| |  | Dec 12, 2025 | | | | | Supported by |  | | | | | | Thank goodness it's Friday! Disney will invest $1 billion in OpenAI and license 200 of its best known characters for video generation in the Sora app. Broadcom reports a big jump in its AI chip revenue. China considers a record $70 billion incentive program to support its chip sector.
| | | | Walt Disney Co. is investing $1 billion into OpenAI as part of a deal in which Disney is licensing more than 200 characters from its program library for use in OpenAI's Sora video-generating app. Among the characters that people will be able to use in Sora videos are Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, Black Panther, Captain America, Iron Man, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. The deal follows criticism from Hollywood figures that Sora could be used to steal images of actors without compensation. In striking a deal with Disney, OpenAI demonstrates it is willing to work with Hollywood. Disney drew an implicit contrast with Google: on Wednesday, Disney lawyers sent Google a letter demanding it stop infringing on its copyrights in its training of AI models, Variety reported. The announcement from OpenAI and Disney didn't make clear, however, what the terms of the licensing agreement are, and whether OpenAI is paying money. Instead, what is clear is that Disney will be paying OpenAI. In addition to investing in OpenAI, Disney will become a major customer of OpenAI, the companies said, using the AI firm's tools to build new products and experiences including for its Disney+ streaming service. Disney will be able to run some of the Sora videos on its streaming service, Disney+. The videos will include "costumes, props, vehicles and iconic environments" from the programs but not "talent likenesses or voices." Disney CEO Bob Iger has ties to OpenAI, through Thrive Capital, one of OpenAI's biggest backers. Iger was briefly a venture partner at Thrive and took a stake in its management company in 2023. He remains a limited partner in its funds. | | | | Broadcom reported 28% higher revenue of $18 billion for its fourth fiscal quarter ended Nov. 2, driven by a 74% jump in AI chip revenue, reflecting how its business of helping companies like Google develop specialized AI chips is lifting Broadcom's business significantly. Broadcom shares rose 3% in -after-hours trading. But AI chips are less than half of Broadcom's business and other parts of the company are performing less robustly, which dilutes the growth impact. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan forecast that AI chip revenue would double in the company's first fiscal quarter, through January, while total revenue would only rise 28% to $19.1 billion, the same growth rate as the fourth quarter. Broadcom's free cash flow is growing faster than its topline, however. In the fourth quarter, free cash flow hit $7.466 billion, up 36% on the year-earlier quarter. Tan also said on the firm's earnings call that Anthropic was the customer who placed a $10 billion order last quarter. He said Anthropic bought racks of Google's tensor processing units. Anthropic placed another $11 billion order in the current quarter for the chips, Tan added. The Information first reported on Google's plans to sell its TPUs directly to customers, instead of renting them through Google Cloud, in an effort to compete more directly with Nvidia. | | | | Beijing is considering pouring as much as $70 billion into its semiconductor industry in what would be the world's largest state-backed chip support program, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The move elevates China's push for semiconductor self-sufficiency as the country's tech industry confronts restrictive US export controls on advanced chips and chipmaking equipment. The package under consideration ranges from 200 billion ($28 billion) to 500 billion yuan ($71 billion) in subsidies and financing, and Chinese government officials are still hammering out which companies will benefit and how much each sector will receive, according to Bloomberg. If rolled out at the top end, China's proposed spending would dwarf comparable efforts worldwide and surpass funding the U.S. government has committed for the semiconductor sector through the Chips and Science Act. The investment will function separately from Beijing's existing subsidy program for the chip industry, according to Bloomberg, and signals the government's determination to reduce its reliance on foreign tech products such as Nvidia's chips. | | | | OpenAI on Thursday released a new flagship AI model, GPT-5.2 as the company tries to improve its ChatGPT chatbot and enterprise sales against rivals Google and Anthropic. The company said that the new generation of models are better at workplace-related tasks including creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, using tools and handling complex, multi-step projects. GPT-5.2 Thinking is the company's first model that performs at or above a human expert level on GDPval, an OpenAI evaluation that measures AI performance on real-world tasks across domains such as law, finance and engineering. The company also said that GPT‑5.2 Pro and GPT‑5.2 Thinking are especially optimized for scientific and mathematical work. GPT-5.2 is around 40% more expensive than OpenAI's last flagship model, GPT-5.1, according to publicly available pricing. The release comes less than two weeks after OpenAI leaders declared a "code red" within the company, telling employees that they had to refocus resources on improving ChatGPT after Google made technological strides in developing its Gemini 3 model. On Thursday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on CNBC that Gemini 3 "has had less of an impact on our metrics than maybe we feared." | | | | Nvidia plans to host a private summit next week with startups focused on solving data center power problems that could hold up the development of artificial intelligence, according to several people who were invited. The event, at Nvidia's Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters, signals how energy shortages are impacting companies building facilities filled with Nvidia's power-hungry artificial intelligence server chips. Executives from power and electrical engineering startups are expected to attend the summit, including firms in which Nvidia has taken equity stakes. The firms sell products ranging from software to physical power equipment technologies. A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to comment. | | | | Wealthfront, an automated investment adviser, said late Thursday it had priced its initial public offering at $14 per share, at the top of the marketed range. At that price it raised $485 million, valuing the company at over $2 billion, or $2.6 billion if all stock options and potential shares were included. That's a premium to the $1.4 billion the company was valued at in 2022. Its largest shareholder, Tiger Global Management, invested around $90 million to get its stake of $310 million, netting the firm about $220 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. The listing should boost cash returns for the New York-based hedge fund, one of the most aggressive venture investors during the pandemic-era startup boom. Other large shareholders in Wealthfront include DAG Ventures, which owned 12%, Index Ventures which owned 11% and Ribbit Capital, which owned almost 9%, according to securities filings. The business had raised almost $300 million from investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital and Greylock Partners, dating back to 2007, according to PitchBook Data. Wealthfront markets itself as a more efficient alternative to a wealth advisor, using technology to automate investment decisions. Its revenue for its most recent fiscal year ending in January was $309 million, up from $217 million the year before. The business is profitable. The listing comes during a year that has seen a number of financial technology listings, including Chime and Klarna, several of which have been off to a rocky start. Wealthfront listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker "WLTH." Goldman Sachs is the lead underwriter on the deal. Fenwick & West and Latham & Watkins served as counsel. (The story has updated.) | | | | Harness, an eight-year-old startup that helps developers manage updates and scan for security bugs in AI applications, announced $240 million in Series E funding led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives at a valuation of $5.5 billion, up from $3.7 billion after its last round three years ago. The investment reflects how developing AI applications is more complex than building traditional ones. Growing adoption of AI coding tools like Anysphere's Cursor is creating additional work for developers, who must spend time cleaning up the code and vetting it for security bugs. Harness' product automates that work so that developers can focus on writing code. Goldman Sachs Alternatives is investing $200 million in the new round, with the additional $40 million coming from a planned tender offer in which IVP, Menlo Ventures, and Unusual Ventures are taking part. | | | | Pinterest is acquiring advertising technology company tvScientific, the companies announced. tvScientific helps smaller companies buy ads on streaming television. Pinterest has been looking to acquire an advertising technology company since earlier this year in an effort to boost its ad sales, the Information earlier reported. With tvScientific, advertisers can show ads to known Pinterest users watching TV shows, and better measure the customer journey from seeing an ad on Pinterest, to seeing the ad on TV, to making a purchase. Pinterest contemplated spending hundreds of millions of dollars when it first contemplated an advertising technology acquisition in January. In the announcement of the deal, Pinterest said the deal will require regulatory review, which implies a value of over $126 million. | | | | The Securities and Exchange Commission gave the greenlight to DTCC, the main clearinghouse for U.S. financial markets, to record stocks on blockchain. DTCC said it received a no-action letter from the regulator, allowing it to launch the feature in the second half of 2026. DTCC will allow its members to use blockchain to transfer stocks to each other, rather than exclusively going through its centralized ledger. Crypto companies have been pushing for regulatory approval to trade stocks on crypto platforms. That could potentially threaten the role of DTCC. With the new feature, DTCC is positioned to retain an essential role in blockchain-based stock trading. | | | | Michael Hsu, the former Acting Comptroller of the Currency under President Biden, has joined early-stage VC firm Core Innovation Capital as a venture partner. Hsu will work with founders to "anticipate regulatory hurdles" and engage with policymakers, supporting companies in fintech, embedded finance, and AI governance, the venture firm said. During his tenure at the OCC, Hsu increased scrutiny of banks' activities in digital assets and fintech. None of the banks supervised by the OCC failed during the regional bank crisis in 2023. The OCC, one of the three federal banking regulators, is set to play a major role regulating stablecoin issuers when the Genius Act takes effect. Crypto companies like Ripple, Circle and Coinbase have applied for federal trust charters with the OCC. Core Innovation Capital has invested in companies including Ripple, NerdWallet and PayJoy. It focuses on startups building in highly regulated sectors such as finance and healthcare. | | | | | Popular articles
By Jemima McEvoy, Qianer Liu and Wayne Ma
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