Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Total global VC funding to fintech startups totaled $51.8B in 2025, up 27% YoY and above pre-pandemic totals, but much lower than 2021's peak of $141.6B (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)

Techmeme

Ashley St. Clair, mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sues xAI, alleging Grok refused to stop making sexualized deepfakes of her, amid custody disputes (Peter Senzamici/New York Post)

Techmeme

As Meta shifts resources away from its Supernatural VR fitness service, users mourn the loss of a community built around the platform and its coaches (Boone Ashworth/Wired)

Techmeme

Google agrees to pay $8.25M to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging its AdMob SDK illegally collected data from children under age 13 (Suzanne Smalley/The Record)

Techmeme

Source: at least two more Thinking Machines staffers are expected to join OpenAI soon; some researchers say they are exhausted by the industry's constant drama (Wired)

Techmeme

Replit launches Mobile Apps on Replit, which enables vibe-coding of iOS apps with integrated Stripe monetization (CNBC)

Techmeme

Sources: Replit is in advanced discussions to raise about $400M in a new round of funding that would roughly triple its valuation to $9B (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Mytra, which is building autonomous robots for warehouses that can move loads up to 3,000 pounds, raised a $120M Series C led by Avenir Growth (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune)

Techmeme

Andrea Vallone, who left OpenAI in November as the head of its safety research team, joins Anthropic's alignment team (Hayden Field/The Verge)

Techmeme

The US says Taiwanese companies will invest $250B+ in chip production in the US as part of a trade deal, with Taiwanese government guaranteeing $250B in credit (Kif Leswing/CNBC)

Techmeme

Symbolic.ai, founded by ex-eBay CEO Devin Wenig and Ars Technica co-founder Jon Stokes, partners with News Corp to offer AI tools to WSJ, Barron's, and others (Ben Sherry/Inc)

Techmeme

Equal1, which was spun out from University College Dublin, raised $60M to deploy its new quantum server for data centers, bringing its total funding to $85M (Ciara O'Brien/The Irish Times)

Techmeme

Letter: a top House Republican warns severe DRAM and HBM3E supply shortages will constrain H200 export licenses; Nvidia says it "can serve all approved" orders (Maggie Eastland/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Google releases TranslateGemma, a suite of Gemma 3-based open translation models available in 4B-, 12B-, and 27B-parameter sizes, with support for 55 languages (The Keyword)

Techmeme

X revises its developer API policies to "no longer allow apps that reward users for posting on X (aka 'infofi')", amid a backlash about increasing AI slop on X (André Beganski/Decrypt)

Techmeme

Sources: Apple now needs to fight for TSMC production capacity amid the AI boom; Nvidia was likely TSMC's top customer in at least one or two quarters in 2025 (Tim Culpan/Culpium)

Techmeme

OpenAI says it issued a request for proposals to US-based hardware manufacturers as it seeks to push into consumer devices, robotics, and cloud data centers (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Amazon files an objection to Saks Global's bankruptcy financing plan, and says its $475M investment in the department store is now effectively "worthless" (CNBC)

Techmeme

Brain-computer interface startup Merge Labs, which Sam Altman co-founded, raised a $252M seed from OpenAI, Bain Capital, Gabe Newell, and others (Ike Swetlitz/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

AI video startup Higgsfield raised an $80M Series A extension from Accel and others at a $1.3B+ valuation, and says it hit a $200M annualized revenue run rate (Krystal Hu/Reuters)

Techmeme