Transcript
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Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line but first. There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes. Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line, but first. There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.
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These are the Daily Tech Headlines for Friday, December 19, 2025. I'm Rob Dunwood. TikTok is selling its U.S. operations to a new entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, for about $14 billion to resolve U.S. national security concerns over its Chinese ownership. The joint venture, set to close on January 22, will be 45% owned by US investors Oracle, Silver Lake and M, with the rest being held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors and ByteDance. This new independent US entity will be responsible for US data protection, content moderation and algorithm security, including retaining the content recommendation algorithm. With Oracle acting as the security compliance partner. OpenAI is reportedly seeking to raise up to $100 billion, potentially valuing the company at $830 billion by the end of the calendar first quarter next year. This massive fundraise is needed to cover rising inferencing costs. Fund maintain its lead over rivals like Anthropic and Google, committing trillions to the AI race despite cooled investor sentiment and chip constraints. OpenAI is rumored to be pursuing an IPO and courting Amazon for a $10 billion investment in cash in AI computing chips, which would substantially increase its current $64 billion in funds following a recent $500 billion valuation. Meta platforms is restructuring its AI initiatives by forming the Meta Superintelligence Labs under Mark Zuckerberg and Chief AI Officer Alexander Wang. This new division focus on accelerating AI development, aiming to launch two major models in the first half of 2026 mango for image and video generation, and Avocado, a large language model for coding. The strategic shift, particularly toward visual AI, is a response to intense market competition from rivals like OpenAI's Sora and Google's Nano Banana. LG Smart TV owners were surprised by the sudden, unremovable appearance of a Microsoft Copilot icon, which LG later clarified as merely a shortcut to launch an AI chatbox in the TV's web brow, not an embedded application. Following the backlash, an LG representative stated that the company will take steps to allow users to delete the shortcut icon if they wish, underscoring the point that much like with YouTube's forced iTunes album giveaway, customers prefer to choose which services are added to their devices, especially given smart TVs existing privacy concerns. Google Cloud and cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks have substantially increased their partnership, revealing what a source characterized de Reuters as Google Cloud's most significant security services agreement to date. This contract involves a commitment from Palo Alto Networks to spend approaching $10 billion with Google Cloud over a span of several years, according to an individual with direct knowledge of the deal. Meta's Threads app has had a successful year, becoming the second most downloaded iOS app after ChatGPT and reaching 400 million monthly and 150 million daily active users. While initial growth has been fueled by promotions on Instagram and Facebook, threads head Connor Hayes is focused on building an organic user base that opens the app voluntarily. The platform Platform is aiming to define its identity as the go to place for what's going on in the world by strategically developing verticals like sports, entertainment and news. Instacart has agreed to pay a $60 million refund settlement to the US Federal Trade Commission over allegations of deceptive advertising and unlawful tactics. The FTC claimed Instacart misled customers with false free delivery promises that included mandatory service fees, failed to honor its 100% satisfaction guarantee by steering customers toward future credits instead of full refunds, and did not disclosed charges after the free trial for its Instacart plus membership. Instacart denied wrongdoing but accepted the settlement while simultaneously facing a separate FTC investigation into its AI powered pricing tool, which is found to be causing price variations for the same items. Samsung unveiled the Exynos 2600, its flagship chipset for some Galaxy S26 phones. It's the world's first smartphone SOC built on a 2 nanometer gate all around process, promising significant gains in performance, efficiency and thermals the new chip features a 10 core CPU based on ARM's latest version 9.3 architecture, using new C1 Ultra and C1 Pro cores and dropping the traditional low power cores. And finally, Instagram is taking steps to curb the overuse of hashtags on its platform, with chief Adam Mosseri announcing a new CAPA 5 hashtags per post. Mosseri explained that a small number of specific high quality tags perform better than a long generic list, emphasizing that while hashtags aid in search, they do not inherently boost reach. Instead, creators should concentrate on producing content that truly resonates with their audience. This move follows a similar measure taken for threads where posts are limited to just one tag and encourage community focus over engagement manipulation for more analysis of the tech news of the day, subscribe to DailyTreeNewsHow.com, you can find show notes and links to all the headlines there as well. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time.