs”  —  Privacy stalwart Nicholas Merrill spent a decade fighting an FBI surveillance order.

Sam Kriss / New York Times:
A look at various quirks in AI-generated prose, mainly influenced by “overfitting” in AI models, as humans increasingly mimic AI language in writing and speech  —  If only they were robotic!  Instead, chatbots have developed a distinctive — and grating — voice.