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CNBC: AWS says services have “returned to normal operations” after an outage in its US-EAST-1 region, first reported at 3:11am ET, that took down major websites — Amazon Web Services, a leader in the cloud infrastructure market, reported a major outage on Monday that took down numerous major websites.
Antonio Regalado / MIT Technology Review: Study: brain-computer interface company Science's PRIMA device, which includes a retinal implant and special glasses, restored vision in some blind patients — Science Corporation—a competitor to Neuralink founded by the former president of Elon Musk's brain-interface venture …
Ashley Capoot / CNBC: Reid Hoffman calls Anthropic “one of the good guys” after David Sacks accused the company of running a “regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering” — Two of the main members of the PayPal mafia are sparring again — this time over artificial intelligence.
Jaures Yip / CNBC: OpenAI says it will work with SAG-AFTRA, CAA, UTA, and others to crack down on Sora 2 deepfakes, following concerns from actor Bryan Cranston and SAG-AFTRA — OpenAI announced on Monday in a joint statement that it will be working with Bryan Cranston, SAG-AFTRA, and other actor unions …
Chris Welch / Bloomberg: Doc: Google launched a Trusted Tester program that will select 15 of its “Superfans” to test unreleased Pixels, using protective cases to disguise the hardware — Alphabet Inc.'s Google plans to let Pixel smartphone enthusiasts test out the company's next handset ahead of its public introduction.
Frederic Lardinois / The New Stack: Anthropic announces Claude Code on the web and in the Claude iOS app, available in beta as a research preview for Pro and Max users — Today, Anthropic's Claude Code agentic coding tool is moving beyond the terminal and coming to the web and the company's mobile app.
Jonathan Kemper / The Decoder: DeepSeek releases DeepSeek-OCR, a vision language model designed for efficient vision-text compression, enabling longer contexts with less compute — Chinese AI company Deepseek has built an OCR system that compresses image-based text documents for language models, aiming to let AI handle …
Matt Durot / Forbes: An interview with Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz, who expects a 2025 profit of $170M to $200M, about the company's $300M round that pushed its valuation above Rippling's — HR software rivals have accused each other of corporate espionage in lawsuits filed earlier this year.
Sharon Goldman / Fortune: LangChain, whose open-source framework connects AI apps to real-time data, raised a $125M Series B led by IVP at a $1.25B valuation — LangChain, one of the earliest breakout startups of the generative AI era, announced a $125 million Series B funding round on Monday at a $1.25 billion valuation.
David Pan / Bloomberg: CleanSpark shares jump 12%+ after the bitcoin miner expands into AI infrastructure, hiring Humain's president Jeffrey Thomas as SVP of AI data centers — Shares of CleanSpark Inc. surged as much as 13% after the Bitcoin miner announced that it was expanding into date-center infrastructure …
Ashley Capoot / CNBC: Anthropic announces Claude Life Sciences, a new offering for researchers that integrates Claude AI models with lab tools like Benchling to boost efficiency — Anthropic on Monday announced Claude for Life Sciences, a new offering for researchers to use the company's artificial intelligence technology …
Reuters: Evernorth, a digital asset treasury backed by Ripple, says it will list on the Nasdaq through a merger with a blank check company and expects to raise $1B+ — Evernorth, a new crypto venture backed by digital asset firm Ripple, said on Monday it will list on the Nasdaq through a merger …
Katie Drummond / Wired: Q&A with NYC mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani on social media, tech leaders, Apple's and Google's “wrong decision” to remove ICE-tracking apps, and more — Mere months ago, New York's mayoral front-runner was polling right next to “Someone Else.”
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Oura launches a redesigned app with a new feature showing a weekly overview of stress management and says it's working with the US FDA on a blood pressure study — The company is launching a study that uses ring data to detect ‘early signs of hypertension.’
Webb Wright / ZDNET: Adobe launches AI Foundry, a program that helps enterprise customers create bespoke, commercially safe, Firefly-based generative AI models trained on their IP — ZDNET's key takeaways — Adobe assures its new AI model service is copyright-safe. — Foundry models leverage Firefly and are trained on brands' IP.
Cheyenne MacDonald / Engadget: X is testing a new way of opening links without fully covering an X post, allowing users to see the Like, Repost, and other buttons, starting on iOS — It comes in response to creators' complaints about the reach of posts containing links. — Links have proven to be a tricky thing when it comes to social media engagement.
Terrence O'Brien / The Verge: X plans a Handle Marketplace for Premium+ and Business subscribers to search for and request inactive usernames; rare handles can cost from $2,500 to $1M+ — Premium subscribers will be able to search and request usernames that have been unavailable. … Handles are going to be broken up into two broad categories.
Financial Times: A look at the Crylock ransomware scheme, orchestrated by a Russian couple who targeted as many as 400,000 victims and earned over €64M in BTC over eight years — How a mysterious tip-off led investigators to uncover the inner workings of a highly unusual hacking operation
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: OpenAI's Broadcom deal shows how the AI startup is diversifying its chip suppliers, including Nvidia chips for training and Broadcom chips for inference — The maker of ChatGPT and Sora wants to control its destiny, which means controlling the hardware that runs its software
Matthias Bastian / The Decoder: OpenAI researchers delete X posts claiming that GPT-5 solved Erdos math problems, after pushback from Demis Hassabis and others; Yann LeCun ridicules OpenAI — OpenAI researchers recently claimed a major math breakthrough on X, but quickly walked it back after criticism from the community …
Bloomberg: China says the NSA has been hacking its National Time Service Center, which provides high precision time services for the government and others, since 2023 — China said it's uncovered “irrefutable evidence” of US government cyber attacks on the country's main agency responsible for timekeeping.
Jocelyn Gecker / Associated Press: Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic are providing millions to the American Federation of Teachers to build AI training hubs aimed at educating 400,000 teachers — Add AP News to Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Share
Zeyi Yang / Wired: ByteDance's Cici, an overseas counterpart of China's most popular AI chatbot app Doubao, is quietly gaining traction in the UK, Mexico, and Southeast Asia — ByteDance is paying for ads and partnering with influencers to promote its AI chatbot app Cici in countries like the UK, Mexico, and Indonesia.
The Conversation: A study of 311 AI-generated eighth-grade civics lesson plans in Massachusetts suggests they fall short of inspiring students or promoting critical thinking — When teachers rely on commonly used artificial intelligence chatbots to devise lesson plans, it does not result in more engaging …
Jinjoo Lee / Wall Street Journal: A look at some US energy companies linked to AI infrastructure, such as Sam Altman-backed Oklo, whose stocks have soared despite having little to no revenue — Concept stocks with no revenue have soaring valuations — Forget about the froth in tech valuations. The real excess might be building up in energy stocks.
Emma Beavins / Fierce Healthcare: Counsel Health, which uses a medical AI chatbot and human physicians to provide virtual care, raised a $25M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and GV — Artificial Intelligence Andreessen Horowitz Google Ventures Telehealth — AI-enabled virtual care company Counsel Health …
Tamara Djurickovic / Tech.eu: Paris-based Upciti, which offers city operations software and hardware to over 150 municipalities in 17 countries, raised a $20M Series A led by Notion Capital — UPCITI's platform helps cities run essential operations with greater efficiency and security, offering a clear, proven ROI that simplifies adoption for municipalities.
Dan Jones / Fierce Network: Boston-based OneLayer, which offers zero-trust security and device management for private 5G and LTE networks, raised a $28M Series A led by Maor Investments — private 5G private LTE cybersecurity funding — OneLayer has scored $28 million in funding — SNS Telecom said that it already has 30 private network customers
Meir Orbach / CTech: Prisma Photonics, which develops AI-based tech for monitoring infrastructure using existing optical fiber networks, raised $30M, taking total funding to $80M — The Tel Aviv deep-tech firm turns ordinary fiber networks into global security and power-grid sentinels.
Financial Times: Sources: Chinese companies including Ant Group and JD.com pause plans to issue stablecoins in Hong Kong after instructions from regulators not to move ahead — Regulators raise concerns about the rise of privately controlled currencies — Chinese tech giants have paused plans …
Business Insider: US military has adopted an aggressive push to embrace AI; the top US Army commander in South Korea says “Chat and I” have become “really close lately” — - Some military leaders are adopting AI for decision-making. — The military has adopted an aggressive push …
Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg: Shares of bitcoin mining companies pivoting to AI and HPC infrastructure have soared in 2025, with a fund tracking mining firms up 150% year-to-date — Shares of the large-scale computing outfits that make Bitcoin work are once again outperforming the original cryptocurrency …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: WhatsApp updates its Business API terms to ban general-purpose chatbots starting January 15, 2026, affecting WhatsApp assistants of OpenAI, Perplexity, others — Meta-owned chat app WhatsApp changed its business API policy this week to ban general-purpose chatbots from its platform.
Andy Newman / New York Times: Two Wikipedia contributors disarmed a gunman who threatened to kill himself at WikiConference to protest a policy banning editors who identify as pedophiles — After the man walked onto the stage at the “Wiki World's Fair” event and threatened to kill himself, witnesses said, two members of the audience jumped in to stop him.
Reuters: Nexperia's China unit asserts its operational independence and compliance with Chinese laws amid escalating tensions with Nexperia Netherlands — Nexperia's China unit has respected Chinese laws and has the right to operate independently, it said on Saturday, a day after the Netherlands …
Samuel Axon / Ars Technica: An interview with Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince on the company's new Content Signals Policy, which lets sites fine tune how their data can be used by crawlers — It could be a consequential act of quiet regulation. Cloudflare, a web infrastructure company, has updated millions …
Natallie Rocha / New York Times: The AI boom has pushed SF's residential rents up by the most in the US over the past year, as AI companies lease apartments and offer rent stipends to employees — The artificial intelligence gold rush has pushed San Francisco's residential rents up by the most in the nation …
Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter: Inside the discussions between OpenAI and talent agencies about the video app Sora; some agents say studios have been too reluctant to challenge tech giants — OpenAI's CEO brazenly regurgitated major studios' characters to allow video app Sora 2 to spit out clips tailor-made for users.
Muyao Shen / Bloomberg: Inside Hyperliquid, a booming DEX for perpetual crypto futures still controlled by a small insider group, raising questions about how decentralized it really is — In just two years, a little-known decentralized exchange built by a small group of engineers has drawn heavyweight investors and billions in trading volume.
John Kang / Forbes: Shares of ISU Petasys, a South Korea-based multi-layer PCB supplier for AI servers used by Alphabet, Nvidia, Microsoft, and others, are up 215% so far this year — Based in Daegu, a city in southeastern South Korea, ISU Petasys makes multi-layer printed circuit boards that hold chips and other components for AI servers.
Christian Davies / Financial Times: South Korea restricts travel to Cambodia over online scam center kidnappings; the UK and US sanction Cambodia's Prince Group for allegedly running scam centers — Seoul says 330 of its nationals detained or abducted in the first eight months of this year — South Korea has prohibited …
Bloomberg: Mexico-based fintech Plata, approved for a banking license in December 2024, raised $250M at a $3.1B valuation, as it seeks to transition to a full-fledged bank — Mexico-based Plata raised $250 million through a new equity funding round valuing the company at $3.1 billion …
Akash Sriram / Reuters: Lyft plans to open a new tech hub in Toronto in H2 2026 and acquires TBR Global Chauffeuring, a Glasgow-based luxury chauffeur services company, for £83M — - Expansion comes as Lyft looks to grow its presence outside the US — Lyft's Canadian rides grew over 20% in the first half of 2025
Carly Nairn / Courthouse News Service: A US judge bars NSO Group from targeting WhatsApp users and cuts the ~$168M damages verdict awarded to Meta by a jury in May to $4M, ruling it was excessive — Meta previously won $168 million in damages over claims spyware compromised WhatsApp users, but a judge reduced the damages down to $4 million.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: Google says North Korea hackers are using “EtherHiding” to embed malware on blockchains, the first time it has seen a nation-state threat actor using the method — North Korean hackers have adopted the ‘EtherHiding’ technique that leverages smart contracts to host and deliver malware …
Kendra Barnett / Adweek: Google is phasing out its Privacy Sandbox technologies; the initiative was launched in 2019 to develop privacy-protecting tech to replace third-party cookies — The elimination of many remaining Privacy Sandbox APIs come six months after third-party cookies got a reprieve in Chrome.
Bloomberg: Sources: Li Lin, founder of crypto exchange Huobi, and some of Asia's earliest Ethereum backers have raised ~$1B to launch a digital asset trust to buy Ether — Li Lin, the founder of crypto exchange Huobi and chairman of investment firm Avenir Capital, is joining forces …
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News: Dreamdata, which offers a B2B marketing analytics platform, raised a $55M Series B led by PeakSpan, bringing its total funding to $67M — Dreamdata, a B2B marketing analytics platform, has secured a $55 million Series B round of funding, the company told Crunchbase News exclusively.
Bloomberg: Sources: Suno is in talks to raise $100M+ at a $2B+ valuation, quadrupling its previous valuation; it raised $125M in 2024 and is generating $100M+ in ARR — - The company is raising more than $100 million from investors — Effort comes as Suno and major labels discuss settlement
Ari Levy / CNBC: Marc Benioff apologizes for saying Trump should send the National Guard to SF, says the comments were made out of “an abundance of caution” around Dreamforce — Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff apologized on Friday for making comments in support of President Donald Trump sending federal troops …