Top stories today:

1. Apple to halt sales of Watch Series 9 due to patent ruling
2. Adobe abandons $20B Figma acquisition
3. OpenAI's board can now reverse mgmt.'s AI safety decisions
4. Meta's VR market share drops to 49% in Q3
5. Mixtral offered at $0.27/1M tokens, vs. $2 for GPT 3.5 Turbo

0. Data and calendar

1. Apple to halt sales of Watch Series 9, Ultra 2 due to patent ruling, starting Dec. 25

• In October, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) found the Apple Watch violates Masimo's patent rights.

• Apple is working on a software workaround, but it might not happen in time.

2. Adobe abandons $20B Figma acquisition due to EU, UK regulatory hurdles

• Figma's ARR is at $600M, +40% YoY.

  • May raise privately at $9B.

• Figma will get a $1B breakup fee, which Adobe may be happy to pay, since it won't have to buy Figma at 33x P/S.

• Liquidity for startups is going down, given the anti-M&A posture of most global governments.

4. OpenAI's board can now reverse management decisions related to safety

• OpenAI's trust and safety team had previously been split up, and now that has been made permanent.

5. Meta's VR market share drops to 49% in Q3, as PlayStation VR2 leads Sony to 32%

6. Deepinfra offers Mixtral, open-source LLM, at $0.27/1M tokens, vs. $2 for GPT 3.5 Turbo

• Race to the bottom in AI inference pricing: a look at by Semi Analysis.

Mixtral quickly became the #1 open-source LLM, on par with GPT 3.5 Turbo and Claude, but below GPT 4

• Open-source is exactly 1 year behind OpenAI.

7. Big Tech continues to make big investments in AI startups

2023 was the strongest year ever, after a weak 2022

8. Global M&As at $2.495T in 2023, lowest level in decade

9. Nonbank borrowers paying higher fees for mortgages

10. Interesting videos, posts, and memes

11. Other headlines

AI

• Pakistan's Imran Khan to campaign behind bars with AI's help.

• Harmonic AI: startup discovery platform to find breakout investments.*

*Sponsored.

Tech

• Farfetch shareholders getting wiped out in $500M loan deal.

• Blue Origin pushes off flight to Tue due to technical issue.

• TikTok staff told not to flag Amazon accounts.

• The CEO Report: become a better leader by subscribing, 100% free.*

• Synthesis: AI tutor for kids from SpaceX's incubated edtech startup.*

*Sponsored.

Tech & law

• Google to pay $700M to settle with 50 states on app store antitrust.

• Nikola founder Trevor Milton sentenced to 4 years for fraud.

Biotech

• Estée Lauder launches Longevity Collective for skincare aging research.

• Arterra launches new longevity supplement for dogs.

• Fisetin improves vascular function in old mice.

Business

• Fed's Mary Daly: rate cuts could be needed next year.

• BOJ keeps short rates at -0.1%, 10-year limit at 1%.

• Justin Smith on how Semafor achieved profitability.

Crypto

• Binance to pay $2.7B CFTC, CZ $150M, court approves.

• Galaxy's AUM jumps from $1.7B to $5.3B, led by FTX's estate.

• Zcash leader Zooko Wilcox steps down, replaced by Josh Swihart.

• Ordinal NFTs are clogging up blockchains.

• Crypto super PACs raise ~$78M in Q4.

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