How "cash to crypto" swaps allow users everywhere to convert national currencies to stablecoins and then debit cards, avoiding financial oversight and sanctions (Aaron Krolik/New York Times)
How a Cryptocurrency Helps Criminals Launder Money and Evade Sanctions
Through layers of intermediaries, stablecoins can be moved, swapped and mixed into pools of other funds in ways that are difficult to trace, expert...
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How “cash to crypto” swaps allow users everywhere to convert local currencies to stablecoins and then to debit cards, avoiding financial oversight and sanctions
By Aaron Krolik / New York Times. View the full context on Techmeme.
Sources: IBM is in advanced talks to buy data streaming software maker Confluent for ~$11B, above its market value of ~$8B as of December 5 close (Lauren Thomas/Wall Street Journal) https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/ibm-nears-roughly-11-billion-deal-for-confluent-276f52d8
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IBM agrees to acquire data streaming software maker Confluent for ~$11B in cash, above its ~$8B market value as of its December 5 close, paying $31 per share
By Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal. View the full context on Techmeme.
A look at an "etiquette camp" for young founders in San Francisco, which teaches them how to dress, act, and talk, amid shifting expectations for tech founders (Lisa Bonos/Washington Post) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/07/tech-startup-founders-etiquette/
Techmeme
A look at an “etiquette camp” in San Francisco that teaches young founders how to dress, act, and talk, amid shifting expectations as the industry gains power
By Lisa Bonos / Washington Post. View the full context on Techmeme.
Impressions from a test ride in London in a car using Wayve's self-driving tech; Wayve has raised $1.3B since launch and is testing cars with Level 2+ autonomy (John Thornhill/Financial Times)
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Impressions from a London test ride in a car using Wayve
By John Thornhill / Financial Times. View the full context on Techmeme.
President Trump says Netflix's planned acquisition of WBD will have "to go through a process", as it would create an entity with "a lot of market share" (Bloomberg) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-07/trump-says-netflix-warner-bros-deal-will-need-review
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President Trump says Netflix
From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
An interview with Headspace CEO Tom Pickett on its AI chatbot Ebb, which he insists isn't for serious mental health issues, Ebb's upgrade to voice, and more (Emma Jacobs/Financial Times)
Client Challenge
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An interview with Headspace CEO Tom Pickett on AI chatbot Ebb, which he insists is not for serious mental health issues, upgrading from text to voice, and more
By Emma Jacobs / Financial Times. View the full context on Techmeme.
Sources: Aaru, which uses AI to simulate user behavior, has raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures at multiple valuation tiers, including a $1B tier (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
TechCrunch
Sources: AI synthetic research startup Aaru raised a Series A at a $1B 'headline' valuation | TechCrunch
The one-year-old startup, which does market research on simulated populations, had a multi-tier valuation round, sources tell TechCrunch.
Techmeme
Sources: Aaru, which generates AI agents to simulate user behavior, raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures at multiple valuation tiers, including at $1B
By Marina Temkin / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
Sources: Ted Sarandos met with President Trump in November, and both agreed WBD should go to the highest bidder; Sarandos argued that Netflix wasn't a monopoly (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-07/netflix-co-ceo-ted-sarandos-wooed-trump-personally-ahead-of-warner-bid
Techmeme
Sources: Ted Sarandos met with Trump in November, arguing that Netflix wasn
By Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Essential AI, whose CEO co-wrote Google's Attention Is All You Need paper, unveils Rnj-1, an 8B-parameter open model with SWE-bench performance close to GPT-4o (Ashish Vaswani/Essential AI)
Essential AI
Essential AI
Essential AI builds open-source models and tools to make frontier AI more accessible.
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Essential AI, whose CEO co-wrote Google
By Ashish Vaswani / Essential AI. View the full context on Techmeme.
Nikita Bier accuses the European Commission of trying to deceptively amplify the reach of its post about the €120M fine on X; X terminates the EC's ad account (Bjarke Smith-Meyer/Politico)
X axes European Commission’s ad account after €120M EU fine – POLITICO
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Nikita Bier accuses the European Commission of trying to deceptively amplify the reach of its X post about its €120M fine of X; X terminates the EC
By Bjarke Smith-Meyer / Politico. View the full context on Techmeme.