The $250 Billion Lifeline
SpaceX acquired xAI for $250 billion on February 2. Twenty months earlier, xAI was valued at $18 billion. In between: losses that grew every quarter, a safety team of two or three people, and a product generating child sexual abuse material.
Notepad++ and security researchers say Chinese state-sponsored threat actors were likely behind the hijacking of its update traffic from June to December 2025
Chinese state-sponsored threat actors were likely behind the hijacking of Notepad++ update traffic last year that lasted for almost half a year …
Newly-released emails between tech industry notables and Jeffrey Epstein kick off a renewed flurry of acrimonious social posts and lurid news coverage
The Department of Justice has released more than 3 million documents and photos related to Jeffrey Epstein.
OpenAI launches a Codex app for macOS, designed to serve as a command center for managing AI agents, and says Codex usage has nearly doubled since mid-December
ZDNET's key takeaways — OpenAI launches a Mac-only Codex app as an agent command center.
Wiz says Moltbook had a major flaw that exposed private messages, emails, and credentials; Wiz co-founder Ami Luttwak called the flaw a byproduct of vibe coding
A buzzy new social network where artificial intelligence-powered bots appear to swap code and gossip about their human owners …
SpaceX acquires xAI; sources say the combined company is expected to price shares at ~$527 each in a potential IPO and would have a valuation of $1.25T
Elon Musk plans to merge SpaceX with xAI, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that encompasses the billionaire's …
Sources: SpaceX is in advanced talks to combine with xAI and they have informed some of their investors, as Elon Musk moves quickly to consolidate his empire
SpaceX is in advanced talks to combine with xAI, according to people familiar with the matter, as billionaire Elon Musk moves quickly to consolidate his empire.
Sources: Apple's executives question if it has the right ingredients to win the AI era, new MacBook Pros are coming, and Apple mulls a clamshell foldable iPhone
Apple's blockbuster holiday quarter was impressive — but it shouldn't give cover to avoid an AI reckoning.
Inside Elon Musk's bet to hook X users that turned Grok into a porn generator; sources say xAI's AI safety team was just two or three people for most of 2025
Under pressure to boost its popularity, Elon Musk's xAI loosened its guardrails and relaxed controls on sexual content, setting off internal concern.
Anthropic and UofT researchers detail “disempowerment patterns in real-world LLM usage” where AI potentially distorts a user's reality, beliefs, or actions
At this point, we've all heard plenty of stories about AI chatbots leading users to harmful actions, harmful beliefs, or simply incorrect information.
Mozilla says Firefox users will be able to disable all AI features in its desktop browser, starting with Firefox 148, rolling out on February 24
In response to user feedback on AI integration, Mozilla announced today that the next Firefox release will let users disable AI features entirely or manage them individually.
How food delivery is reshaping US mealtimes, as some users spend thousands; NRA data shows nearly 75% of 2024 restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant
Almost three of every four restaurant orders in the U.S. weren't eaten in a restaurant, according to recent data.
SEC complaint: a whistleblower alleges Google broke its ethics rules in 2024 to help an Israeli military contractor use AI to analyze drone surveillance video
A whistleblower complaint filed with the SEC claims that Google breached its own ethics rules to help an Israeli contractor apply AI to drone surveillance video.
Oracle is selling $25B of bonds to help finance its AI buildout, in what is set to be the biggest high-grade US offering since Meta's $30B bond sale last year
Oracle Corp. is selling $25 billion of investment-grade bonds on Monday to help finance infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence projects …
OpenSourceMalware: 230+ malicious OpenClaw extensions, posing as crypto trading automation tools to steal user info, were uploaded to ClawHub since January 27
Or is that Moltbot, or Clawdbot? I can't keep up. … Security researchers are warning that the growing ecosystem around 'OpenClaw …
Documents and sources: Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan backed a $500M investment for a 49% stake in WLF, four days before Trump's inauguration
$500 million investment for 49% of World Liberty came months before U.A.E. won access to tightly guarded American AI chips
TikTok US says it has resolved technical issues caused by an Oracle data center outage; features like posting and view counts were impacted over the past week
The outage happened just days after U.S. companies, including Oracle, assumed control of the domestic operations of the video platform.
AI companies are outbidding Apple, long dominant in the electronics supply chain, for chips, memory, glass fiber, and more, as suppliers gain leverage on prices
Parts for iPhones to cost more owing to surging demand from AI companies — Apple has dominated the electronics supply chain for years.
xAI rolls out Grok Imagine 1.0, which it says can generate 720p 10-second videos with better audio, and says Imagine generated 1.245B videos in the past 30 days
Introducing Grok Imagine 1.0, our biggest leap yet. 1.0 unlocks 10-second videos, 720p resolution, and dramatically better audio. Imagine has generated 1.245 billion videos in the last 30 days alone. ...
Oracle says it plans to raise $45B to $50B in 2026 to build additional cloud infrastructure capacity, including for AMD and OpenAI, via debt and equity sales
Oracle Corp. said Sunday it plans to raise $45 billion to $50 billion in 2026 to build additional capacity for its cloud infrastructure through …
Waymo raised $16B led by Sequoia, DST Global, and Dragoneer at a $126B valuation and plans a rapid expansion across the US and into the UK this year
Waymo, Alphabet Inc.'s autonomous driving unit, raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation, a funding round that reflects its rapid ascent as a robotaxi pioneer.
Snowflake and OpenAI sign a multiyear, $200M deal to integrate OpenAI's models into Snowflake Cortex AI and the Snowflake Intelligence agent for enterprises
India proposes zero taxes for foreign cloud providers through 2047 on services sold outside the country if they run those workloads from Indian data centers
As the global race to build AI infrastructure accelerates, India has offered foreign cloud providers zero taxes through 2047 …
Snap blocked 415K+ Australian accounts as of January to comply with the under-16 social media ban and warns its implementation has “real technical limitations”
Day AI, which is developing an AI-powered CRM service that can automate data entry, meeting prep, note-taking, and more, raised a $20M Series A led by Sequoia
Sources: OpenAI is unsatisfied with some of Nvidia's AI chips used for inference and has sought alternatives since last year, including from Cerebras and Groq
OpenAI is unsatisfied with some of Nvidia's latest artificial intelligence chips, and it has sought alternatives since last year …
Palantir reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $1.41B, vs. $1.33B est., and forecasts FY 2026 and Q1 revenue above estimates; PLTR jumps 6%+ after hours
Palantir topped Wall Street's fourth-quarter estimates as more businesses and the U.S. government race to buy its artificial intelligence tools.
French IT company Capgemini plans to sell its US subsidiary Capgemini Government Solutions, after French lawmakers asked about its contract with US agency ICE
French IT company Capgemini (CAPP.PA) will sell its U.S. subsidiary Capgemini Government Solutions, it said on Sunday …
SpaceX and Tesla are feeling the gravitational pull toward xAI, as Elon Musk looks to use his empire to fund xAI's ravenous appetite for cash and compute
Spiraling costs have prompted talk of a Tesla and SpaceX merger as the billionaire looks to use his empire to fund his ambitions.
Indonesia lifts its ban on Grok after receiving a letter from X “outlining concrete steps” to prevent misuse; Indonesia was the first country to ban Grok
Alibaba says it will spend ~$431M in a Lunar New Year campaign from February 6 to attract users to its Qwen AI app, above Tencent's ~$143.7M and Baidu's ~$71.8M
Alibaba (9988.HK) said on Monday it will spend 3 billion yuan ($431 million) to attract users to its Qwen AI app during the Lunar …
A survey of 100 companies in the Global 2000 on AI use: 78% of CIOs use OpenAI models in production, above Anthropic's 44%, but Anthropic's gains are impressive
Results from our third annual CIO Survey — The enterprise AI battleground is heating up, and we've got some fresh data on the state of play and who's winning.
A look at iOS 26's call-screening feature: some see it as an executive assistant that filters unwanted calls and some complain it makes people hard to reach
AI conferences have rushed to restrict the use of LLMs for writing and reviewing research papers in recent months after being flooded with AI-generated slop
Conferences restrict use of LLMs after surge of low-quality AI-generated papers and reviews — Artificial intelligence researchers …
Meta gives $65M to two super PACs to elect California state candidates, regardless of party, whom it views as supportive of the AI and tech industry
Federal lobbying budgets for Big Tech hit record highs this year. But with federal AI regulation stalled in Washington …
A look at China's “genius class” system, which picks ~100K gifted teens annually for elite science-focused schooling; its alumni span ByteDance, PDD, and more
Fieldguide, which uses AI agents to automate accounting and auditing tasks, raised a $75M Series C led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives at a $700M valuation
Barcelona-based Biorce, which is developing an AI service to speed up clinical trials, raised a $52.5M Series A, bringing its total funding to $60M+
Shield, which acquires IT businesses and uses AI to make them efficient, raised $100M from Thrive Holdings and says it crossed $100M in annual revenue in 2025
China's desire to lead in cutting-edge AI is rubbing against its aim to control it; Zhipu AI warned IPO investors about the burden of complying with 6+ AI rules
Beijing wants to lead the world in developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence, but it also wants companies to adhere to an increasingly complex set of rules.
OpenText is selling its analytics business Vertica to Rocket Software for $150M to reduce its outstanding debt, its second business unit sale within five months
OpenText has inked its second business unit sale within five months, this time selling off its analytics business Vertica …
How Kontigo, a crypto startup from YC S24 that raised $20M+, helped move money in and out of Venezuela and now faces bank and payment network service cutoffs
Cryptocurrency fintech Kontigo, which recently raised $20 million from Coinbase and others, is under fire for its role in helping Venezuelans avoid sanctions
Sources: a KKR-led consortium is nearing a deal to buy Singapore-based ST Telemedia Global Data Centers for $10B+, as Asia sees a data center investment frenzy
Talks are at a very advanced stage, and an announcement could be made soon. — A KKR -led consortium is nearing a deal to buy …
OpenAI says it is asking select advertisers to commit $200K+ as it rolls out beta ads on ChatGPT; two sources say their companies were pitched lower amounts
A look at DestinE, an EU-funded project to create Earth's digital twin using AI, offering climate change models with far higher resolution than current models
EU-funded project to create a computer simulation of the world could also model biodiversity or pandemics
The US' high-speed internet rollout means drillers, linemen, and splicers pull in soaring pay nationwide amid a labor shortage for the physically demanding work
Record demand for fiber-optic cables means drillers, linemen and splicers pull in soaring pay at projects nationwide
Seoul unveils Maeumi, an AI chatbot integrated into its suicide prevention hotline, offering immediate emotional support even before a human counselor connects
AI chatbot, community-based counselors to bolster access to mental health support — Seoul is confronting persistent suicide pressures …
Alabama-based Linq, which pivoted to programmatic messaging APIs in February 2025, raised a $20M Series A to build AI assistants that work within messaging apps
A look at Polymarket's rise since the US DOJ dropped its probe: securing publisher deals and US licenses, insider trading concerns, and bet resolution disputes
Shayne Coplan has built the crypto-based betting platform into a $9 billion company; Justice Department probe gets shelved
India plans to exempt foreign companies from being taxed when providing equipment to their contract manufacturers in the country, a change Apple lobbied for
it can now fund iPhone-making machines for Foxconn and Tata Electronics without fearing tax/income liabilities... 📱India's government on Sunday handed a major win to Apple by allowing foreign companie...
Q&A with D‑Wave CEO Alan Baratz on the Quantum Circuits acquisition, error-correcting quantum systems, its Davidson and Anduril defense collaboration, and more
“If 2025 was the international year of quantum, 2026 is the international year of D-Wave Quantum,” said CEO Dr. Alan Baratz.Forums:r/QBTSstockForums:r/QBTSstock:D-Wave Quantum CEO on what's next after...
After X updated Grok to ban sexual deepfakes of women, tests show Grok still undresses men on Grok's app, Grok's website, and X, rarely rejecting user requests
Robert Hart /The Verge:
Taiwan hits a 21.06% weight in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, surpassing China's 20.93%, the first time since July 2007, driven by AI-linked local companies
Taiwan has overtaken China as the market with the top weighting in a key emerging-markets stock index for the first time in nearly two decades …
Anthropic positions itself as the AI sector's superego, but it's caught between the pressures to be safe, fast, and rigorous while being commercially successful
“Perhaps the greatest confusion at Anthropic is between theory and practice—the idea of safe AI versus the speed necessary to win the AI race. …Forums:r/singularity:Anthropic positions itself as the A...
Chinese government funding is backing traditional Chinese medicine providers to adopt AI for drug discovery, clinical diagnostics, acupuncture robots, and more
Researchers detail how AI tools for generating deepfakes spread on Civitai before it banned deepfakes in 2025; many tools submitted before the ban remain live
Civitai—an online marketplace for buying and selling AI-generated content, backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz …
Source: SpaceX acquired xAI for $250B; the announcement about the acquisition focuses on SpaceX's plans to launch data centers into space
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