Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

The UK government plans to take a £25M stake in Octopus Energy's tech spin-off Kraken, last valued at $8.65B, in an effort to encourage Kraken to list in London (Financial Times)

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Sources: Seoul-based AI chip designer FuriosaAI seeks to raise a $300M to $500M Series D to fund mass production of its second-gen RNGD chip and eyes a 2027 IPO (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg)

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The UK Gambling Commission says Meta is letting illegal gambling sites advertise on Facebook and Instagram, calling its ad library a "window into criminality" (Olivia Solon/Bloomberg)

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OpenAI executive Chris Lehane says the startup is "on track" to unveil its first device in H2 2026; reports suggest it won't have a screen and may be a wearable (Axios)

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Taiwanese media: Asus Chair Jonney Shih says the company won't release any new smartphones in 2026, which may signal the brand's exit from the Android market (James Peckham/PCMag)

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Sources: internal Google data shows Gemini API calls surged from ~35B in March 2025 to ~85B in August 2025; Google says Gemini Enterprise has hit 8M subscribers (Erin Woo/The Information)

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The NYSE plans to use its tech that matches buyers and sellers, plus blockchain networks, to facilitate the real-time trading of tokenized securities in 2026 (Katherine Doherty/Bloomberg)

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How a16z found success with 2024's $1.25B AI infrastructure fund, focusing on early funding and the largest investments at ~$60M, as it expands the fund to $3B (Bloomberg)

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Sources: Microsoft is preparing to launch a session-based ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming tier in 2026; users note Xbox Cloud Gaming now references "ad support" (Jez Corden/Windows Central)

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Source: Elon Musk donates $10M to boost pro-Trump Senate candidate Nate Morris, who is seeking to replace Mitch McConnell, in Musk's largest-yet Senate donation (Alex Isenstadt/Axios)

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The IMF says the "surprisingly resilient" global economy is at risk of a sharp AI boom reversal, but "the levels of market frothiness" are below the dotcom bust (Financial Times)

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Bitcoin fell 3.6% to under $92K, ether fell 4.9%, and solana fell 8.6%, wiping ~$100B from crypto's total value, after Trump proposed a new 10% European tariff (Suvashree Ghosh/Bloomberg)

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Q&A with FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam, only the second CEO in the company's history, on humanoid robots, automation, AI, drones, US-China trade tensions, and more (Jordyn Holman/New York Times)

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On Joe Rogan's JRE, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck discuss Hollywood and AI; Damon says Netflix wants movies to restate the plot because viewers are on their phones (Jack Dunn/Variety)

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Sources: after five Thinking Machines staff left, investors are rattled, potentially impacting fundraising; two researchers quit via Slack during an all-hands (The Information)

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Chinese smartphone shipments fell 1.6% YoY in Q4 2025 and 0.6% in 2025 due to weak demand after memory shortages increased prices; iPhone shipments rose 28% YoY (Counterpoint Research)

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Sources: US political appointees at CISA blocked Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala's attempt to remove the agency's chief information officer, Robert Costello (John Sakellariadis/Politico)

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Chinese media: phone makers Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Transsion trimmed their 2026 shipment targets, with Oppo cutting up to 20%, due to the memory chip shortage (Maggie Eastland/Bloomberg)

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The memory shortage that is spiking RAM prices is now expanding to the broader PC market, driving price hikes for GPUs, high-capacity SSDs, and hard drives (Andrew Cunningham/Ars Technica)

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Shenzhen-based UBTech signs deals to supply its Walker S2 humanoid robots to Airbus and Texas Instruments, and says it aims to produce 10,000+ units in 2026 (Bloomberg)

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