Weekly Recap: 13 Tech Press Releases You Need to See

A roundup of the most newsworthy tech announcements from PR Newswire this week, including IBM's acquisition of Confluent, NextEra Energy and Google Cloud's energy partnership, and AliExpress' counterfeit bust.

NEW YORK, Dec. 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- With thousands of press releases published each week, it can be difficult to keep up with everything on PR Newswire. To help tech journalists and consumers stay on top of the week's most newsworthy and popular releases, here's a recap of some major stories from the week that shouldn't be missed.

The list below includes the headline (with a link to the full text) and an excerpt from each story. Click on the press release headlines to access accompanying multimedia assets that are available for download.

1. IBM to Acquire Confluent to Create Smart Data Platform for Enterprise Generative AI
   "IBM and Confluent together will enable enterprises to deploy generative and agentic AI better and faster by providing trusted communication and data flow between environments, applications and APIs. Data is spread across public and private clouds, datacenters and countless technology providers," said Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer.
2. TIME Names the 2025 TIME Person of the Year: The Architects of AI
   In his letter to readers, TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs writes, "This was the year when artificial intelligence's full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back or opting out... This year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI."
3. Instacart App Launches in OpenAI ChatGPT - First Company to Offer New Instant Checkout App Experience
   "With the Instacart app directly in ChatGPT, users can go from meal planning to checkout in a single, seamless conversation. It's another step toward bringing our vision to life—where AI delivers helpful suggestions and connects directly to real-world services, saving people time and effort in their everyday lives," said Nick Turley, VP, Head of ChatGPT.
4. Saviynt Raises $700M at Approximately $3B Valuation in KKR-Led Round to Establish Identity Security as the Foundation for the AI Era
   "This is a defining moment for Saviynt and the industry," said Sachin Nayyar, Founder & CEO of Saviynt. "The demand for secure, governed identity has never been greater, and this growth investment gives us the resources to meet it head-on."
5. People Inc. Announces AI Content Partnership with Meta People Inc., America's largest digital and print publisher, announced a strategic content partnership with Meta as the first lifestyle publisher to make real-time content available to Meta AI users across popular categories such as entertainment, home, food, health, and finance. The multi-year partnership provides Meta access to People Inc. content to help Meta AI users discover lifestyle topics tailored to their interests.
6. Harmonic Announces Pending Sale of Its Video Business to MediaKind The proposed transaction would accelerate Harmonic's long-term strategy by sharpening its focus on growth priorities in its industry-leading virtualized Broadband business. Additionally, this divestiture would deliver a healthy capital infusion and further bolster Harmonic's balance sheet, providing the financial flexibility to better serve its expanding customer base and build shareholder value.
7. Linux Foundation Announces the Formation of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), Anchored by New Project Contributions Including Model Context Protocol (MCP), goose and AGENTS.md "We are seeing AI enter a new phase, as conversational systems shift to autonomous agents that can work together. Within just one year, MCP, AGENTS.md and goose have become essential tools for developers building this new class of agentic technologies," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. "Bringing these projects together under the AAIF ensures they can grow with the transparency and stability that only open governance provides."
8. NextEra Energy and Google Cloud Announce Landmark Strategic Energy and Technology Partnership to Accelerate AI Growth and Transform the Energy Industry Together, the companies will partner to develop multiple, new gigawatt (GW)-scale data center campuses with accompanying generation and capacity. The two companies will also collaborate on NextEra Energy's enterprise-wide digital transformation, using Google Cloud AI and infrastructure, to accelerate the company's industry-leading technological innovation and AI deployment.
9. Fermi America Executes Electric Service Agreement with Southwestern Public Service Company, a Subsidiary of Xcel Energy, Securing Up to 200 MW of Power "Partnering with Xcel Energy helps demonstrate that reliable, large-scale energy for artificial intelligence can be developed on time and on budget," said Toby Neugebauer, Co-founder and CEO of Fermi America.
10. Nagarro becomes OpenAI Services Partner to support industry-scale AI adoption Nagarro brings deep expertise in data engineering, AI, automation, and enterprise transformation, supporting clients across retail, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and telecom. Its proprietary Fluidic Intelligence framework applies AI-native engineering to reduce friction and maintain enterprise flow, helping organizations streamline operations and achieve measurable productivity gains.
11. Cadent Acquires YouTube Innovator VuePlanner to Redefine Total Video Activation Cadent, a predictive advertising company and a portfolio company of Novacap, announced that it has acquired VuePlanner, a leader in YouTube video ad planning, optimization, and measurement. With this acquisition, Cadent expands its capabilities, giving advertisers broader access to high-value video inventory to attract any unique audience across any unique format—with a single, end-to-end platform.
12. AliExpress and Specialized Partner with Law Enforcement in largest Counterfeit Bust in Brand's History AliExpress, in collaboration with premium American bicycle brand Specialized and Chinese law enforcement, recently played a central role in dismantling two major counterfeit manufacturing operations in China. This successful operation underscores AliExpress' ongoing commitment to combating counterfeit goods and protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) on its platform.
13. PNC First Major Bank to Launch Direct Bitcoin Access for Clients, Powered by Coinbase's Crypto-as-a-Service Infrastructure The first generation of PNC's new "crypto for clients" solution integrates Coinbase's institutional-grade CaaS infrastructure within the PNC Private Bank Online platform. Through Portfolio View, eligible clients can now access crypto custody capabilities to directly buy, hold and sell bitcoin.

For more news like this, check out all of the latest technology-related releases from PR Newswire.

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