Marissa Mayer's new startup Dazzle, which is building next-gen AI personal assistants, raised an $8M seed at a $35M valuation and plans to exit stealth in 2026 (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
TechCrunch
Marissa Mayer’s new startup Dazzle raises $8M led by Forerunner's Kirsten Green | TechCrunch
Mayer launched Dazzle after shuttering her photo and contact management startup Sunshine. Green’s investment suggests Dazzle is poised for the co...
Techmeme
Marissa Mayer
By Marina Temkin / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
A federal judge grants a temporary injunction blocking a Texas law requiring mobile app stores to verify users' ages from taking effect on January 1 (Lauren Feiner/The Verge)
The Verge
Judge blocks Texas app store age verification law
A tech industry group challenged the law as unconstitutional.
Techmeme
A US federal judge grants a temporary injunction blocking a Texas law requiring mobile app stores to verify users
By Lauren Feiner / The Verge. View the full context on Techmeme.
Xbox had a terrible 2025: Microsoft canceled games and raised console and Game Pass prices, Costco stopped selling Xbox, and Valve's Steam Machine upstaged it (Devindra Hardawar/Engadget)
Engadget
2025 was the year Xbox died
The Xbox brand effectively died this year. But can it be resurrected as a PC platform?
Techmeme
Xbox had a terrible 2025: Microsoft canceled games and raised console and Game Pass prices, Costco stopped selling Xbox, and Valve
By Devindra Hardawar / Engadget. View the full context on Techmeme.
Lemon Slice, which launched a 20B-parameter model that creates digital avatars for AI agents, streaming video at 20 FPS on a single GPU, raised a $10.5M seed (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
TechCrunch
Lemon Slice nabs $10.5M from YC and Matrix to build out its digital avatar tech | TechCrunch
Digital avatar generation company Lemon Slice is working to add a video layer to AI chatbots with a new diffusion model that can create digital ava...
Techmeme
Lemon Slice, which launched a 20B-parameter model that creates digital avatars for AI agents, streaming video at 20 FPS on a single GPU, raised a $10.5M seed
By Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
France's La Poste says it has suffered a suspected DDoS attack in "a major network incident" on Monday, which disrupted its postal and banking services (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)
TechCrunch
France's postal and banking services disrupted by suspected DDoS attack | TechCrunch
France's postal service, La Poste, said it was hit by a disruptive cyberattack that knocked its services offline.
Techmeme
France
By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
The US says China is engaging in unfair trade practices in the chip sector, but holds off on imposing additional tariffs on chip imports at least until mid-2027 (Jordan Fabian/Bloomberg Law)
US Holds Off on New Chinese Chip Tariffs Amid Trump-Xi Truce (2)
The US accused China of engaging in unfair trade practices in the semiconductor sector, but is declining to impose additional tariffs on chip impor...
Techmeme
The US says China is engaging in unfair trade practices in the chip sector, but holds off on imposing additional tariffs on chip imports at least until mid-2027
By Jordan Fabian / Bloomberg Law. View the full context on Techmeme.
ServiceNow agrees to acquire cybersecurity startup Armis for $7.75B, set to close in H2 2026, pending approvals; Insight acquired Armis in a $1.1B deal in 2020 (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg.com
ServiceNow to Buy Cyber Startup Armis for $7.75 Billion
ServiceNow Inc. has reached a deal to buy the cybersecurity startup Armis in a deal valued at $7.75 billion, representing its largest acquisition t...
Techmeme
ServiceNow agrees to acquire cybersecurity startup Armis for $7.75B in cash in a deal set to close in H2 2026, marking its largest acquisition to date
From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Brett Harrison, the former president of FTX US, raised $35M for his new global exchange AX, which offers perpetual futures, a source says at a $187M valuation (Yueqi Yang/The Information) https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/former-ftx-head-raises-35-million-new-exchange
Techmeme
Brett Harrison, the former president of FTX US, raised a $35M Series A for his new perpetual futures exchange AX, a source says at a $187M valuation
By Yueqi Yang / The Information. View the full context on Techmeme.
Google's Nano Banana Pro and OpenAI's ChatGPT Images can make nonconsensual bikini deepfakes from photos of fully clothed women; Reddit bans r/ChatGPTJailbreak (Reece Rogers/Wired)
WIRED
Google’s and OpenAI’s Chatbots Can Strip Women in Photos Down to Bikinis
Users of AI image generators are offering each other instructions on how to use the tech to alter pictures of women into realistic, revealing deepf...
Techmeme
Google
By Reece Rogers / Wired. View the full context on Techmeme.
The Canada Pension Plan Board and Australia's Goodman agree to invest $2.6B+ in data centers in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Paris, starting to build in June 2026 (Angus Whitley/Bloomberg) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-22/cpp-goodman-to-invest-2-6-billion-in-european-data-center-unit
Techmeme
The Canada Pension Plan Board and Australia
By Angus Whitley / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.