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09 Dec 2025

Fal secures $140M Series D funding led by Sequoia, tripling valuation to $4.5 billion

Fal, a multimodal AI provider hosting image, video, and audio models for developers, raised $140 million in Series D funding led by Sequoia Capital. The round tripled the company's valuation to $4.5 billion just months after its previous raise. With revenue surpassing $200 million and a 300% growth in run rate since July, Fal's rapid ascent reflects strong investor appetite for AI infrastructure.

3 Sources

Wikimedia Foundation Names Bernadette Meehan CEO to Navigate AI Content Attribution Crisis

Wikimedia Foundation appointed Bernadette Meehan, former US Ambassador to Chile, as its new CEO starting January 20. She faces critical challenges posed by artificial intelligence as tech giants like OpenAI and Meta scrape Wikipedia data for model training without clear attribution, while the non-profit struggles with rising server costs and maintaining its free and open access mission.

2 Sources

Snowflake Ventures invests in Ataccama to strengthen data trust for AI agents and enterprise AI

Snowflake Ventures has made a strategic investment in Ataccama, a data quality and governance platform provider, to deliver trusted data for AI agents and enterprise applications. The partnership addresses a critical readiness gap, with only 3% of banks currently running AI initiatives at scale, highlighting the urgent need for automated data reliability in production AI systems.

2 Sources

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block Launch Foundation to Standardize AI Agents Under Linux Oversight

Major AI companies have formed the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation to establish open standards for AI agents. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block donated key technologies including Model Context Protocol, Goose, and AGENTS.md to prevent a fragmented ecosystem of incompatible agent systems.

15 Sources

Google brings gesture controls back to Pixel Watch 4 with Double Pinch and Wrist Turn features

Google is rolling out new wearable gesture controls exclusively for the Pixel Watch 4, including Double Pinch and Wrist Turn features borrowed from Apple's playbook. The update also brings enhanced Smart Replies powered by Gemma AI to both Pixel Watch 3 and 4, offering twice the speed and three times better memory efficiency than previous models.

4 Sources

Alexa+ can now track deals and automatically buy products when prices drop to your target

Amazon is rolling out new Alexa+ shopping features that track product prices and automatically purchase items when they hit your desired threshold. The AI-powered assistant introduces a Shopping Essentials dashboard on Echo Show 15 and 21, with personalized gift suggestions and real-time order tracking. While the feature offers proactive deal finding, users should be mindful of potential surprise purchases.

4 Sources

Pebble's founder launches $75 AI smart ring that turns fleeting thoughts into organized notes

Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, has unveiled the Index 01, a $75 AI smart ring designed as external memory for your brain. Unlike always-on AI wearables, this privacy-preserving device only records when you press its button, processing voice notes locally on your smartphone. With a battery lasting up to two years and no subscription fees, the ring enters a growing market alongside competitors like Sandbar's $249 Stream Ring.

9 Sources

Vibe Coding Named Word of the Year as AI Reshapes How Software Gets Built

Collins Dictionary crowned vibe coding its 2025 Word of the Year, marking a shift in software development where AI tools generate code from simple text prompts. While the approach democratizes programming and accelerates development, it raises critical questions about code quality, security vulnerabilities, and the evolving role of developers who must now balance creative freedom with rigorous oversight.

3 Sources

Accenture and Anthropic forge multi-year partnership to train 30,000 on Claude AI

Accenture has expanded its collaboration with Anthropic through a multi-year strategic partnership that will train approximately 30,000 professionals on Claude AI. The new Accenture Anthropic Business Group marks Anthropic's largest enterprise deployment to date, focusing on scaling AI-powered software development across regulated industries including financial services, life sciences, and the public sector.

9 Sources

Salesforce reveals how $8 billion Informatica deal solves enterprise AI's context problem

Salesforce has detailed how Informatica fits into its unified data strategy alongside MuleSoft, addressing the core challenge that causes 80% of AI projects to fail: lack of trusted context. The $8 billion acquisition creates a data foundation combining metadata-rich enterprise context with real-time operational signals, aiming to transform AI agents from 'corporate stupid' to reasoning-based systems.

2 Sources

230+ Groups Push Congress for AI Datacenters Moratorium Amid Energy and Cost Concerns

More than 230 environmental organizations are calling on US Congress to impose a moratorium on new datacenter construction, citing the AI-driven expansion's impact on energy consumption, water resources, and electricity bills. With global datacenter spending projected to hit $657 billion by 2025 and energy demand expected to triple by 2035, the campaign highlights mounting tensions between AI development and environmental sustainability.

2 Sources

Microsoft and Amazon pledge $52.5B in India as tech giants race to dominate AI infrastructure

Microsoft announced a $17.5 billion investment in India through 2029, its largest in Asia, followed immediately by Amazon's $35 billion commitment through 2030. The massive India AI investment signals an intensifying battle among tech giants India to capture the world's fastest-growing digital market, with both companies targeting AI and cloud infrastructure, data center expansion, and skills training for millions.

30 Sources

iFixit launches FixBot, an AI repair assistant trained on 125,000 guides to fix anything

iFixit has released a mobile repair app featuring FixBot, an AI-powered chatbot that guides users through fixing devices, appliances, and vehicles. Trained on over 125,000 repair guides and millions of pages of documentation, the app uses computer vision to identify broken items and provides step-by-step guidance with voice commands. Currently free, the app will eventually introduce a paid subscription tier at $4.99 per month.

11 Sources

Brookfield and Qatar form $20 billion joint venture to build AI infrastructure across Middle East

Brookfield Asset Management has partnered with Qatar's Qai to create a $20 billion joint venture focused on developing artificial intelligence infrastructure. The partnership aims to position Qatar as a leading AI hub in the Middle East through an Integrated Compute centre, while also exploring opportunities in select international markets.

2 Sources

India proposes mandatory royalties for AI training data, challenging OpenAI and Google

India's government committee has proposed a mandatory royalty system requiring AI companies to pay content creators for training AI on copyrighted content. The blanket licensing system would give OpenAI, Google, and others automatic access to copyrighted works through a centralized royalty pool. This India AI regulation marks a sharp divergence from US fair use models and EU opt-out systems.

6 Sources

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