AI News Roundup Today (Dec. 18, 2025): OpenAI’s $750B Funding Talks, Google’s Gemini 3 Flash, Amazon’s AI Shakeup, and the Data Center Backlash
Thursday, December 18, 2025 — Today’s AI news cycle had one clear throughline: scale is getting expensive, and the industry is now wrestling with the consequences of building at “national infrastructure” size. OpenAI is reportedly exploring a funding round that would be almost without precedent; Google is pushing faster, cheaper models deeper into Search; Amazon is reorganizing its AI org around chips and frontier research; and the political fight over data centers is escalating from local zoning meetings to Capitol Hill. The Verge+3Reuters+3The Verge+3 Below is a detailed roundup of the biggest AI stories shaping headlines on 18.12.2025 across product launches, funding, chips, regulation, and