OpenAI plans to test ads below ChatGPT replies for users of free and Go tiers in the US; source: OpenAI expects to make “low billions” from ads in 2026
$500bn start-up seeks ways to fund expansion and fend off competition from rivals Google and Anthropic
A profile of Wikipedia as it faces myriad challenges, including attacks from Elon Musk and the far right, reduced traffic due to AI, and a legal battle in India
As the website turns 25, it faces myriad challenges from regulators, AI, the far right and Elon Musk
Source: at least two more Thinking Machines employees are set to join OpenAI soon; some AI researchers say they are exhausted by the industry's constant drama
OpenAI is planning to bring over more researchers from Thinking Machines Lab after nabbing two cofounders, a source familiar with the situation says.
The US says that Taiwanese companies will invest $250B+ in chip production capacity in the US as part of a trade deal, and Taiwan will guarantee $250B in credit
The U.S. and Taiwan have reached a trade agreement to build chips and chip factories on American soil, the Department of Commerce announced on Thursday.
Meta says it will discontinue Workrooms, its VR space for workers, on February 16, and stop selling Quests and Horizon services to businesses from February 20
Meta continues to trickle out the bad news for VR. … Today, the company announced it's shutting that space down …
Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sues xAI, alleging Grok refused to stop making sexualized deepfakes of her, amid custody disputes
Elon Musk baby mama Ashley St. Clair is suing his AI platform, Grok, for refusing to stop making sexually explicit deepfake images of her …
Unsealed docs from Elon Musk's OpenAI lawsuit, set for a jury trial on April 27: Sutskever's concerns about treating open-source AI as a “side show”, and more
Musk v Altman is headed to trial. I read thousands of pages of unsealed evidence in the case. Here are the highlights.
The Wikimedia Foundation says Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral joined Wikimedia Enterprise to get “tuned” API access; Google is already a member
for better or worseMatthias Bastian /The Decoder:Some of the largest AI players are now paying Wikipedia for the data they already useAndre Revilla /Engadget:Wikimedia announces AI partners including ...
Trump and Northeastern state governors ask grid operator PJM to hold an auction for tech companies to fund new power plants, amid the AI boom
President Donald Trump and the governors of several US Northeastern states agreed to push for an emergency wholesale electricity auction …
Cloudflare acquires AI data marketplace Human Native for an undisclosed sum to help it develop a system where AI developers pay creators for training content
Cloudflare is acquiring artificial intelligence data marketplace Human Native, the company said Thursday …
Q&A with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos about the $83B WBD bid, Trump's involvement in the deal, maintaining a 45-day theatrical window for WBD releases, and more
The company's co-chief executive sat down for an extensive interview for the first time since announcing plans to buy Warner Bros. Discovery's film and TV business.See also Mediagazer
Replit launches Mobile Apps on Replit, which lets creators and small-business owners vibe code Android and iOS apps and monetize them via a Stripe integration
AI coding startup Replit is now letting users create and publish mobile apps for Apple devices using only natural language prompts, the latest evolution in so-called vibe-coding.
Sources: Thinking Machines lacks a clear product or business strategy and has been struggling over the past couple of months to raise a new round of financing
More Thinking Machines employees are in talks to join OpenAI. Also: Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe on ACCESS and the Sources Live @ Davos lineup.
Australia's eSafety Commissioner reports social media platforms “removed access” to ~4.7M accounts under its ban for under-16s, which took effect in December
Governments around the world are watching the rollout of the landmark law, which made it illegal for those under 16 to have accounts.
TikTok says it will roll out new age detection tech, which analyzes profile information to predict whether a user is under 13, across Europe in the coming weeks
TikTok will start rolling out new age-detection technology across Europe in the coming weeks, it told Reuters on Friday …
Some top California Democrats join Governor Gavin Newsom in opposing a ballot initiative led by a healthcare union seeking a one-time 5% tax on $1B+ in assets
A proposed tax on California's wealthiest residents is drawing opposition from a growing group of top state Democrats …
ClickHouse, a Snowflake challenger that offers an OLAP database management system, raised $400M led by Dragoneer at a $15B valuation, up from $6.35B in May 2025
Dragoneer is leading a $400 million funding round for the startup. — Database technology startup ClickHouse Inc …
Italy's competition watchdog opens two investigations into Microsoft's Activision Blizzard over sales practices the regulator calls “misleading and aggressive”
Italy's competition watchdog on Friday announced investigations into Microsoft's (MSFT.O) Activision Blizzard unit over allegedly …
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson says the agency is examining Big Tech's acqui-hires to make sure “they are not an attempt to get around” its merger review process
The US Federal Trade Commission is taking a closer look at moves by major tech companies to hire away the employees …
Analysis: Colossus 2, one of the world's largest AI datacenters, uses roughly the same water resources required to supply 2.5 typical In-N-Out Burger locations
A different perspective on the datacenter water debate, forget tokens/watt or tokens/dollar, it's about tokens/burger …
DoorDash Chief Revenue Officer Lee Brown is departing the delivery app company after less than six months; long-term VP Shanna Prevé will succeed Brown as CRO
DoorDash Inc. Chief Revenue Officer Lee Brown is departing the delivery app company after less than six months to pursue a new opportunity.
Claude Code represents a “ChatGPT moment repeated” and an “extinction-level event” for horizontal software companies focused on human-oriented consumption
The age of PDF is over. The time of markdown has begun. Why Memory Hierarchies are the best analogy for how software must change.
Andrea Vallone, who left OpenAI in December after serving as its Head of Model Policy, joins Anthropic's alignment team, which tries to understand AI model risk
Andrea Vallone has joined Anthropic's alignment team. … One of the most controversial issues in the AI industry over the past year was what to do when a user displays signs …
Sources: Replit is in advanced discussions to raise a new round of funding that would roughly triple its valuation to $9B; source: the round is for ~$400M
YouTube revises its policy to allow full monetization of nongraphic videos on sensitive issues, like abortion, self-harm, suicide, and domestic and sexual abuse
YouTube's guidelines for ad-friendly content are changing, and creators who cover controversial topics are in line for increased revenue.See also Mediagazer
Vietnam's military-run telecom company Viettel begins construction of the country's first chip plant, with trial production expected to start by late 2027
Vietnam's military-run telecom company Viettel on Friday began construction of the country's first semiconductor fabrication plant …
California regulators unanimously approved Verizon's nearly $10B Frontier acquisition; deliberations included Verizon committing to the state's DEI requirements
Utility regulators in California have approved Verizon's propose nearly $10 billion acquisition of peer broadband provider Frontier Communications …
X updates Grok to prevent the “editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis” and geoblocks it for all users “where it's illegal”
x.com/Safety/artic...Tatum Hunter /@tatumhunter:X says Grok account will stop undressing women. I just tested the standalone Grok app, which immediately complied with my request to undress a photo of...
TikTok has launched a standalone micro drama app, PineDrama, in the US and Brazil, offering vertical serialized shows for free without ads or paywalls for now
Wikimedia celebrates Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, marking its growth from 100 pages to 65M+ articles with nearly 15B monthly views, and releases a docuseries
When Wikipedia launched 25 years ago today …Simon Sharwood /The Register:Wikimedia's 25th birthday gift: Letting more AIs scour pages volunteers createdWikimedia Foundation:Celebrate Wikipedia's 25th ...
SiFive says it will integrate Nvidia's NVLink Fusion with its RISC-V processor IP platforms, letting SiFive silicon communicate with Nvidia's and partner chips
SiFive To Integrate Nvidia NVLink Fusion — In a move that could have major implications for future AI datacenters, SiFive …
Sources: Apple now needs to fight for TSMC production capacity amid the AI boom; Nvidia was likely TSMC's top customer in at least one or two quarters in 2025
[Exclusive] A 15-year relationship helped TSMC grow and Apple leap ahead of rivals. But now the iPhone maker is struggling …
As Meta cuts employees from its Supernatural VR fitness service and shifts resources away, users mourn the community formed around the platform and its coaches
Users of the VR fitness service are distraught that Supernatural has had its staff cut and won't receive any more content updates.
Google releases TranslateGemma, a suite of Gemma 3-based open translation models available in 4B-, 12B-, and 27B-parameter sizes, with support for 55 languages
Sources: ElevenLabs seeks to raise hundreds of millions at a valuation of $11B, four months after a secondary share sale that valued it at $6.6B
Fundraising would transform company into UK's most highly valued AI start-up — ElevenLabs is in talks for new funding that would almost double …
OpenAI quietly rolls out ChatGPT Translate, a standalone website that supports plain text translations across 50+ languages and features prompt customization
Source: Italian police searched the offices of the country's data protection agency, one of the EU's most proactive regulators, as part of a corruption probe
Italian finance police searched the headquarters of the country's data protection agency on Thursday as part of an investigation …Forums:Hacker NewsandSlashdotForums:Hacker News:Italy's privacy watchd...
Google agrees to pay $8.25M to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging its AdMob SDK illegally collected data from devices used by children under the age of 13
Google has agreed to pay $8.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit centered on claims that it habitually and illegally collected data from devices belonging to children under age 13.
Researchers detail WhisperPair, vulnerabilities in Google's Fast Pair protocol affecting 17 audio device models from 10 brands; Google rolled out updates
OpenAI expands its $8/month ChatGPT Go subscription tier to the US and the rest of the world, after previously launching it in India and some other countries
'ChatGPT Go' is available worldwide for $8 per month. … OpenAI is expanding a low-cost subscription tier called ChatGPT Go to the US and the rest of the world.
Amazon files an objection to Saks Global's bankruptcy financing plan, and says its $475M investment in the department store is now effectively “worthless”
X revises its developer API policies to “no longer allow apps that reward users for posting on X (aka 'infofi')”, amid a backlash about increasing AI slop on X
X is making major changes to its API to prevent access by “InfoFi” crypto projects that seek to incentivize “reply spam,” an exec said.
Istanbul-based TaleMonster Games, the studio behind the puzzle game Match Valley, raised a $30M Series A led by Arcadia Gaming Partners and a16z
The mobile game studio behind the innovative puzzle title Match Valley will use the new investment to scale its category-creating casual game.
Sources: Chinese AI companies seek to rent compute in Southeast Asia and the Middle East for Nvidia Rubin access, as Zhipu and Alibaba warn of a widening US gap
Companies in China scrap for access to Nvidia's latest Rubin lineup while better-funded U.S. competitors are first in line
OpenAI will match ads to conversation topics using some personalization data, but says it will not sell user data or expose user conversations to advertisers
OpenAI says ads will not influence ChatGPT's responses, and that it won't sell user data to advertisers.
Sources: Google is in talks with broadband operator Radiate to set up a JV to hold their fiber assets; Stonepeak Partners will invest $1B to support the deal
Alphabet Inc.'s Google is in talks with Radiate, a broadband operator backed by Stonepeak Partners, to set up a joint venture …
Spotify plans to raise its Premium subscription by $1 to $12.99/month in the US, its first US price hike since July 2024, and increase it in Estonia and Latvia
Equal1, which was spun out from University College Dublin, raised $60M to deploy its new quantum server for data centers, bringing its total funding to $85M
Total global VC funding invested in fintech startups hit $51.8B in 2025, up 27% YoY and above pre-pandemic totals, but much lower than 2021's peak of $141.6B
Global venture funding to fintech startups climbed in 2025 to its highest level in several quarters, boosted by later-stage deals, Crunchbase data shows.
Bitmine, the largest corporate holder of ether, invests $200M in MrBeast's Beast Industries, set to close on January 19; Bitmine holds 4M+ ETH valued at ~$13.6B
Anthropic researchers say rich countries' higher AI adoption risks deepening economic disparities and widening living standard gaps, assuming productivity gains
Brain-computer interface startup Merge Labs, which Sam Altman co-founded, raised a $252M seed from OpenAI, Bain Capital, Gabe Newell, and others
Mytra, which is building autonomous robots for warehouses that can move loads up to 3,000 pounds, raised a $120M Series C led by Avenir Growth
Senior Finance Reporter And Author Of Term Sheet — Mytra's Chris Walti (L) and Ahmad Baitalmal (R).MYTRA — Chris Walti once led engineering for Tesla's humanoid Optimus.
Sources: the US cyberattack during the Maduro mission plunged Caracas into darkness and disrupted its air defense radar, demonstrating US offensive capabilities
OpenAI says it issued a request for proposals to US-based hardware manufacturers as it seeks to push into consumer devices, robotics, and cloud data centers
Letter: a top House Republican warns severe DRAM and HBM3E supply shortages will constrain H200 export licenses; Nvidia says it “can serve all approved” orders
India's Supreme Court rules Tiger Global's $1.6B Flipkart stake sale to Walmart in 2018 is subject to taxes, a ruling that will shape future cross-border deals
Symbolic.ai, founded by ex-eBay CEO Devin Wenig and Ars Technica co-founder Jon Stokes, partners with News Corp to offer AI tools to WSJ, Barron's, and others
Exclusive: An AI-based journalism platform aims to do it all. Can it deliver the accuracy and productivity it promises?