Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTube TV plans to launch over 10 genre-specific, cheaper YouTube TV Plans in early 2026, including a Sports Plan featuring ESPN Unlimited and Fox Sports 1  —  YouTube TV's base package currently costs $82.99 per month.  But early next year, the streaming service will roll out a range …

Lauren Johnson / Adweek:
Shopify launches Product Network, an ad tool that lets merchants recommend and advertise products on other merchants' storefronts  —  Shopify is taking a big step forward in its much-watched advertising business.  The e-commerce firm is formally rolling out a product that allows its merchants …

Benoît Morenne / Wall Street Journal:
Geothermal energy company Fervo, which aims to power data centers and more, raised $462M from Google and others, taking its total funding to $1.5B since 2017  —  The company, also backed by Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy Ventures, has emerged as a leader in advanced geothermal energy

Pia Singh / CNBC:
Starcloud, which launched a satellite with a Nvidia H100 chip in November, says the satellite is running and querying responses from Google's Gemma  —  Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud trained an artificial intelligence model from space for the first time, signaling a new era for orbital data centers …

Bloomberg:
In a series of lawsuits, Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, and Berkshire were accused of failing to keep their tech out of Russian-made weapons used in Ukraine  —  Microchip manufacturers Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. were accused in a series of lawsuits …

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
Nvidia says that it hasn't seen “substantiation or received tips” about chip smuggling via data centers outside of China, after The Information's DeepSeek story  —  Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has relied on Nvidia Corp. chips that are banned in the country …

Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg:
Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: the $630 pen-enabled e-reader is a tough sell for most people, even with its big 11" display and productivity features  —  Review: Amazon's $630 pen-enabled device is a tough sell for most people.  —  Amazon.com Inc.'s new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft …

Emma Roth / The Verge:
The RSL Collective, backed by Ziff Davis, Yahoo, and others, launches RSL 1.0, which lets publishers set licensing and compensation rules for AI web crawlers  —  RSL 1.0 helps publishers outline how AI companies should pay for the content they scrape across the web.

Bloomberg:
Sources: Meta's new model, codenamed Avocado, may launch in spring 2026 as a “closed” model, as Alexandr Wang advocates for closed models in a shift for Meta  —  Meta Platforms Inc.'s Mark Zuckerberg, months into building one of the priciest teams in technology history …

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Google launches a cheaper AI Plus plan in India, costing ~$2.21 per month for the first six months and ~$4.44 thereafter, to compete with ChatGPT Go  —  Google on Wednesday launched its more affordable AI Plus plan in India as it seeks to compete on pricing with other low-cost AI offerings, like OpenAI's ChatGPT Go subscription.

Reece Rogers / Wired:
Instagram launches Your Algorithm, which shows users an AI analysis of their activity to let them customize the topics shaping their Reels recommendations  —  In the battle for your attention, Instagram is betting that more control over the algorithm could keep you scrolling on Reels.

Heather Somerville / Wall Street Journal:
How US startups like Oakland-based Brimstone are racing to develop sources of raw materials that the US needs for tech, an industry China has long dominated  —  Startups and venture capital are joining the nationwide push to develop new sources of metals the U.S. desperately needs

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Adobe launches free ChatGPT-integrated Photoshop, Acrobat, and Express apps on desktop, the web, and iOS, after OpenAI added ChatGPT app integrations in October  —  Just describe your edits to ChatGPT, and the Photoshop, Acrobat, and Express apps will do it for you or surface the tool you need.

New York Times:
Sources: Lip-Bu Tan's dual roles as Intel CEO and tech investor cause consternation in the industry and at Intel; four ex-Intel execs say it caused them to exit  —  Lip-Bu Tan, who was appointed chief executive of Intel in March, is also a longtime venture capitalist.  His dual roles have caused some consternation.

Justina Lee / Bloomberg:
Betting exchange Matchbook plans to launch a prediction market platform in the UK in January 2026 as a “road test” before a planned US launch as early as March  —  Matchbook, a sports betting exchange, is launching a prediction market platform in the UK as it prepares to compete with rivals Kalshi and Polymarket in the US.

Joe Wilkins / Futurism:
McDonald's Netherlands pulls an AI-generated Christmas ad, made by TBWA\NEBOKO with film production company Sweetshop, after backlash that the ad is distasteful  —  There's just one issue: pretty much everybody hates it.  —  This year, McDonald's decided to get in on the corporate slopfest …

Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
The Tech Transparency Project: Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store host dozens of apps for US-sanctioned companies; Google removed 17 and Apple removed 35  —  Watchdog finds firms and organizations in Apple and Google stores that were banned for issues including human rights abuses in China and facilitating war in Ukraine.

The Information:
Sources: DeepSeek is developing its new AI model using several thousand Nvidia Blackwell chips, which were smuggled into China via third-party countries  —  DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup, has been developing its next major model using several thousand Nvidia's state-of-the-art Blackwell chips …

Bloomberg:
How President Trump's tariffs ended China's monopoly on making US game consoles, boosting Vietnam, whose exports jumped from $30M/month in 2024 to $400M in May  —  Millions of holiday shoppers across America are filling their baskets with pricey video game consoles, likely unaware …

Eli Tan / New York Times:
Sources: this fall, Alexandr Wang told people that he disagreed with top Meta execs like Chris Cox and Andrew Bosworth, including on using Instagram data for AI  —  When Mark Zuckerberg revamped Meta's artificial intelligence operations this year, he recruited a new leader — Alexandr Wang …