Waymo Chaos, AI Legislation, China’s AI Push, and ChatGPT Wrapped
This Week in AI Newsletter: 12/22/2025
Waymo temporarily suspended its San Francisco autonomous vehicle service during a major blackout after some vehicles stalled at intersections, then resumed operations the next day while saying it learned lessons from the disruption. More here.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the RAISE Act, making New York the second U.S. state to pass major AI safety legislation that requires large AI developers to disclose safety practices and report serious incidents within 72 hours. More here.
OpenAI now lets users directly adjust ChatGPT’s warmth, enthusiasm, and emoji usage after criticism that the chatbot has swung between being too cold and too sycophantic. More here.
Ex-Splunk executives’ startup Resolve AI raised a Series A led by Lightspeed at a $1B headline valuation, despite generating roughly $4M in ARR. More here.
Chinese AI chip startup Biren Technology is seeking to raise up to $623 million in a Hong Kong IPO as Beijing continues to push for sovereign AI. More here.
Alphabet is buying clean energy and data center developer Intersect Power for $4.75 billion as it moves to secure its own power supply and bypass grid bottlenecks driven by surging AI demand. More here.
OpenAI is rolling out “Your Year with ChatGPT,” a Spotify Wrapped style recap that summarizes how users use the chatbot. More here.
Strong weekly roundup. That Resolve AI valuation is wild considering the revenue multiple, but I guess observability tooling has proven pricing power and investors are betting on the Splunk DNA. The Waymo blackout response time shows how edge cases still matter more than people think when scaling autonmous systems. Seems like the infrastructure gaps (power, data centers) might bottleneck AI deployment faster than model capabilities.