Reddit, a huge website of discussion forums, will make everyone log in to read it. [1] Its boss, Steve Huffman, announced the change on Thursday with Reddit's quarterly results. [6] He blamed Google's AI answers, which keep searchers on Google instead of sending them on. [2] In October, Google search sent Reddit more than 1 million fewer visits a week. [1]

Google's AI Overviews are answer boxes written by AI above the usual search links. [7] AI Mode is a separate Google screen that answers questions in the same way. [7] "AI Mode does not drive traffic," Huffman said on a call with investors. [2] He said Google still reads Reddit's pages as hard as ever. [2]

For about 20 years, anyone could read almost all of Reddit without an account. [1] Many people add the word Reddit to Google searches to find answers written by people. [4] An earlier Google change raised forum posts in its results and helped Reddit grow. [6] Google has paid Reddit, reportedly $60 million a year, to use its posts. [7] That deal is still being negotiated, Huffman said. [6]

Reddit had 130.3 million daily users worldwide in the third quarter, about the same as before. [4] In the US, daily users fell from 53.2 million to 50.7 million in three months. [4] Reddit warned its daily users could fall by a low double-digit percentage this quarter. [3]

Huffman said logged-in readers give Reddit more signals for aiming its adverts. [5] He said readers who log in also use the site more. [5] Reddit is also steering readers to a new For You feed of suggested posts. [8] Most copying of Reddit by outsiders happens through logged-out pages, the company says. [1] App users and logged-in users bring in over 80% of the money Reddit makes from readers. [1]

Tests start in a few countries outside the US in the last 3 months of 2026. [3] Reddit has set no date for the rest of the world. [4] It is still deciding what logged-out visitors will be allowed to see. [6] Reddit is also bringing back a rebuilt incognito mode in its app. [1] "Reddit is the last platform to provide basically unfettered logged-out access," Huffman said. [6]

Why it matters. Readers who arrive from a Google search may be asked to make an account. [1] Other websites are losing Google visitors the same way, TechCrunch reports. [4] The next sign is how Reddit's test countries react before the year ends. [3]

US officials believe a suspected Chinese spy got close to Nvidia's boss, Jensen Huang. [9] Nvidia's chips are a cornerstone of the AI boom, the Guardian notes. [10] The suspect, Alice Huang, no relation, was a top executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore data-centre firm. [10] Megaspeed builds data centres and rents out computing to Chinese firms like Alibaba. [12] US officials already suspected it of passing restricted Nvidia chips to Chinese firms. [11] Its Malaysian sister company bought at least $4.8 billion of Nvidia-based equipment in under two years. [15] The Times says President Trump was told a year ago and chose to do nothing. [9] Nvidia says the meetings were ordinary customer business, with no secrets shared. [13] China's embassy in Washington called the claims groundless smears. [14]

Why it matters. The report lands while Nvidia presses to sell more advanced chips to China. [11] Trump visits China next month, where the chip question is likely to come up. [9]

Intel, the US chipmaker, says its cheapest new laptop chips, called Wildcat Lake, are sold out. [16] They power cheaper Windows laptops like the Dell XPS 13, often with only 8GB of memory. [16] Memory chips have grown scarce and dear as AI data centres buy them up. [16] Intel's finance chief said he does not expect memory supply to improve in 2027. [16] Intel expects 12% fewer PCs to sell this year, and 10% fewer in 2027. [18] It will move some laptop-chip factory capacity to processors for data centres. [18] Intel's boss, Lip-Bu Tan, says AI agents will need far more data-centre processors. [17] Even so, Intel says it will likely not make all the chips customers want. [17]

Why it matters. Buyers of cheap laptops face fewer chips and dearer memory as a result. [16] Intel will show its next desktop chips, Nova Lake, at the CES trade show in January. [18]

PC makers cannot get enough circuit boards, Nikkei Asia reports. [19] A printed circuit board is the flat board that a device's chips are mounted on. [19] Board makers are serving AI hardware makers first, because they demand more and pay more. [19] Some board orders now take as long as 30 months to fill. [19] One supplier says an order placed today would arrive in late 2028. [19] Costs for one key board material have risen at least 12 times since July. [19] A leading maker of that material has orders filling its books to 2030. [19] Wages in the board industry have risen 20% to 30% to keep skilled staff. [19]

Why it matters. Even if fewer PCs sell next year, PC makers still struggle to find boards. [19]

Mistral, a French AI company, released its biggest model for anyone to download on Thursday. [20] Its weights, the trained numbers that make the model work, are now public. [20] The model, Mistral Large 4, is nicknamed Le Chonk for its trillion-parameter size. [22] Mistral says it matches GLM-5.3, a leading Chinese open model, on cyber and coding work. [20] On one overall coding score it trails GLM-5.3 by a point, 48 to 49. [22] Mistral says it needs 47% less work per task, so it is cheaper to run. [20] Mistral pitches it for cyber defence that no outside company can switch off. [21] "It's clearly a dual-use technology," said Rafe Pilling of Sophos, a security company. [21]

Why it matters. That means attackers can download and change the model too. [21] Firms and governments can now run a top model on their own computers. [20]

Cohere, a Toronto AI company, is raising up to C$7bn in new money. [23] Cohere says it is the biggest private funding round in Canadian tech history. [23] Canada's government is among the investors and agreed to put in up to $1.14bn. [23] The round would value Cohere at C$35.7bn, the company says. [23] Schwarz Group, a large European retailer, leads the round and wants Cohere's AI on its cloud. [23] Cohere will keep its headquarters in Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney said. [23] It will also spend about $1.2bn on computing in Canada by 2030. [23]

Why it matters. Carney said the strongest AI sits with very few companies in very few countries. [23] Within a year Cohere plans to finish combining with Aleph Alpha, a German AI firm. [23]

FuriosaAI, a Seoul chip designer, raised $620m, valuing it at about $2.9bn. [24] South Korea's National Growth Fund put in $280m, the most of any investor. [24] Its value has roughly quadrupled since last year's round. [24] Its chips do inference, the work of running an AI model after it is trained. [24] Its second-generation chip, RNGD, went into mass production in January. [24] TSMC, the Taiwanese chip factory, is making 20,000 of them this year. [24] FuriosaAI says it has memory and factory space to make over 40,000 in 2027. [24]

Why it matters. LG and Samsung's cloud arm already run AI on its chips, the company says. [24] Investors want alternatives to Nvidia that use less power, Bloomberg reported. [24]

Oracle, a big business-software maker, will charge customers for each piece of work its AI does. [25] Its business apps are sold by subscription, priced by seats, one for each user. [25] The new charge is counted in AI units, used up as the work gets done. [25] "We don't have to add more seats," said Oracle's Chris Leone. [25] Leone runs Oracle's app development and spoke at its investor day on Wednesday. [25] The AI runs through Fusion Claw, Oracle's tool for controlling AI agents in finance apps. [25]

Why it matters. The Register says Oracle's promise of more revenue also means higher bills for customers. [25] So the more work a customer's AI does, the more Oracle earns. [25]

OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, doubled the usage limits on its Pro plans on Thursday. [26] It had planned to cut how much use the $200-a-month Pro plan includes. [26] Customers objected, and OpenAI reversed the plan. [26] The doubling covers Pro plans at $100, $200 and $500 a month, and Business Premium. [26] The limits cap how much work ChatGPT and Codex, its coding tool, do for each user. [26] OpenAI does not publish the exact limit for each plan. [26]

Why it matters. Pro subscribers can now use more without paying for a dearer plan. [26] Dots, OpenAI's always-on assistants, keep their own separate allowance for now. [26]

Baseten, which runs AI models for companies, released a small open model called joey-1. [27] It answers yes-or-no and multiple-choice questions instead of writing text. [27] It costs $0.01 per million tokens of text, Baseten says. [27] It answers a typical request in about 20 milliseconds, Baseten says. [27] Sorting 10 million support tickets a month would cost $50, against $500 on a bigger model. [27] Such jobs include routing help requests and spotting spam. [27] Microsoft's similar model is priced at $0.042 per million tokens. [27]

Why it matters. Baseten has not yet published the tests behind its claim to be the best small model. [27] Cheap, fast models like this suit sorting jobs done millions of times. [27]

55% of lawyers in Victoria, Australia, now use AI, up from 37% a year ago. [28] The figures come from the state legal regulator's 2026 census of 2,221 lawyers. [28] Only 26% said using AI had led to lower fees for clients. [28] Business clients were likelier to get cuts: 34%, against 23% for individual clients. [28] The lead researcher said business clients may use AI themselves and push for lower prices. [28] Checking AI's answers for errors may have eaten into the time saved, she said. [28] 79% of lawyers use general chatbots like ChatGPT rather than legal tools. [28]

Why it matters. Clients also bring chatbot advice that lawyers must then correct, adding work. [28] So for most clients, their lawyer's use of AI has not meant a smaller bill. [28]

&Truth, a Palo Alto start-up, launched on Thursday to prove software has no bugs. [30] It has raised $70 million from investors. [29] Its method, formal verification, uses maths to check code against exact rules. [29] It is slow and costly, so most companies rarely pay for it. [29] A Stanford team's AI tool did one such job in under half a day. [29] The same job had taken three skilled experts 5 months. [29]

Why it matters. AI can now find and exploit software flaws fast, the New York Times notes. [30] Proving code correct is one way to remove those flaws first. [30] Antithesis, a bug-hunting firm, still found bugs in code its customers had verified. [29]

David Durman, a University of Kentucky administrator, won a religious exemption from using AI at work. [31] He is a humanist, someone whose beliefs centre on human life without a god. [31] US courts have ruled that humanism counts as a religion under job law. [32] The exemption comes under Title VII, a 1964 US law against job discrimination. [32] He argued that handing his thinking to AI undercuts his ability to be a moral person. [32] The American Humanist Association, which helped him, calls it the first case of its kind. [32] He was inspired by Erin Maus, a software engineer who won a similar exemption. [31]

Why it matters. He must still attend meetings with colleagues who use AI. [32] Under the law, an employer can say no when an exemption would cost it too much. [32]

Proton, a Swiss maker of encrypted email, is pushing staff onto AI, 404 Media reports. [33] Its boss, Andy Yen, told staff to "use AI more." [33] Yen said this is the last year Proton will hire engineers at all. [33] Proton installed software that tracks how much of its code AI writes. [33] This week it said it would re-interview staff about their use of AI. [33] Staff told 404 Media those interviews could decide who keeps their job. [33] An internal document calls Proton "an underperforming company." [33]

Why it matters. Some staff worry about building security products fast with AI, the reporting found. [33] Proton said "many people are anxious" and that it will explain itself better. [33]

Anything, an AI start-up, has 15 human staff and about 150 AI agents. [34] AI agents are programs that carry out tasks without a person stepping in. [34] Its boss, Dhruv Amin, names them, like Gwen for scheduling and Cody for code. [34] About 40% of large firms used AI agents last year, up from 27%, McKinsey found. [34] Boston Consulting Group says firms expect 10% to 15% smaller workforces from AI. [34]

Why it matters. Agents still make mistakes, so staff become their managers overnight. [34] MIT research finds firms are not yet seeing big productivity gains from AI. [34]

Apps now sell psychic readings from AI chatbots, the Guardian reports. [35] One app, Your AI Psychic, charges 4.06 coins a question, with coin packs from $9.99. [35] AI horoscopes and spells are flooding Etsy, an online craft market, practitioners say. [35] Human psychics now add "no AI" to their adverts. [35] They say AI readings lack the human connection their clients pay for. [35]

Why it matters. "Our industry has, unfortunately, been associated with scams for hundreds of years," said Lauryn Kellett. [35] The trade is lightly regulated, which makes AI's arrival more fraught, the Guardian says. [35]

OpenAI's boss, Sam Altman, says the company will point its robots at building data centres. [36] He spoke on Cheeky Pint, a podcast by Stripe co-founder John Collison, out Thursday. [36] He said data centres that help build more of themselves are within grasp. [36] Altman put the cost of a gigawatt of AI computing at $70bn over five years. [36] He said $20bn would make him much happier. [36]

Why it matters. He said memory makers stay careful because overbuilding once nearly bankrupted them. [36] TNW, which reported the interview, has not checked his cost figures. [36]

Meta quietly launched Style Sketch, an AI app that suggests outfits from clothes people own. [37] It builds a virtual wardrobe from photos a user has posted on Instagram. [37] Users can try outfits on a model matched to their body shape and skin tone. [37] It can plan a trip's outfits using the weather forecast. [37] For now it is only in Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. [37]

Why it matters. Apps like Alta, and Google Photos, already offer digital closets. [37] It is one of many small AI apps Meta has launched lately, like Vibes. [37]

Threads, Meta's text-post app, is testing posts shared with only up to 50 friends. [38] The test is running in Ireland, Italy and Japan. [38] Meta suggests friends from the people a user interacts with most. [38] Twitter tried a similar feature, Circles, for groups of up to 150 people. [38] Twitter launched Circles in 2022 and dropped it about a year later. [38]

Why it matters. Meta has given no date for a wider launch. [38] Users outside the test can still see friends-only posts if added to a list. [38]

Google's Gemini chatbot can now create and edit documents inside the chat. [39] That covers PDFs, Google Docs, Sheets, slides, text and code files. [39] It is open to all Gemini users from Thursday. [39] Only PDFs can be edited on phones for now; other files need the web. [39] Users can highlight a table and ask Gemini to turn it into a graph. [39]

Why it matters. Anthropic's Claude added a similar feature earlier this year. [39] People no longer need to leave the chat to change a file. [39]

Granola, an app known for writing meeting notes, now types what users say in any app. [40] Users press one key and speak, and it tidies and formats the text. [40] It is free with no word limit, and works on Macs first. [40] Versions for iPhone and Windows are coming soon. [40] Wispr, a rival worth $2 billion, did the reverse and added meeting notes. [40] Granola is valued at $1.5 billion. [40]

Why it matters. Voice apps are piling features into one app to capture more of users' speech. [40]

Dream, a start-up by two former Palantir executives, raised $17 million in seed money. [41] Palantir is a US data-software firm that works for defence and spy agencies. [41] Andreessen Horowitz, a big US venture firm, led the round. [41] Dream's AI designs buildings that can stand up, using real physics and building rules. [41] It learned from over 100 million square feet of building plans in US permit records. [41] It aims to replace older design tools like Autodesk's AutoCAD and Revit. [41] It is already in use on 10 projects in Texas and California. [41]

Why it matters. The founders say the US builds fewer buildings than decades ago, as costs rise. [41]

SuperMe, which builds AI profiles of real experts, is raising $20 million. [42] A question pulls the best-matched expert profiles into one group chat. [42] It learns from public sites like LinkedIn and YouTube. [42] It also draws on apps experts connect, like Gmail and Google Drive. [42] It says personal details and trade secrets from those apps never appear in answers. [42] Forerunner leads the round, with Greylock, another venture firm. [42]

Why it matters. It is free now but plans to cap the number of questions. [42] Advice that once needed a personal contact is being turned into a chatbot. [42]

Mintive, which helps companies manage AI agents, raised a $7 million seed round. [43] Its tools let IT staff decide which services an agent may reach and use. [43] Agents get identities of their own, separate from the staff they serve. [43] It also caps spending on AI models and tracks every agent in a company. [43] Co-founder Vijay Vasudevan helped create TensorFlow, an early Google tool for building AI. [43] Investors include Jeff Dean, Google's former chief scientist, and Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI co-founder. [43]

Why it matters. Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic already sell similar tools. [43] Over 40 start-ups from Y Combinator, a start-up programme, chase the same idea. [43]