December 12th Newsletter

Author

Da Yu
December 12, 2025

As of close on December 11, 2025

Markets rallied after the Fed delivered a third rate cut, lowering its benchmark to 3.5–3.75% in a divided 9-3 vote, while signaling a pause and restarting Treasury purchases with $40B. Adding fuel, core PCE inflation surprised to the downside at 2.8% in September. Consumers remained resilient, with income and spending rising 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively. Overseas, China’s trade surplus surged to a record $1.1T in just 11 months, shrugging off U.S. tariffs as exports across autos, electronics, and solar gear displaced global competitors. In tech and M&A, IBM will acquire Confluent for $11B in cash to bolster its AI and data stack, sending Confluent shares up 29%. Meanwhile, Netflix secured $59B in bridge financing for its $72B Warner Bros. deal, now challenged by a $108.4B hostile bid from Paramount Skydance. Elon Musk confirmed on Thursday SpaceX’s plan for a 2026 IPO, with a secondary sale in motion that could value the company at $800B. In consumer and policy news, Southwest Airlines will offset most of its $140M DOT fine with system investments. 

Monthly AI Financing Report: See the November update here.

Top 5 AI Highlights

[1] 🚀 OpenAI launches GPT-5.2 amid “code red,” touting major upgrades in speed, reasoning, and hallucination reduction. Separately, Disney partners with OpenAI in $1B deal to license 200+ characters for Sora AI videos; fan content will stream on Disney+, with both firms pledging responsible, creator-respecting AI deployment. More on GPT 5.2 and Disney deal. 

[2] 🧩 OpenAI has hired Slack CEO Denise Dresser as chief revenue officer to lead global enterprise growth, as it targets $20B in revenue and scales amid rising competition and $1.4T infrastructure commitments. More from CNBC

[3] 🤝 President Trump will permit Nvidia’s H200 chip sales to approved Chinese buyers with a 25% U.S. revenue cut as an effort to curb illicit demand after DeepSeek smuggled banned Blackwell chips into China. More from CNBC and The Information.

[4] 💼 President Trump signed an executive order to curb state-level AI laws, pushing for a single federal standard, backed by major tech firms, while states warn national rules may weaken safety and privacy protections. Details from Reuters.

[5] 🏗️ SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son is planning “Trump Industrial Parks” across the U.S., backed by up to $550 billion in Japanese trade-deal funds, to bolster AI infrastructure and onshore high-tech manufacturing. Details on WSJ.

✨Open Source AI Development

[1] 📜 OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block formed the Agentic AI Foundation, open-sourcing MCP, Agents.md, and Goose to establish interoperable agent standards, broaden adoption, and strengthen US influence amid global AI competition. Details on The Wired.

[2] 📱Zhipu AI open-sources AutoGLM, an on-device phone-control agent that performs multi-step tasks across 50+ major Chinese apps, enabling OEMs to build full phone-operation assistants with local or cloud deployment. See more on Technode.

[3] 🧠 Z.ai launches open-source GLM-4.6V VLMs (106B and 9B), adding native visual tool-calling, 128K context, SoTA benchmarks, MIT licensing, and highly competitive pricing—advancing enterprise multimodal and agentic AI capabilities. VentureBeat.

[4] 💻 Essential AI unveils Rnj1, an open source 8B model pair excelling in code generation, agentic tasks, and scientific reasoning, with the aim to democratize advanced AI through transparent, rigorous development. More on Essential AI.

[5] 🏆 Poetiq sets a new ARC-AGI-2 benchmark with 54% accuracy at $30.57 per problem, surpassing Gemini 3’s 45% at $77.16, using an open-source Gemini system via its meta-system without fine-tuning. See more from Poetiq.

Founder’s Corner

Latest Valuation by Stage

Source: X

What We Read This Week

  • Rivian unveiled proprietary AI chips delivering 1,600 TOPS to power autonomous driving, launching lidar-equipped vehicles, a Large Driving Model, and subscription services as it races to catch Tesla amid slowing EV demand. (The Verge)

  • SoftBank is in talks to acquire data-center investor DigitalBridge amid AI infrastructure boom; DigitalBridge shares surged 35% on the news, with a potential deal valuing it around $1.8 billion. (Bloomberg)

  • Meta shares fell about 1.2% while Alibaba rose roughly 2% after reports Meta is abandoning open-source Llama for a closed AI model trained partly on Alibaba’s Chinese Qwen system. (Yahoo Finance)

  • Oracle shares slid 11% after reporting $16.06 billion in revenue versus $16.21 billion expected, spooking investors over heavy AI spending, rising debt, negative free cash flow, and dragging down Nvidia, Micron, and CoreWeave. (CNBC)

  • UBS may cut up to 10,000 additional jobs globally by 2027 amid Credit Suisse integration, equal to 9% of the workforce; reductions to rely on attrition, early retirements, and internal mobility. (Reuters)

  • Nvidia-backed Starcloud runs AI in orbit, debuting first space-based LLM training using H100 GPU. It aims to slash Earth-based data center costs and emissions with solar-powered orbital compute. (CNBC)

  • Read: Howard Marks’ latest take on whether we are in a bubble. (Oaktree)

  • Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff signals possible corporate rebrand to “Agentforce” as the company pivots from cloud to AI agents, renaming products and emphasizing agentic interfaces over traditional cloud services. (Business Insider)

  • DoorDash and Uber sued New York City to block laws mandating upfront tipping prompts, arguing free-speech violations, warning that higher checkout costs could cut orders, deepen losses, and strain demand amid inflation. (Bloomberg)

AI Fundraising News (Dec 4 — Dec 11)

  • 7AI: AI agents triaging cybersecurity alerts, raised a $130M Series A

  • Aaru: AI simulating user behavior, raised a $50M Series A

  • a2z Radiology AI: AI analyzing CT scans for conditions, raised $4.5M Seed

  • AIR Platforms: AI credit rating and risk platform, raised $6.1M Seed

  • Araceli Biosciences: AI imaging for drug discovery, raised $12.24M Seed

  • BoodleBox: AI platform for predictive content creation, raised $5M Seed

  • Boom Supersonic: Supersonic aircraft and AI turbines, raised a $300M Series B

  • BuildCheck AI: AI for construction design review, raised $5.9M Seed

  • Cleric: AI platform diagnosing software issues, raised $9.8M Seed

  • Cynch: AI finance platform for accountants, raised $9M

  • DEEP Robotics: Humanoid and quadruped robots, raised a $70M Series C

  • Duve: AI guest management for hotels, raised a $60M Series B

  • Edison Scientific: AI “scientist” for research discovery, raised $65.89M

  • Equixly: AI for API security testing, raised a $11.6M Series A

  • Excelsior Sciences: AI and robotics for drug R&D, raised a $70M Series A

  • Fal: Generative AI hosting platform, raised a $140.5M Series D

  • Flair Labs: AI lead gen for real estate, raised $4M Seed

  • Fortell: AI hearing aids for premium users, raised $150M

  • Generative Bionics: Industrial-use humanoid robots, raised a $81.6M

  • Harness: AI software delivery automation, raised a $200M Series E

  • Heva: AI platform for medical tourism, raised $3.1M Series A

  • Hill Research: AI clinical trials decision platform, raised $15M Seed

  • Internet Backyard: AI platform for finance automation, raised $4.5M Seed

  • Kilo Code: AI agent automating code tasks, raised $8M Seed

  • Lemurian Labs: Hardware-agnostic AI software, raised a $28M Series A

  • Medra: AI robotics for lab automation, raised $52M Seed

  • Miravoice: AI voice agent for survey data, raised $6.3M Seed

  • Oboe: AI platform for learning content, raised a $16M Series A

  • Outset: AI for qualitative research insights, raised $30M Series B

  • Parloa: AI customer service platform, raised $200M

  • PermitFlow: AI platform for permit workflows, raised a $54M Series B

  • Pine: AI agent for digital chores, raised a $25M Series A

  • Prime Security: AI agents for code review, raised $20M Series A

  • Pryzm: AI for defense contract capture, raised $12.2M Seed

  • RelationalAI: AI knowledge graph platform, raised $22.5M

  • Relentless Health: AI breath diagnostics for diseases, raised $20.7M

  • Resemble AI: AI voice generation and detection, raised $13M

  • Safebooks AI: AI for finance fraud detection, raised $15M Seed

  • Scowtt: AI sales lead qualification platform, raised $10.94M Series A

  • Serval: AI IT help desk automation, raised $75M Series B

  • Simular: AI agents for personal computers, raised a $21.5M Series A

  • Surf: AI market intelligence for crypto, raised $15M

  • The General Intelligence Company of New York: AI automation for business ops, raised $8.7M Seed

  • Unconventional AI: Energy-efficient AI computing startup, raised $475M Seed

  • Valinor: AI models for drug development, raised $13M Seed

  • Worktrace AI: Workflow automation agent startup, raised a $9.3M Seed

  • X9: AI robotics for medical imaging, raised $8.57M

  • Yoodli: AI communication coaching platform, raised a $40M Series B