Saturday, December 13, 2025

A look at Netflix House in Philadelphia, a new 100K sq. ft. location for in-person experiences, which resembles a Disneyland attraction and a Dave & Buster's (Sarah Holder/Bloomberg)

Sarah Holder / Bloomberg:
A look at Netflix House in Philadelphia, a new 100K sq. ft. location for in-person experiences, which resembles a Disneyland attraction and a Dave & Buster's  —  The entertainment company's new “Netflix House” experience is bringing the brand's shows into former department stores.



Sources: The Trump administration is drafting a new cyber strategy that would enlist private companies to mount offensive cyberattacks on foreign adversaries (Jamie Tarabay/Bloomberg)

Jamie Tarabay / Bloomberg:
Sources: The Trump administration is drafting a new cyber strategy that would enlist private companies to mount offensive cyberattacks on foreign adversaries  —  President Donald Trump's administration is preparing to turn to private businesses to help mount offensive cyberattacks …



Sources: private capital giant Apollo Global has shorted loans and rapidly cut exposure to the enterprise software sector in 2025 amid concerns over AI threat (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Sources: private capital giant Apollo Global has shorted loans and rapidly cut exposure to the enterprise software sector in 2025 amid concerns over AI threat  —  Private capital giant shorted loans and cut exposure to sector amid concerns over threat from AI



A profile of Nex, which makes the $249 Nex Playground motion-based gaming system targeted toward kids and projects more than $150M of sales this year (Ben Cohen/Wall Street Journal)

Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal:
A profile of Nex, which makes the $249 Nex Playground motion-based gaming system targeted toward kids and projects more than $150M of sales this year  —  How an obscure company pivoted, then pivoted again, nearly ran out of money—and built a hit product



Friday, December 12, 2025

EU finance ministers agreed to set a €3 customs duty on low-value parcels from July 2026, aiming to crack down on cheap Chinese imports from brands like Shein (Reuters)

Reuters:
EU finance ministers agreed to set a €3 customs duty on low-value parcels from July 2026, aiming to crack down on cheap Chinese imports from brands like Shein  —  European Union finance ministers agreed on Friday to set a 3 euro ($3.52) custom duty on low-value parcels arriving in the bloc …



Papua New Guinea says Google will build three subsea cables for the country, a $120M effort funded by Australia, amid China's rising influence in the region (Kirsty Needham/Reuters)

Kirsty Needham / Reuters:
Papua New Guinea says Google will build three subsea cables for the country, a $120M effort funded by Australia, amid China's rising influence in the region  —  Papua New Guinea said on Friday that Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google will build three subsea cables, funded by Australia under a mutual defence treaty …



Taiwan opens its largest AI supercomputing data center using Nvidia's Blackwell chips, a major effort in its push for sovereign AI and chip industry innovation (Nikkei Asia)

Nikkei Asia:
Taiwan opens its largest AI supercomputing data center using Nvidia's Blackwell chips, a major effort in its push for sovereign AI and chip industry innovation  —  TAINAN, Taiwan — Taiwan has opened its latest and largest AI supercomputing data center with Nvidia's most advanced Blackwell chips …



Thursday, December 11, 2025

Israeli startup Port, which offers a proprietary developer portal competitor to Spotify's open-source Backstage, raised a $100M Series C at an $800M valuation (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

Julie Bort / TechCrunch:
Israeli startup Port, which offers a proprietary developer portal competitor to Spotify's open-source Backstage, raised a $100M Series C at an $800M valuation  —  Spotify may be synonymous with music streaming, but it's also got a wildly popular developer-tool side-hustle called “Backstage.”



Harness, which uses AI to automate code testing, verification, security, and governance, raised a $240M Series E led by Goldman Sachs at a $5.5B valuation (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Harness, which uses AI to automate code testing, verification, security, and governance, raised a $240M Series E led by Goldman Sachs at a $5.5B valuation  —  AI DevOps tool Harness, founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal, is on track to exceed $250 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025, Bansal tells TechCrunch.



An Ai2 research scientist argues that AGI, as commonly conceived, will not emerge because it ignores, among other things, the physical realities of computation (Tim Dettmers)

Tim Dettmers:
An Ai2 research scientist argues that AGI, as commonly conceived, will not emerge because it ignores, among other things, the physical realities of computation  —  If you are reading this, you probably have strong opinions about AGI, superintelligence, and the future of AI.



PE firm Everstone combines India's Wingify, which helps A/B test sites, and France's AB Tasty, which improves e-commerce UX; Everstone bought Wingify for $200M (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch : PE firm Everstone combines India's Wingify, which helps A/B test sites, and France's AB Tasty, which...