Reading List

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

Analysis: the top US tech companies spent $109M on DC lobbying in 2025, topping $100M for the first time; Meta spent $26.29M, Amazon $17.78M, and Google $13.1M (Bloomberg)

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Binance files for a European MiCA license in Greece, where it has also set up a holding company (Jeff John Roberts/Fortune)

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LiveKit, which offers tools for building voice, video, and physical AI models, including for ChatGPT's voice mode, raised a $100M Series C at a $1B valuation (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)

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Google launches free SAT practice exams in the Gemini app, providing students with performance analysis and detailed explanations for incorrect answers (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)

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The curl project plans to end its HackerOne bug bounty program at the end of January, citing a surge in low-quality AI-generated vulnerability reports (Lawrence Abrams/BleepingComputer)

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Elon Musk says Tesla launched robotaxi rides in Austin with no human safety driver; Tesla's AI lead says Tesla is "starting with a few unsupervised vehicles" (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)

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Sources: Apple expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to manage design teams at the end of 2025, solidifying his status as a leading CEO candidate (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

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Yelp acquires Hatch, which charges a monthly fee for AI-powered agents that can respond to customer inquiries and make appointments, for $300M (Laura Mandaro/The Information)

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Substack launches its Substack TV app for Apple TV and Google TV in beta for free and paid subscribers, with access matched to their current subscription levels (On Substack)

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The US BOP releases Caroline Ellison, the former FTX executive and ex-girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried, after about 14 months; she had a two-year sentence (Business Insider)

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Inside the turmoil at Thinking Machines; sources say Meta discussed buying TML, and CTO Barret Zoph had been in talks since October 2025 about an OpenAI return (New York Times)

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Railway, a cloud platform for software deployment, raised a $100M Series B led by TQ Ventures, bringing its total funding to $130M+, says it has ARR of $10M+ (Chris Metinko/Axios)

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Inferact, founded by the creators of vLLM to create a commercial AI product for cross-hardware efficiency, raised a $150M seed led by a16z at an $800M valuation (Agnee Ghosh/Bloomberg)

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Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch calls claims that Chinese AI startups lag behind the US a "fairy tale", and China's open-source tech is "probably stressing" US CEOs (Bloomberg)

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Spotify expands its AI-powered Prompted Playlists beta to Premium subscribers in the US and Canada, following initial testing in New Zealand (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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Google rolls out Personal Intelligence in AI Mode to access users' Gmail and Google Photos data for more tailored responses, for US Pro and Ultra subscribers (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

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Cambio, creator of AI-powered commercial real estate software for institutional investors, raised an $18M Series A led by Maverick Ventures at a $100M valuation (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)

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Superstate raised an $82.5M Series B to expand from tokenized Treasury offerings into SEC-registered equities on Ethereum and Solana (James Hunt/The Block)

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Adobe rolls out Firefly Foundry, which creates AI-generated "commercially safe" images, video, and more grounded in a brand or franchise's creative universe (Dade Hayes/Deadline)

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Autodesk plans to cut about 1,000 jobs, or ~7% of its workforce, as part of a global restructuring plan seeking to strengthen sales and marketing (Robb M. Stewart/Wall Street Journal)

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