December 2025 Tech Signal

I’m trying out a new series with ChatGpt; I’ll be sharing the trends at the end of each month using the same prompt.

ChatGpt yardımıyla yeni bir seri deniyorum, hazırladığım promptla her ayın sonunda trendleri paylaşacağım.

December wasn’t about “new announcements.” It was about what survived 2025 — and what leaders are building into 2026. Across engineering, product, and fintech, a few themes kept repeating:

1) AI moved from “features” → “infrastructure + workflows”

Signal: Leaders increasingly framed AI as the operating layer of work (how decisions, execution, and automation happen), not a bolt-on capability. exponentialview.co

Company samples:

• Stripe introduced an “agentic commerce” framing — products becoming agent-ready through discoverability + payments integration. stripe.com
• Klarna launched an open standard to make 100M+ products discoverable by AI agents — same direction: agent-native commerce. klarna.com
• Vercel shipped AI SDK 6 with explicit support for agents + tool execution approval + MCP support — meaning agent workflows are becoming “platform primitives.” Vercel
• Shopify published multiple December pieces framing AI as core to retention/operations in commerce (not experimental). Shopify+1

Why engineering leaders should care: your architecture choices in 2026 increasingly assume agent workflows, not just “AI features.”

2) “Agentic operations” became real: AI embedded into customer→product pipelines

Signal: The practical “agent wins” showed up in boring but high-impact workflows: converting conversations into structured work, routing tasks, triage, permissions.

Company samples:

• Linear shipped an agent to turn Intercom / Zendesk / Gong conversations into actionable issues, reducing manual product ops overhead. Linear
• Vercel shared a strong lesson from internal agent-building: they removed 80% of tools and performance improved — a very “less tools, more reliability” engineering takeaway. Vercel
• Shopify Engineering published “Tangle,” an open-source ML experimentation platform—reinforcing that the tooling layer (reproducibility + shared compute) matters as much as models. Shopify

Why this is a signal: the trend is not “more agent demos,” it’s agents in the operational plumbing (support → product, data → execution, workflow → governance).

3) Security moved up the stack (especially for agentic systems)

Signal: In December, the most credible commentary wasn’t “cooler models.” It was “AI systems are attack surfaces.” Agentic browsing + tool use makes that sharper.

Company samples:

• Lenny’s Newsletter (Sander Schulhoff) focused on prompt injection, why guardrails fail, and what actually secures AI systems. lennysnewsletter.com
• Vercel published a concrete security response playbook around React2Shell, including exploit volume and a high-signal “security as engineering reality” narrative. Vercel

Why engineering leaders should care: the 2026 baseline becomes: AI governance + security reviews are part of delivery, not a compliance afterthought.

4) Fintech’s December tone: execution + compliance moats, not hype

Signal: Fintech commentary in December leaned heavily toward “reality check” framing — sustainable performance, partner bank scrutiny, and compliance as competitive leverage.

Company samples:

• This Week in Fintech (TWIF) ran a year-end “reality check” view via its fintech index lens. This Week in Fintech
• TWIF also published sponsor bank partnership guidance: compliance expectations rising; “turn compliance into moat.” This Week in Fintech
• Revolut published a year recap of Revolut X launches (crypto product line) — a “shipping + iteration” end-of-year narrative. Revolut

Why this matters: 2026 “winning” in fintech looks like distribution + compliance + execution discipline more than story-telling.

⚠️ December 2025 watch-out (recurring pattern)

The clearest repeated subtext across sources:
“Agentic systems without ownership, permissions, and security boundaries create fragility.” Vercel+2lennysnewsletter.com+2

🧠 Takeaway

December confirmed the direction of travel:

• agent-native commerce + infrastructure
• workflow automation where it hurts (ops)
• security pushed into the AI stack
• fintech tightening around execution and compliance moats

Aralık 2025, yeni şeylerin duyurulduğu bir ay değil; 2025’te neyin gerçekten işe yaradığının netleştiği bir ay oldu.
Mühendislik, ürün ve fintech dünyasında aynı sinyaller tekrar tekrar karşımıza çıktı:

🚀 1️⃣ AI “feature” olmaktan çıkıp altyapı ve iş akışına dönüştü

Sinyal:
AI, artık “ürüne eklenen bir özellik” gibi değil; işlerin nasıl yapıldığını belirleyen bir katman olarak konumlanıyor. Karar alma, otomasyon ve execution doğrudan AI üzerinden kurgulanıyor.

Şirket örnekleri:

• Stripe — Agentic Commerce yaklaşımı: ürünlerin AI agent’lar tarafından keşfedilebilir ve kullanılabilir olması
• Klarna — 100M+ ürünü AI agent’lara açan Agentic Product Protocol
• Vercel — AI SDK 6 ile agent workflow’larını platform primitive’i haline getirdi
• Shopify — AI’ı operasyon, müşteri sadakati ve ticaretin merkezine koyan Aralık yazıları

Engineering leader için anlamı:
2026’da mimari kararlar artık “AI feature ekleyelim mi?” değil,
“Sistemlerimiz agent’larla çalışacak şekilde tasarlandı mı?” sorusu etrafında şekilleniyor.

🤖 2️⃣ “Agentic operations”: AI gerçek işlerde kullanılmaya başlandı

Sinyal:
Kazanan kullanım senaryoları demo’larda değil; support → product, data → execution gibi can sıkan ama yüksek etkili iş akışlarında ortaya çıktı.

Şirket örnekleri:

• Linear — Intercom / Zendesk / Gong konuşmalarını otomatik issue’a çeviren agent
• Vercel — internal agent’lardan %80 tool’u kaldırıp performansı artırdıklarını paylaştı
• Shopify (Engineering) — Tangle: ML deneyleri için ortak, reproducible altyapı

Bu neden sinyal?
Trend “daha çok agent” değil,
agent’ların operasyonun tesisatına girmesi.

🔐 3️⃣ Güvenlik, AI stack’inin üstüne çıktı

Sinyal:
Aralık ayında AI ile ilgili en ciddi içerikler “daha iyi model” değil,
AI sistemlerinin yeni bir attack surface olduğu gerçeği üzerineydi.

Şirket / kaynak örnekleri:

• Lenny’s Newsletter — Prompt injection, guardrail’lerin neden yetmediği
• Vercel — React2Shell için gerçek exploit verileriyle güvenlik response yazısı

Engineering leader için anlamı:
2026 baseline’ı: AI governance ve security review = delivery sürecinin parçası

💳 4️⃣ Fintech’te Aralık tonu: hype değil, execution & compliance

Sinyal:
Fintech dünyasında Aralık ayı dili oldukça netti:
gerçek performans, regülasyon ve disiplin.

Şirket / kaynak örnekleri:

• This Week in Fintech (TWIF) — “2025 fintech için bir reality check miydi?”
• TWIF — sponsor bankalarla çalışmanın yeni şartları: compliance = moat
• Revolut — Revolut X ürünlerinde yıl sonu “ship & iterate” anlatısı

Fintech liderleri için mesaj:
2026’da kazananlar;
dağıtım + compliance + operasyonel disiplin üçlüsünü birlikte yönetenler olacak.

⚠️ Aralık 2025 ortak uyarısı

Birçok kaynakta tekrar eden alt mesaj:

Sahibi, yetkisi ve güvenlik sınırları net olmayan agentic sistemler hız değil, kırılganlık yaratıyor.

🧠 Özet çıkarım

Aralık 2025 şunu netleştirdi:

• Agent-native commerce & platformlar geliyor
• AI, operasyonun içine giriyor
• Güvenlik, AI stack’inin bir parçası
• Fintech’te “hikâye” değil, execution kazanıyor

Sources used (specific links + dates)

(1) Azeem Azhar — Exponential View (Dec 20, 2025)
https://www.exponentialview.co/p/reflecting-on-2025-the-year-ai-became-real

(2) Stripe — Agentic Commerce Suite (Dec 11, 2025)
https://stripe.com/blog/agentic-commerce-suite

(3) Klarna — Agentic Product Protocol (Dec 15, 2025)
https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-launches-agentic-product-protocol-the-open-standard-that-makes-100m/

(4) Vercel — AI SDK 6 (Dec 22, 2025)
https://vercel.com/blog/ai-sdk-6

(5) Vercel — “We removed 80% of our agent’s tools” (Dec 22, 2025)
https://vercel.com/blog/we-removed-80-percent-of-our-agents-tools

(6) Linear — “Now” product updates (Dec 11 & Dec 17, 2025 updates listed on page)
https://linear.app/now

(7) Shopify — AI Customer Loyalty (Dec 15, 2025)
https://www.shopify.com/blog/ai-customer-loyalty

(8) Shopify — AI in Retail (Published Dec 23, 2025)
https://www.shopify.com/hk-en/enterprise/blog/ai-in-retail

(9) Shopify Engineering — Tangle (Dec 5, 2025)
https://engineering.shopify.com/

(10) Vercel — React2Shell security response (Dec 19, 2025)
https://vercel.com/blog/our-million-dollar-hacker-challenge-for-react2shell

(11) Lenny’s Newsletter — AI security crisis (Dec 21, 2025)
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-coming-ai-security-crisis

(12) This Week in Fintech — “Reality check for fintech” (Dec 9, 2025)
https://www.thisweekinfintech.com/signals-was-2025-a-reality-check-for-fintech/

(13) This Week in Fintech — sponsor bank support (Dec 16, 2025)
https://www.thisweekinfintech.com/what-fintechs-need-to-know-to-win-sponsor-bank-support/

(14) Revolut — “Meet the launches of 2025 on Revolut X” (Dec 19, 2025)
https://www.revolut.com/blog/post/x/