📣 Headlines

• Amazon is in talks to invest $10B in OpenAI while supplying Trainium chips and AWS data-center capacity to deepen its AI infrastructure partnership.

• OpenAI released major model upgrades with GPT-5.2-Codex for stronger software engineering and GPT Image 1.5 optimized for image editing.

• TikTok’s US future moved closer to resolution as ByteDance signed a deal to avoid a US ban and agreed to cede significant control of US operations to an Oracle-led investor group.

• AI-first growth startups kept soaking up capital as Neural Concept raised $100M for AI-aided product engineering and MoEngage pulled in another $180M to expand AI and scale in the US/Europe.

• Deep-tech energy funding surged with Radiant Nuclear raising $300M to build portable 1‑MW microreactors.

• IPO and expansion pressure hit fintech leadership as Monzo’s board reportedly pushed out CEO Anil over IPO timing.

• The policy conversation around AI externalities intensified as Sen. Mark Kelly discussed taxing AI companies that kill jobs and addressing data-center revolts alongside findings that 2025’s AI boom drove huge CO2 emissions and water use.

• Security risk management stayed front-and-center for product teams after millions were impacted by PornHub and SoundCloud data breaches tied to Mixpanel access.

🔧 Company Engineering Blogs

1 500+ PRs plus tard : Le parcours de Spotify avec leur agent de codage en arrière-plan (engineering​.atspotify​.com). Spotify scales Fleet Management with AI coding agents to automate complex migrations across Java, YAML, and UI changes

How We Built Meta Ray-Ban Display: From Zero to Polish (engineering​.fb​.com). Explores Meta Ray-Ban Display development, AI glasses, display tech, UI patterns, and hardware design challenges

The Open Evaluation Standard: Benchmarking NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano with NeMo Evaluator (huggingface​.co). Open evaluation standard for Nemotron 3 Nano using NeMo Evaluator, open tooling, configs, artifacts, and reproducible workflows

Stripe Atlas startups in 2025: Year in review (stripe​.com). Global Atlas startups in 2025 drive faster revenue, more international founders, and a shift to AI agents and autonomous computing

🌍 Work, Talent & Community

Tech Talent Relocation Forecast for 2026 (relocateme​.substack​.com). Forecast predicts selective relocation in 2026, with data/AI roles in demand, Europe as a top destination, and emphasis on internal mobility and targeted outreach

Lifting the Fog (jonathanbuys​.com). Professional reflections on 2025: Rust learning, AI concerns, management challenges, and a plan for thinking clearly in 2026

Frontline Manager at Meta to Senior Director at Snapchat in 3 years (Career Story) (developing​.dev). Career story of Rong Yan moving from Meta frontline manager to Snapchat Senior Director, with insights on job hopping, management, LA vs SF culture, and North Star goals

Seven Years Later: What Research Says About Community and Organization (learningalliances​.net). Explores how formal organizations and informal communities interact, examining enabling leadership, landscapes of practice, and network dynamics

How big tech fell out of love with remote work (leaddev​.com). Tech giants push return-to-office; Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft push for in-person collaboration and leadership emphasize direct interaction over remote work

Social value, personal value, and the chicken-and-egg problem (hamishcampbell​.com). Explores social vs personal value, open web culture, OMN governance, and the slow, collective emergence of social value beyond platform metrics

Working across time zones: When async becomes the default (feed​.thoughtbot​.com). How to work across time zones with async-first communication, writing thorough updates, and documenting decisions using tools like Sidekiq and Rails in distributed teams

📣 Growth, Narrative & GTM

Growth lessons behind Lovable’s $6.6B valuation (shared on Lenny’s podcast!) (elenaverna​.com). Lovable growth lessons: empathy, velocity, public building, community, social-first, and generous freemium tactics

Marketing for Founders Who Hate Marketing (thebootstrappedfounder​.com). Programmatic SEO, AI-assisted marketing, and documentation-driven growth for technical founders

O alto preço do crescimento acelerado (moacirmoda​.substack​.com). Rapid SaaS growth challenges, operational chaos, and leadership growth, with Tintim's MRR surge and lessons on scaling

How Tally Bootstrapped to 1.3M Users With a Calm, Product-Led Strategy (tinyempires​.substack​.com). Marie Martens discusses Tally’s calm, product-led growth, free plan, social listening, and hiring choices that scaled to 1.3M users

Do you really need a lead scoring model? (betterthanrandom​.substack​.com). Propensity models for B2B lead scoring succeed only when there’s a real cost to broad targeting, contrasting sales vs. product surfaces

Some thoughts on "Head of Narrative" (youngmoney​.co). Explores Head of Narrative roles in Silicon Valley, AI labs, and how storytelling shapes GTM, with examples from Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and Vanta

Why Founders Should Build an Owned Growth Engine Instead of Relying on Algorithms (founderreports​.com). Owned growth emphasizes controllable assets like websites and email lists to reduce risk and stabilize long-term traction

🏛️ Markets, Power & Risk

The Quiet Repricing of Risk | Ep. 882 (bowtiedbiotech​.substack​.com). Industry-wide risk repricing in private biotech; deal flow up, but average checks fall as late-stage data and clear narratives dominate

The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Bill Gurley (#840) (tim​.blog). Tim Ferriss interviews Bill Gurley on AI investing, China insights, SPVs, and the economics of tech ecosystems

The Incredible Shrinking — Stock Market? (humbledollar​.com). Discusses shrinking stock market listings, private funding, IPO delays, and implications for index investing and regulation

Conflicts & Interests in AI (spyglass​.org). Conflicts of interest in AI investing, funding moves, and key players like Amazon, OpenAI, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Anthropic

Congrats Regulators, You Killed Roomba (spyglass​.org). Regulators block Amazon-iRobot deal; EC moves fast, FTC pauses, iRobot faces bankruptcy as Chinese takeover looms

It’s A Google Problem (ritholtz​.com). Explores Google’s ad-centric practices, TikTok culture, pull marketing, and concert ticket dynamics impacting primary vs secondary markets

💸 Fundraising & VC Tactics

Why Startups Announce Funding (alsoblogposts​.com). Funding announcements explain why now, frame capital as fuel, and coordinate customers, recruits, and partners for early-stage startups

Foundation Capital’s Build Accelerator (foundationcapital​.com). Foundation Capital's Build Accelerator supports early founders with no equity or fees, featuring Cal Build and IIT Build programs in the Bay Area

How I Invested in a $2 Billion Company (davelu​.com). Venture insights into Hyphen Capital's founder-driven thesis, funding Asian American-led startups like Gamma and MìLà, plus network-driven investing

Fundex: Banker-Led Fundraising, Productized (coinstack​.substack​.com). Fundex productizes banker-led fundraising with verified investor data, guided playbooks, and ongoing advisor support for founders and funds

🧑‍💼 Leadership Under Load

The cost of skipping hard conversations (and how to have them) (leaddev​.com). Leadership debt costs across emotional, cultural, operational, and strategic areas, with feedback and proactive conversations to mitigate

Want to Invite Culture Change? Use Stories About Who We Are, Part 2 (jrothman​.com). Strategies to invite culture change through flow metrics, experiments, and stories about leadership and collaboration

Annual Planning Playbook for Startup CEOs (patricksalyer​.substack​.com). A CEO’s guide to annual planning: align mission and strategy, translate into quarterly initiatives, and establish accountability

Leadership Advice That Breaks in Startups (dave-bailey​.com). Founder-led leadership for high-growth startups emphasizes staying hands-on to shape outcomes beyond targets and processes

The hardest year of my life (bradhussey​.ca). Brad Hussey discusses the hardest year of loss and pivot, launching Build with Brad and rebranding Authority Engines for sustainable growth

Notes from “No Rules Rules” by Reed Hastings (mickmel​.com). Notes from Reed Hastings' No Rules Rules: Netflix culture, talent density, candor, and removing policies

End of Year Reflections (thecynical​.dev). End-of-year reflections on contracts, delivery, and community, with insights on Java/JBoss migrations, tech leads, and privacy-focused projects

Update from December 16, 2025 (blog​.andrewshell​.org). Senior Web Engineer at PetPlace leads 24PetShelter, mentoring peers while navigating SAFe, PIs, and cross-team feature planning

🧩 Product Strategy & PMF

Graphite Gets Bought By Cursor: Three Reflections from Six Years of Work [PMF didn’t happen right away; working IRL mattered; three founders, three distinct roles] (hunterwalk​.com). Seed-to-PMF journey of Graphite: three founders, IRL culture, and lessons on product-market fit

What Is The Product Strategy With Proven Frameworks And Real Examples (aakashg​.com). Learn proven frameworks, AI PM insights, and real-world examples for product strategy to accelerate growth

The Product Model at Google (svpg​.com). Google’s product model centers on empowered discovery, multi-team tackling of hard problems, and a scalable delivery platform guided by data, OKRs, and strong technical/product leadership

El proceso te protege de la mala ingeniería (estrategiadeproducto​.com). PM freedom vs structured product processes; protecting roadmap and preventing bad engineering through lightweight artifacts and quarterly planning

How To Measure The Impact Of Features (smashingmagazine​.com). A practical guide to the TARS UX metric: targeting, adoption, retention, and satisfaction for feature impact

The Go/No Go Date (werd​.io). Go/No-Go Date helps founders confront fear with a defined evaluation point to sustain ambition and innovation

🪙 Crypto & Agentic Payments

DeFi: Coinbase Bets on Equity Tokens & Prediction Markets to fight Robinhood (lex​.substack​.com). Coinbase bets on tokenised equities and prediction markets, competing with Robinhood and industry peers amid DeFi expansion

Payments in the Agentic Economy (decentralised​.co). Explores stablecoins, agentic commerce, MCP/AP2/ACP x402 systems, identity (KYA), fraud, and recourse for autonomous agents in payments

Cypher Explained: What If L1 Wins? (dewhales​.substack​.com). Rollup-centric Ethereum roadmap, native AMM and tokenomics, and community-driven Cypher with a three-token model on Mainnet

🛠️ Engineering for Scale

SE Radio 699: Benjamin Brial on Internal Dev Platforms (se-radio​.net). Explores internal developer platforms (IDPs) and portals to tackle DevOps scale, multi-cloud complexity, and cloud waste with GitOps foundations

There's an 'A' in failure (shortdiv​.com). An engineer shares growth through failure, grief, and learning IaC, Grafana/Loki/Prometheus, Helm, and AWS EKS/ECS in a remote startup

The Hidden Risks of NVIDIA’s Open Model License (shujisado​.org). NVIDIA’s Open Model License analyzed for open-w集/open weights, with risk assessment for enterprises and OSI conformity

Vibe Engineering (kpwags​.com). Vibe Engineering by Keith Wagner discusses mastering LLM-powered software development, architecture, QA, and agentic workflows for scalable, maintainable code

How to use Gemini Live audio as an interviewer for a software engineer’s job (with video) (geshan​.com​.np). Use Gemini Live audio in Google AI Studio to interview backend engineers with prompts, modes, and audio-focused feedback

Making Claude Code Usage Observable (emsi​.me). Observability stack for Claude Code using OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Loki, and Grafana to track sessions, tokens, tool usage, and code changes

Open-Source Funding: Do We Need a “No Maintenance” Month? (meiert​.com). Explores a proposed no-maintenance December to highlight funding gaps in open-source projects and motivate sustainable support

Why “Microservices” Debates Miss the Point (codeopinion​.com). Coupling and logical boundaries, not microservices, drive scale and maintainability in software architecture across monoliths and distributed systems