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Bloomberg: Preqin data: Southeast Asia's AI startups raised just $1.7B across 122 deals so far in 2024, out of ~$20B across 1,845 deals for the whole Asia-Pacific region  —  - While global tech expands in the region, its startups languish  — Its homegrown tech industry risks falling behind in AI

Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times: How Britannica survived the Wikipedia era by changing itself into a maker of education software and AI agents, as it reportedly weighs an IPO at a $1B valuation  —  The encyclopedia maker could have become a casualty of the Wikipedia era.  But it has remade itself into a digital learning giant that is weighing going...

Esha Dey / Bloomberg: Tesla's shares are up 73% since Election Day, as several analysts see the Trump administration easing rules for self-driving tech, benefiting Tesla's ambitions  —  - Stock was down 2% before election, gains 73% since Trump's win  — ‘Hard to imagine an upside’ from here: Wisdomtree's Gannatti

Wall Street Journal: Gina Raimondo says holding back China in the chips race is a “fool's errand”, and investment, more than export controls, will keep US ahead of Beijing  —  Investment, more than export controls, will keep the U.S. ahead of Beijing, Commerce secretary says

Satviki Sanjay / Bloomberg: A look at India's quick food delivery market as Swiggy and Zomato enter the sector; report: online food delivery market in India to reach $15B by March 2029  —  - Zomato, Swiggy among those who now have quick food delivery  — Some social media users have voiced concerns on food quality

Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media: Researchers at Anthropic, Oxford, Stanford, and MATS create Best-of-N Jailbreaking, a black-box algorithm that jailbreaks frontier AI systems across modalities  —  Anthropic created an AI jailbreaking algorithm that keeps tweaking prompts until it gets a harmful response.

Reuters: Dealogic data: the global M&A activity in the tech sector in 2024 jumped 20%+ YoY to $534B, accounting for the largest share of the total $3.45T in M&A activity  —  Bankers expect global deal volumes to surpass $4 trillion next year, the highest in four years, buoyed …

Wency Chen / South China Morning Post: Report: Alibaba splits the team developing apps for its AI chatbot Qianwen from the team that builds its LLM, following similar moves by ByteDance and Baidu  —  It follows similar moves by ByteDance and Baidu, which have divided their AI research and application teams to tackle a competitive market

Bloomberg: Sources: Intel shortlists buyout firms for the next round of bidding for its Altera unit, including Francisco Partners, Silver Lake, and Lattice Semiconductor  —  - Company asks suitors to submit formalized bids by late January  — Intel is without a permanent CEO after Pat Gelsinger ousted

Bloomberg: Google calls DOJ's proposed Chrome sale “extreme” and at odds with the law, urging the judge to take caution to avoid stifling innovation and future investment  —  - Justice Department seeking forced sale in antitrust case  — DC federal court to hold hearing on remedy proposals in April

Jody Godoy / Reuters: As part of its remedies proposal, Google would make its Android agreements with OEMs non-exclusive and allow them to unbundle Play Store from Chrome and Search  —  Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google proposed on Friday a loosening of its agreements with Apple (AAPL.O) and others to set Google …

Lee-Anne Mulholland / The Keyword: Google files its proposed remedies in the DOJ's search antitrust lawsuit, including letting browser companies have multiple default agreements across platforms  —  We will appeal the Court's decision but the process requires that we first file proposed remedies.  This is a case about contracts.

Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal: Sources: OpenAI's GPT-5, codenamed Orion, is behind schedule and faces technical hurdles, including high computing costs and limited high-quality training data  —  OpenAI has run into problem after problem on its new artificial-intelligence project, code-named Orion

TrendForce: Global shipments of VR and MR headsets are expected to reach ~9.6M units in 2024, up 8.8% YoY; Meta remains the global leader with a 73% market share  —  TrendForce's latest report estimates that global shipments of VR and MR headsets are expected to reach approximately 9.6 million units in 2024, representing a YoY increase of 8.8%.

Joseph Menn / Washington Post: A US judge finds NSO Group liable for exploiting a bug in WhatsApp to spy on 1,400 users and that WhatsApp is entitled to sanctions against NSO  —  Israel-based maker of Pegasus program loses five-year-old landmark case.  —  Messaging giant WhatsApp won a landmark ruling Friday …

David Scheer / Bloomberg: Tai Mo Shan, part of Jump Trading's crypto unit, agrees to pay $123M to settle SEC's claims it misled investors about the stability of TerraUSD  —  Tai Mo Shan Ltd., part of Jump Trading's crypto unit, agreed to pay $123 million to settle a US regulator's claims it misled investors …

Kali Hays / Fortune: Sources: David Sacks' role as WH AI and crypto czar will be limited to an adviser role, overseen by Michael Kratsios, partly because he won't divest from Craft  —  David Sacks may already be getting a taste of how difficult it can be to get things done in Washington D.C.

Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: A study by Waymo and insurer Swiss Re finds Waymo's vehicles were safer than those driven by humans, with a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims and more  —  Waymo's autonomous vehicles cause less property damage and fewer bodily injuries when they crash than human-driven vehicles …

Stephen Alpher / CoinDesk: Rumble announces a $775M investment from Tether and plans to use $525M to fund a tender offer for ~70M shares of its common stock; RUM jumps 35%+ after hours  —  YouTube competitor Rumble (RUM) is in a deal for a $775 million strategic investment from stablecoin giant Tether.

Sylvia Varnham O'Regan / The Information: Google hired 100+ staffers of Magic Leap as contractors to assist with Google's work on its new Android XR OS, raising questions about the future of Magic Leap  —  Google has hired more than 100 staffers at augmented reality firm Magic Leap as contractors to assist with Google's work …

Bloomberg: SAP promoted a team lead five female staff allege has a pattern of targeting female reports, raising questions about its culture and workplace discrimination  —  Women who worked for a team lead at the tech giant's Signavio unit say that the company failed to address complaints of bullying and discrimination.

Bloomberg: Sony shares surged ~50% from an August trough to reach an all-time high last week, as investors are bullish on Sony's gaming business growth in 2025  —  - Next year ‘one of the greatest’ for video games: Smithers  — M&A and good management boost stock's appeal: Janus Henderson

Yantoultra Ngui / Reuters: Singapore-based bolttech, a B2B2C startup that offers “embedded” insurance products, raised a $100M+ Series C led by Dragon Fund at a $2.1B valuation  —  Singapore-headquartered insurance technology firm bolttech has raised more than $100 million in its latest funding round …

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Sources: Anysphere, developer of GitHub Copilot rival Cursor, raised a $100M Series B at a $2.6B valuation, up from a $400M valuation in August 2024  —  Anysphere, the developer of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, raised $100 million Series B at a post-money valuation of $2.6 billion, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.