This Week in Tech (Week Ending Nov 14, 2025)
TL;DR - ✌️RIP govt shutdown and the penny; 📨📪Epstein mail; 🔁Vine
Hey folks!
Happy Friday! 😎 It was Veterans Day this past week. Tech news below.
TL;DR -
🥳Govt shutdown over - until Jan 30 at least
📨📪We’ve got mail: Democrats released a trove of new Jeffrey Epstein emails that included mentions of President Trump.
🔁Vine is back: diVine is a Vine reboot that includes Vine’s video archive of six-second, looping videos
Anthropic has launched an ambitious new data center partnership with the UK-based Fluidstack, committing $50 billion to building facilities across the US.
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
🥳Govt shutdown over: President Trump signed a bill Wed night to reopen the government and officially end the 43-day shutdown — the longest in American history. The package funds the government through Jan. 30, reverses federal layoffs that happened after Oct. 1 and funds key agencies through the rest of the fiscal year. So what happens now? Food stamp benefits should resume quickly. Workers’ back pay could take a bit longer. And airline officials say travel should return to normal in about a week.
📉📉📉 Despite the good news about the govt shutdown ending, U.S. stocks posted their worst day in a month on Thursday. Declines were broad, with tech stocks sliding alongside the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which lost almost 800 points. The major factor affecting the downtrend was the market’s view that the chances of rate cut next month have fallen from 70% last week to 50%. And this is after the Nasdaq had its worst week last week since April.
📨📪We’ve got mail: Democrats released a trove of new Jeffrey Epstein emails that included mentions of President Trump. 🌎Big picture: The right’s Epstein fixation started as a conspiratorial quest to find ammunition against Democrats and the “deep state.” But some conservatives are now shifting toward a defensive posture, aiming to shield Trump from Democrats and the media.
🍝🥺Get ready: Import duties are so expensive that Italy’s pasta exporters won’t be able to do business in America due to the costs. They’re preparing to pull out of U.S. stores as soon as January.
☠️RIP Penny: The U.S. Mint is struck the last new penny on Wednesday in Philadelphia, officially closing the book on the 1-cent coin, which cost 3.7cents to make.
🌎Global efforts to address climate change are going far better today than they were a decade ago:
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
📱Apple is delaying the release of the second-generation iPhone Air to work on a redesign of the device and make it more appealing to consumers. The redesign could include a second camera lens, an attempt to address one of consumers’ main complaints.
🍎Apple launched Digital ID, a way to carry your passport on your phone for use at TSA checkpoints:
Amazon is merging all its ad buying tools into a single platform. Amazon also introduced a suite of AI agents for media planning.
📺Netflix House, opening this week at King of Prussia Mall, marks the streamer’s first push into physical, experiential retail. The 100,000-square-foot space will have immersive games, themed restaurants, and a “Tadum Theater” for screenings.
📣Earnings
CoreWeave, a cloud provider that rents out Nvidia chips to AI developers like Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI, said that revenue rose 134% in Q3 to nearly $1.4 billion and its revenue backlog more than doubled to $55 billion. But shares fell 16% in Wednesday trading in response to a warning from CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator that the company’s fourth quarter revenue would be “affected by temporary delays related to a third-party data center developer who is behind schedule.“
Disney’s latest quarterly revenue results missed analyst expectations, as the company’s entertainment business was weighed down by its TV networks and a lackluster theatrical film slate.
Buzzfeed’s revenue plummeted 17% to $55.6 million in Q3 yoy.
📌Pinterest use is surging among Gen Z, with more than half its users now between 10 and 25. Before, it was a place for DIY wedding and recipe ideas, but now, young adults are treating it as a “spiritual space” for manifestation.
Brave, the privacy focused browser, has been around for a decade and passed $100 million in annualized revenue in the first quarter of this year. Brave has 100 million monthly active users, up from 77 million at the end of last year. Brave is also one of the few companies that actually owns a search index, meaning it doesn’t rely on another search index provider like Bing or Google Search-scrapers like SerpApi.
Coinbase is leaving Delaware and is planning to reincorporate in Texas, citing “unpredictable” outcomes in the Delaware Court of Chancery.
Vine is back: diVine is a Vine reboot that includes Vine’s video archive of six-second, looping videos. diVine will include more than 100,000 archived Vine videos, and is funded by Jack Dorsey.
Bustle Digital Group, which encompasses Elite Daily, Nylon, and Bustle, is repositioning itself as a live-experiential media company through a new partnership with Breakaway Music Festival. The collaboration, expected to generate $10 million in its first year, will debut with “Breakaway Beach: Miami Art Week” in early December and then expand to markets like Phoenix, Dallas, and Tampa, bringing marketing activations to “post-college zoomers”
Layoffs: Verizon is planning to cut 15,000 jobs.
🤖 AI News
💰Investors are rushing to back a new generation of research-focused AI startups. In just over a month, they’ve made or discussed $2.5 billion of investments into five of these startups, called neolabs, despite the high costs and risk of failure. Venture capitalists are circling these startups in hopes that they can emulate the success of OpenAI and Anthropic. Nvidia in particular is betting on alot of these startups since they’d be Nvidia customers.
🇨🇳Suspected Chinese hackers used Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude Code, to help target dozens of tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturers and government agencies. This is the first documented case of a foreign government using AI to fully automate a cyber operation.
OpenAI has asked the Trump administration to expand the 35% tax credit established under the Chips Act — the 2022 law designed to boost U.S. semiconductor production– to apply to AI data centers. The company wants the government to make the tax credit available to other components of the chip supply chain, including grid components, AI servers and AI data centers.
Anthropic has launched an ambitious new data center partnership with the UK-based Fluidstack, committing $50 billion to building facilities across the US.
Softbank shared that it had divested its stake in Nvidia, the chipmaker behind the artificial intelligence boom, for $5.8 billion. SoftBank executives said the move would help the company finance its extensive investments elsewhere in the A.I. world, including a huge commitment to OpenAI.
Elon Musk’s lawyers argued that his federal lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman should proceed to a trial. The latest filing responds to OpenAI’s request last month for an early legal ruling against Musk.
Lovable says it’s nearing 8 million users.
Alright, alright, alright: ElevenLabs struck a deal with actors Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey to AI-generate their voices
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
Kaltura acquires AI avatar startup eSelf to integrate generative AI into enterprise video and learning tools.
Fundraising
Gamma, a start-up seeking to build a PowerPoint for the A.I. era, raised $68mill at a valuation of $2.1bn.
Grab Holdings, the biggest ride-hailing and food delivery company in Southeast Asia, has agreed to invest in Vay Technology, a Germany-based startup developing technology that allows remote drivers to control electric vehicles from afar.
Scribe has raised $75 million at a $1.3 billion post-money valuation to roll out Scribe Optimize, a platform that maps workflows across the enterprise to reveal where automation and AI will actually yield returns — instead of becoming another sunk cost.
Skims, the apparel and shapewear brand cofounded by Kim Kardashian, has raised $225 million in new funding, boosting the company’s valuation to $5 billion, up from its $4 billion valuation in 2023.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
🤡Another day, another Elon Musk feud: this time with esteemed writer Joyce Carol Oates.
This is almost as wild as High Point University coaching students on fancy etiquette: At the University of Miami, influencer culture has become so central to campus life that it sparked a viral feud between two freshman creators and an intervention from the dean of students. The university routinely hosts brand activations where students earn thousands for creating content, and this semester, they launched a social media minor.
Something only design nerds will care about: Serif font is back.
📺You’re not imagining it: TV shows are being dumbed down to accommodate “second screen viewing” aka you’re scrolling while you’re watching so tv shows need to make it easier to follow along w half your attention.
Hilary Duff has a new single, “Mature”. The Tiger King likes it and so should you
The Devil Wears Prada sequel teaser dropped, as did the Wuthering Heights full trailer.
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