Reuters:
China approves two cars from state-owned automakers with Level 3 autonomous capabilities, the first such approvals; the cars can drive in Chongqing and Beijing  —  China's industry regulator on Monday approved two Chinese cars with level-3 autonomous driving capabilities …

Counterpoint Research:
Global smartphone shipments in 2026 are set to shrink 2.1% due to rising memory costs, led by Chinese OEMs; DRAM price surges are set to raise costs by 10%-15%  —  - Global smartphone shipments in 2026 are expected to shrink 2.1% due to rising memory costs.

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
How the rise of AI has divided Hollywood: some oppose all AI use while others like director Timur Bekmambetov say they are exploring ways to utilize AI tools  —  While finishing Mercy, his upcoming film starring Chris Pratt, Timur Bekmambetov decided to make a new movie almost entirely generated by artificial intelligence.

Financial Times:
Sources: Monzo CEO TS Anil, who announced his exit and handover to ex-Googler Diana Layfield in October, was pushed out by the board over an IPO timing clash  —  Timing for fintech's planned listing was a key aspect of ructions ahead of TS Anil's surprise departure

William Sandlund / Financial Times:
Shares in Chinese companies critical to AI infrastructure surged in 2025, with CATL up 45% and Sungrow up 130%, as exports boost margins despite Trump's tariffs  —  Companies such as battery maker CATL earn big margins on export sales despite US tariffs  —  Shares in Chinese makers of batteries …

Robbie Whelan / Wall Street Journal:
CoreWeave's market value fell $33B in six weeks amid construction delays at its Denton, Texas AI data center, criticism from short seller Jim Chanos, and more  —  The data-center provider's terrible six-week slide picked up speed when a famous short seller piled concerns on top of delays

Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
OpenAI Chief Communications Officer Hannah Wong plans to leave in January; Wong joined in 2021 and led PR during Sam Altman's brief ouster and return in 2023  —  Hannah Wong told staff she is moving on to her “next chapter.”  The company will be running an executive search to find a replacement, according to a memo.

New York Times:
Sources: the US pauses a tech trade deal with the UK, signed in September, over disagreements about the UK's online safety rules and digital services taxes  —  The U.S. government has paused a tech-focused trade pledge with Britain over broader disagreements about Britain's digital regulations and food safety rules.

Emilia David / VentureBeat:
Allen Institute for AI launches Bolmo 7B and Bolmo 1B, claiming they are “the first fully open byte-level language models”, built on its Olmo 3 models  —  Enterprises that want tokenizer-free multilingual models are increasingly turning to byte-level language models to reduce brittleness in noisy or low-resource text.

Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Tesla's shares closed at a 2025 high on December 15 after the company confirmed it is testing driverless vehicles in Austin without a human safety operator  —  Nearly six months after launching a limited Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas with safety drivers in the car, the company …

Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal:
PayPal says it has filed applications to establish PayPal Bank to provide loans more efficiently to US small businesses and reduce its reliance on third parties  —  The payments company says it filed applications with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the FDIC to establish PayPal Bank

TechCrunch:
Ford plans to repurpose its US battery manufacturing capacity to launch a battery energy storage business for data centers, amid a shift away from large EVs  —  Amid Ford's shift away from making large electric vehicles, the automaker is adding a new product line to find a home for its batteries.

Ari Levy / CNBC:
Shares of Broadcom, CoreWeave, and Oracle, companies tied to the AI infrastructure buildout, extend last week's decline; ORCL is down 46%+ since September 10  —  In at least one corner of the artificial intelligence market, sentiment has turned decidedly negative.

Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Intel names Robin Colwell, deputy assistant to President Trump, as its head of government affairs, and Pushkar Ranade, the CEO's chief of staff, as interim CTO  —  Intel (INTC.O) on Monday appointed an economic adviser to U.S. President Trump as its head of government affairs …

Bloomberg:
Sources: Disney's Sora deal is entirely in OpenAI stock rather than a cash licensing fee; Disney has the option to buy additional stock beyond the $1B stake  —  OpenAI is getting access to Disney's kingdom without cutting a check.  —  The artificial intelligence company's recent deal …

Anna Tong / Forbes:
Sources: Notion told staff it is doing a $300M tender offer at an $11B valuation, ahead of a potential IPO, and passed $600M in ARR, half of it from AI products  —  The company, which sells a popular productivity software application and now wants to be an ‘AI everything’ app …

Bloomberg:
How crypto entrepreneur Bill Zanker helped Trump and Melania launch memecoins; as of December 10, $TRUMP was down 92% since its peak and $MELANIA was down 99%  —  No one wants to claim credit for helping the first couple launch cryptocurrencies that plummeted more than 90% from their peak.

Reuters:
The US FTC, along with 21 states and DC, files an amended complaint against Uber, alleging deceptive billing and cancellation practices related to Uber One  —  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Monday that the agency and 21 states, along with the District of Columbia …

Cloudflare:
Cloudflare 2025 report: global internet traffic grew 19% in 2025, ChatGPT was the most popular AI service, global traffic from Starlink grew 2.3x, and more  —  Internet connectivity is critically important to everyday communication, commerce, entertainment, and transportation.

Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
GM is adding native Apple Music to select vehicles, and rolls out support for digital keys, after it started phasing out CarPlay in 2023  —  General Motors is racing to add more native apps to make up for its decision to block Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.