Sensor Tower: ChatGPT had 73M DAUs in India as of last week, up 607% YoY and more than double the US, boosted by its free plans, far above Gemini's 17M DAUs (Munsif Vengattil/Reuters) https://www.reuters.com/world/india/with-freebies-openai-google-vie-indian-users-training-data-2025-12-17/
Bengaluru-based e-commerce platform Meesho is up 95% from its IPO offer price, valuing it at nearly $11B and making it India's best-performing major IPO of 2025 (Ashutosh Joshi/Bloomberg) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-17/meesho-is-india-s-top-performing-big-ipo-of-2025-after-95-rally
Crypto exchange HashKey closed flat in its Hong Kong debut, after rising as much as 6.6% before falling 8.4% intraday, amid a weakness in digital assets (Reuters) https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/crypto-exchange-hashkeys-rise-03-hong-kong-trading-debut-2025-12-17/
Sources: top Monzo shareholders, including Accel and Iconiq, are pushing to oust the fintech's Chair Gary Hoffman after the surprise departure of CEO TS Anil (Financial Times)
Ankar, which develops LLM-powered AI tools to streamline the process of drafting patent applications for patent attorneys, raised a $20M Series A led by Atomico (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune)
Monzo receives an Irish banking license, allowing the London-based digital lender to offer current and savings accounts across the EU (Aisha S Gani/Bloomberg) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-17/monzo-gets-irish-banking-license-to-expand-into-european-markets
Bhutan unveils a pledge of up to 10,000 bitcoin to develop Gelephu Mindfulness City; Arkham says Bhutan holds 5,984 bitcoin, ranking 7th among sovereign holders (Vismaya V/Decrypt)
The Marshall Islands unveils a national UBI scheme that offers payments of ~$200 per quarter to every resident citizen via stablecoin or traditional currency (Prianka Srinivasan/The Guardian)
Berlin-based Trade Republic says early investors will sell €1.2B of shares to Sequoia and others at a €12.5B valuation, becoming Germany's most valuable startup (Financial Times)
Dune and Keyrock: bets placed on prediction markets rose from <$100M per month in early 2024 to $13B per month in November, as Polymarket and Kalshi compete (Jill R Shah/Financial Times)