Vicky Ge Huang / Wall Street Journal:
Bitcoin miners that are retooling data centers for AI have boosted their stocks; the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF is up ~90% YTD even as bitcoin has slumped  —  The pivot to AI has lifted a bitcoin-mining ETF by around 90% this year, even as bitcoin itself has slumped.  —  It's harder than ever to mine bitcoin.

Politico:
Over the past month, the US paused talks on a tech pact with the UK, canceled a South Korea trade meeting, and threatened the EU over Big Tech regulations  —  “It's telegraphing that we've looked at this deeply, we think there's a problem, we're looking at tools to address it and we're looking …

Stu Woo / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: China's AI regulations, which require chatbots to pass a 2,000-question ideological test, have spawned specialized agencies that help AI companies pass  —  Beijing is enforcing tough rules to ensure chatbots don't misbehave, while hoping its models stay competitive with the U.S.

Urvi Malvania / Financial Express:
HCLSoftware, a subsidiary of Indian IT company HCLTech, agrees to acquire business intelligence company Jaspersoft from Cloud Software Group for $240M in cash  —  The company also announced the acquisition of Belgium-based Wobby to boost agentic AI capabilities.

Ari Levy / CNBC:
Waymo says it is updating its fleet to improve navigation during widespread outages, after pausing its service during blackouts in San Francisco on December 20  —  Three days after a blackout in San Francisco caused Waymo to pause it driverless car service, the Alphabet-owned company …