Corporate megastores are spending millions lobbying DC politicians on one-sided policies that send small businesses tumbling.

They want to enact harmful credit card mandates that take resources away from your local credit union and community bank.

Leaving Main Street businesses with less access to credit, making it harder for your family to pay for everyday goods like gas and groceries.

Tell Congress to guard your card and oppose the Durban Marshall credit card mandates.

Paid for by Electronic Payments Coalition.

Here's your morning TNB Tech Minute for Tuesday, December 30th.

I'm Julie Chang for the Wall Street Journal. Meta Platforms has agreed to

acquire AI startup Manus, a Singapore-based company with Chinese founders that conducts deep research

and performs other tasks for paying users. According to people familiar with the acquisition,

Meta is closing the deal at more than $2 billion.

Manus previewed an AI agent in March that was capable of producing detailed research reports

and building custom websites with AI models developed by companies such as Anthropic and China's

Alibaba. The deal would help Meta cement its position in the product segment of AI agents.

British Renewable Energy startup, Octopus Energy, will spin off utility management platform

Cracken Technologies at evaluation of $8.65 billion.

Cracken is an AI platform used by global energy retailers.

Octopus raised $1 billion in its first standalone funding round for

Cracken. The separation, which Octopus expects to occur by the middle of next year, is seen by

analysts as a precursor to a likely initial public offering, where they say it could be worth as much

as $15 billion. And three Chinese technology companies plan to raise a total of

roughly $1.19 billion through initial public offerings in Hong Kong. The companies, including

an AI developer, a chip provider, and a surgical robot firm expect to begin trading in early

...