Media lawsuits erupt, Meta restructures & more (December 5, 2025)

Good morning,

The AI news cycle today is a collision of legal battles, mega-licensing deals, global chip power moves, and major executive shakeups. The boundaries between newsrooms and AI companies are being rewritten in real time while the hardware race accelerates across China and the U.S. Everything feels like it’s converging into a larger restructuring of the AI landscape.

Let's dig in👇

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⚖️ Legal Battles & Shifting Power

⚖️ NYT and Chicago Tribune escalate lawsuits against Perplexity

The New York Times is suing Perplexity for allegedly scraping and republishing newsroom content without permission, while the Chicago Tribune filed a separate copyright suit over similar claims. Together, the dual cases signal an industry-wide push to reclaim control over journalistic data and AI training rights. If courts align with the newsrooms, it could force sweeping changes in how AI companies gather, attribute, and license information.

📰 Meta signs licensing deals with CNN, Fox News, and USA Today

Meta inked major AI partnerships with CNN, Fox News, USA Today, and People Inc. to feed high-quality, fully licensed news into Meta AI responses. The move marks a strategic shift toward curated data rather than risky web-scrape inputs. It also positions Meta AI as a more trustworthy and publisher-friendly news surface.

🎨 Meta poaches Apple’s top UI designers

Meta recruited two of Apple’s leading design executives to overhaul its software UI, signaling a serious attempt to close the aesthetic gap with Apple. Meta’s apps have lacked cohesive visual identity, especially as new AI tools get layered in. This move hints at a broad redesign of the Meta product ecosystem.

💰 Big Tech Shakeups & AI Hardware Momentum

⚙️ Baidu's Kunlunxin chip unit nears $3B valuation

Baidu’s semiconductor arm Kunlunxin is approaching an $3B valuation as China races to secure domestic AI hardware independence. The surge reinforces China’s aggressive push into GPU alternatives amid U.S. export controls. Kunlunxin’s momentum shows how quickly China’s chip ecosystem is maturing.

✂️ Meta pulls back from Metaverse to focus on wearables

Meta is preparing deep budget reductions across the metaverse in an effort to streamline operations and shift focus toward high-impact AI product lines, like wearables. These cuts follow major investments in licensed data partnerships. A leaner Meta could ship new features faster across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Horizon.

🍃 Apple policy chief Lisa Jackson retires

Apple’s longtime policy and environmental leader Lisa Jackson is retiring after shaping the company’s regulatory posture for more than a decade. Her departure comes as AI policy battles accelerate across Washington, Brussels, and Beijing. Apple will now navigate emerging AI rules with new leadership at the helm.

🧰 Tools of the Day

→ Documentation AI, an AI assistant that turns messy codebases into documentation
→ Gemini 3 Deep Think, Google’s new long-reasoning engine for complex problems
→ Orca 3, a compact research agent built for precise, citation-rich answers

💡 Prompt of the Day

Look at the full picture of my life: my habits, routines, career, health, relationships, and goals. Then identify one improvement I can make in the next 60 minutes that would give me the highest return on happiness, clarity, or momentum. Give me three options: one easy, one medium, one ambitious. For each, tell me exactly what to do, why it matters, and what result I’ll feel right away.

⚡ Quick Hits

→ NEXTDC and OpenAI team up on $4.6B Australian mega-datacenter
→ Cristiano Ronaldo invests in Perplexity to expand his tech portfolio
→ Moore Threads surges after $1B IPO debut
→ Google AI teases new multimodal research milestone
→ Micro1 crosses $100M ARR challenging Scale AI
→ Enthusiasm for Sora has taken a huge hit

📝 TLDR

Newsrooms are going on the offensive, with both the NYT and Chicago Tribune suing Perplexity over alleged content misuse. Meta signs massive news-licensing deals, plans deep cuts, and poaches Apple designers. Baidu’s chip unit surges toward an $3B valuation as China doubles down on AI hardware.

Closing,
David