The fine folks at Crunchbase note that we haven’t seen such liquidity among billion-dollar, venture-backed, privately held tech firms since the go-go post-pandemic days of 2021, when Bumble, Coinbase, Roblox and others had their moment in the limelight.

There are fewer deals this time around, but they’re worth considerably more—even if you take SpaceX’s outlier IPO out of the equation. There are market debuts like Cerebras and Quantinuum, tidy roll-ups like Cursor (SpaceX) and Modular (Qualcomm), and SPAC mergers like Agility Robotics (Churchill Capital) and Terra Quantum (Axiom Intelligence). Something for everyone, really. 

Who says there’s no ROI on AI? More news below. —Andrew Nusca

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U.S. Supreme Court limits use of ‘geofence’ warrants

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that individuals have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” for location information generated by a mobile phone, limiting law enforcement use of so-called geofence warrants.

The case in question is Chatrie v. United States, in which police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment—that’s the “unreasonable searches and seizures” one—search when they acquired Okello Chatrie’s location data from Google.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court said that law enforcement officials must indeed obtain a search warrant when requesting location information, historical or otherwise, from tech companies like Google. And those warrants must be more narrowly applied than they previously have been.

According to the court, the user is not willingly sharing their location data to Google just by using its services, making for a similar situation as location information shared to, say, telecommunications companies. 

(For the legal nerds among you: All of this centers on the so-called “third-party doctrine,” from 2018’s Carpenter v. United States, which says there is no legitimate privacy interest in any data that is voluntarily disclosed.)

Geofence warrants are meant to force tech firms to surrender information about which of their customers were in a given area at a given time. Critics call them unconstitutional “reverse search warrants” because they include information about customers uninvolved in the inquiry. 

The Supreme Court did not ban geofence warrants altogether—so expect law enforcement to continue to draw circles on a map and demand data from tech companies. But the circles must be smaller, pushing back on criticism that geofence warrants are too often made in bad faith and in search of probable cause. —AN

Samsung, SK Hynix plan to build a new chip complex

Tired of headlines about the global memory shortage? So is South Korea.

The nation’s government announced on Monday that fierce local rivals Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix would jointly spend $520 billion—$260 billion each—on a new chipmaking hub in the nation’s southwest.

The plan is for four new memory chip plants in the area near Gwangju, which Samsung specifically cited as a destination for one of its facilities. That’s a big departure from the status quo—both companies’ current factories are in metropolitan Seoul, about two hours away by bullet train.

That last point is rather controversial. The government seeks to spread the wealth of the AI boom to the rest of the country—and, as it so happens, areas that favor President Lee’s Liberal Party—but industry insiders tell the Wall Street Journal that it’s simply too far, complicating talent acquisition efforts and supply chains and ultimately profits.

“We must secure absolute competitiveness in advanced technologies, including semiconductors and AI,” Lee responded in a televised address, “and make sure the fruits of this growth are distributed evenly nationwide and felt by all citizens.” Expect tax breaks and other incentives to ease the natural inefficiencies for both trillion-dollar companies. 

Whatever the case, the reality is that something must be done. Both Samsung and SK Hynix readily acknowledge that their present investments aren’t sufficient to meet the staggering, AI-driven demand for advanced memory chips. The planned 2026 investments of just four Big Tech firms—Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft—already dwarf the South Korean investment figure by nearly $200 billion. —AN

Rocket Lab to acquire Iridium for $8 billion

Who says Elon Musk can have all the fun? 

Rocket Lab, the Long Beach, Calif.-based space launch systems company, said Monday that it would acquire Virginia satellite services firm Iridium Communications in an $8 billion cash-and-stock deal.

Why would a satellite launch company want to buy the actual satellites? Two words: space applications. As Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck put it, “We think we’ve found a little bit of a shortcut here” because acquiring Iridium gives its acquirer spectrum, infrastructure, and a highly profitable business model—just like SpaceX’s Starlink has.

“If you want to do big things in space,” he added, “you need spectrum”—which Amazon (via Globalstar) and SpaceX (via Echostar) already have. Iridium’s constellation of 80 satellites and 2.5 million subscribers—think maritime fleets, aviators, governments, and heavy industry—are icing on the orbital cake.

For investors, the deal is a rare win-win: Rocket Lab shares were up 10% in the wake of the news while Iridium stock jumped more than 20%. Once the deal closes next year, the space race against Starlink will truly be on. —AN

More tech

—Google fights EU antitrust efforts, arguing its DMA proposals to open Android and Search could lead to an uptick in fraud.

—Waymo and Uber go their own ways in Phoenix.

—A ransomware group has stolen product info, including iPhone 18 photos, from Apple supplier Tata.

—Amazon reportedly mulls using its own Nova models after Anthropic raises prices.

—California and Anthropic do a deal for state agencies and local gov’ts to use Claude at a 50% discount.

—U.S. seizes nearly 400 domains for illegally streaming World Cup games. (Sad vuvuzela.) 

—Tencent and CXMT reportedly sign a $3 billion DRAM supply agreement for servers ahead of the latter’s IPO.