The End of Exclusivity
On February 4, Microsoft integrated Claude into GitHub. The same day, data showed Microsoft's Copilot losing market share after a $13 billion exclusive bet on OpenAI. Amazon, Anthropic's biggest backer, was courting OpenAI. The era of exclusive AI partnerships is over.
Alphabet reports Q4 revenue up 18% YoY to $113.8B, Google Cloud revenue up 48% to $17.7B, Google Services revenue up 14% to $95.9B, net income up 30% to $34.46B
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - February 4, 2026 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2025.
Anthropic says “Claude will remain ad-free”, its users “won't see ‘sponsored’ links adjacent to” conversations, and responses won't be influenced by advertisers
There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them.
Uber says it plans to expand its robotaxi services to Hong Kong, Madrid, Houston, and Zurich in 2026; Hong Kong will be Uber's first autonomous market in Asia
Uber Technologies Inc. will expand its robotaxi services to include Hong Kong and Madrid as the ride-hailing giant pours hundreds …
On AMD's Q4 earnings call, CEO Lisa Su says Microsoft's next-gen Xbox “is progressing well to support a launch in 2027” and will feature an AMD semi-custom SoC
AMD says it's ready to support Microsoft launching its next Xbox as soon as next year.
Apptopia: ChatGPT's US market share fell from 69.1% to 45.3% from January 2025 to January 2026; Gemini rose from 14.7% to 25.1% and Grok rose from 1.6% to 15.2%
• Mobile Market Share: ChatGPT fell from 69.1% to 45.3%, while Gemini rose to 25.1% and Grok to 15.2%. — • Web Traffic: ChatGPT visits grew 50% (to 5.7 billion), compared to Gemini's 647% surge (to ...
Google teases the Pixel 10a in a new 15-second video, revealing a completely flat dual-camera system on the back, and says preorders begin on February 18
Google this morning officially announced the Pixel 10a via a video teaser emphasizing the updated design. — A short 15-second video from Made by Google shows the design of the Pixel 10a in full.
Uber reports Q4 revenue up 20% YoY to $14.37B, Gross Bookings up 22% YoY to $54.1B, trips up 22% YoY to 3.8B, and a $296M net income, below est.; UBER falls 5%+
Revenue jumped 20% to $14.37 billion — Uber Technologies logged a jump in fourth-quarter revenue, boosted by higher trip volumes …
Amazon rolls out Alexa+ to all Prime members in the US via any Alexa-enabled device, Alexa.com, and the Alexa app, and launches a free tier for non-Prime users
Amazon's revamped AI-powered assistant is now available to everyone in the US, with new tiers that include a free option for non-Prime users.
AI voice startup ElevenLabs raised a $500M Series D led by Sequoia at an $11B valuation, taking its total funding to nearly $800M, and reports $330M in 2025 ARR
The startup is increasingly joining with creative stars and expanding its work with business customers
Microsoft integrates Claude and Codex AI coding agents directly into GitHub, GitHub Mobile, and Visual Studio Code, for Copilot Pro Plus and Enterprise users
Microsoft-owned GitHub continues to embrace OpenAI and Anthropic AI advances. … GitHub is making Claude by Anthropic …
Microsoft says cybersecurity head Charlie Bell will move into a position focused on engineering quality; Hayete Gallot will return from Google to run security
Microsoft said Wednesday that top security leader Charlie Bell will take on a new role and that Hayete Gallot will return …
Pinterest fires two employees who it says “wrote custom scripts” that accessed confidential info to track which workers lost their jobs during recent layoffs
Pinterest has sacked two engineers for tracking which workers lost their jobs in a recent round of layoffs.
AI chipmaker Cerebras raised a ~$1B Series H led by Tiger Global at a $23B valuation, up from $8.1B in September 2025; Benchmark, Fidelity, and AMD invested too
AI chip provider Cerebras Systems Inc. has raised about $1 billion in a new funding round, bolstering the company's efforts to compete with Nvidia Corp.
Texas Instruments agrees to acquire US chip company Silicon Labs for ~$7.5B, paying $231/share in cash, closing in H1 2027; Silicon Labs has a ~$4.5B market cap
Texas Instruments Inc. has reached an agreement to buy the US chip firm Silicon Laboratories Inc. in a deal valued at $7.5 billion …
Mistral debuts Voxtral Transcribe 2, a family of speech-to-text models with speaker diarization and ultra-low latency, under the Apache 2.0 open-weight license
AI assistants are going voice-first, and Mistral AI just launched its models to compete. — On Wednesday, the French AI startup …
Sources: Amazon and OpenAI are discussing a deal that could require OpenAI to dedicate its researchers and engineers to developing customized models for Amazon
As Amazon weighs an equity investment of tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI, the companies are also discussing a commercial agreement …
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says Tether's target of raising $15B to $20B was a “misconception”; sources say Tether's advisers have floated raising as little as $5B
CEO Paolo Ardoino downplays the scale of $185bn stablecoin group's capital raise — Tether's chief executive …
A US judge sentences Rui-Siang Lin, who pled guilty to operating the $105M+ dark web narcotics marketplace Incognito Market, to 30 years in US federal prison
U.S. prosecutors say the Taiwanese operator of the $105 Million Incognito Market used cryptocurrency and anonymity tools …
Sources: Tokyo-based chipmaker Renesas agrees to sell its clocks and timing device business to Nasdaq-listed chip design company SiTime for ~$3B
Chipmaker divesting non-core businesses after seeing a loss in 1st 9 months of 2025 — Renesas' clocks and timing business was formerly part …
Bedrock, which aims to automate heavy construction equipment like excavators, raised $270M led by CapitalG and the Valor Atreides AI Fund at a $1.75B valuation
The year-old company, founded by veterans of the autonomous vehicle business Waymo, is seeking to automate excavators and other building equipment.
PayPal names HP CEO Enrique Lores as CEO, replacing Alex Chriss on March 1, and reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $8.68B, below estimates; PYPL closes down 20.3%
PayPal Holdings Inc. said HP Inc. Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lores will take the top job from Alex Chriss …
Internal memos: Meta said Avocado is its “most capable pre-trained base model” and achieves 10x compute efficiency “wins” on text tasks vs. Llama 4 Maverick
Meta Platforms is sounding an increasingly bullish note about the first major AI model expected to emerge from its new AI group.
AMD reports Q4 revenue up 34% YoY to $10.3B, Data Center revenue up 39% YoY to $5.4B, and forecasts Q1 revenue at $9.8B, below $10B projections; AMD drops 15%+
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. shares tumbled in late trading after the chipmaker's sales forecast underwhelmed investors …
Resolve AI, which offers AI agents to monitor source code, databases, and infrastructure to address outages, raised $125M led by Lightspeed at a $1B valuation
Resolve AI, a startup building AI agents to find and fix problems in live software systems, just hit a $1 billion valuation in a new funding round.
Anthropic plans a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl that parodies the prospect of intrusive ads in AI conversations, and will also air a 60-second pregame ad
Chatbot wars are heating up, with Anthropic's Claude highlighting the potential frustration of bringing ads into ChatGPT
Snap reports Q4 revenue up 10% YoY to $1.72B, vs. $1.7B est., DAUs up 5% to 474M, vs. 478M est., and announces a $500M share buyback; SNAP jumps 5%+ after hours
TRM Labs, which helps law enforcement and companies track crypto and blockchains, raised a $70M Series C led by Blockchain Capital at a $1B valuation
When TRM Labs cofounders Esteban Castaño and Rahul Raina moved to San Francisco in 2018 to create a startup, their mentors told …
Qualcomm reports Q1 revenue up 5% YoY to $12.25B, vs. $12.21B est., and projects Q2 revenue below est. due to memory supply shortage; QCOM drops 9%+ after hours
Chip supplier Qualcomm (QCOM.O) forecast second-quarter revenue and profit below Wall Street estimates on Wednesday …
Tencent Cloud, DigitalOcean, and Alibaba Cloud add OpenClaw support, offering users the AI agent platform as a service; many OpenClaw users run it on a Mac mini
As analyst house Gartner declares AI tool ‘comes with unacceptable cybersecurity risk’ and urges admins to snuff it out
Lunar Energy, which develops software that syncs batteries across homes into “virtual power plants” and began deploying its own batteries in 2025, raised $232M
Lunar Energy wants to expand its home storage business at a time when the grid is increasingly under strain.
AMD reports $390M in revenue from MI308 AI chip sales to China in Q4; CEO Lisa Su says orders were “from very early in 2025” but shipped in Q4 after US approval
Company sees $100m more revenue from China as Beijing weighs rules on Nvidia, other foreign chips
Filing: Workday is cutting ~400 employees, or ~2% of its workforce, primarily in customer-facing roles, saying the move will help it invest in priority areas
Arm reports Q3 revenue up 26% YoY to $1.24B, vs. $1.22B est., and license and other revenue up 25% to $505M, vs. $519.9M est.; ARM drops 7%+ after hours
Shares of Arm Holdings (O9Ty.F), fell on Wednesday as its licensing revenues slightly missed Wall Street estimates …
Roblox launches a “4D generation” feature in open beta, letting creators generate interactive objects with individual moving parts rather than static 3D models
Last year, Roblox launched an open-source AI model that could generate 3D objects on the platform, helping users quickly design digital items …
EnFi, which makes AI agents that analyze and make decisions on credit applications, raised a $15M Series A led by Fintop, bringing its total funding to $22.5M
Boston-based startup EnFi is raising $15 million with venture capital funds to increase deployment of artificial intelligence agents …
Bitcoin briefly fell below $73,000 on February 3, hitting its lowest price since November 2024, as heavy selling resumes amid mounting geopolitical concerns
Adobe ramped up its ads in 2025, spending $1.4B amid AI competition and Wall Street skepticism, a significantly higher share of sales than other tech companies
Adobe Inc. ramped up its advertising in 2025, spending $1.4 billion to promote its brand in the face of steep competition …
Skyryse, which plans to integrate its flight automation OS, SkyOS, in Black Hawk helicopters and other aircraft, raised a $300M+ Series C at a $1.15B valuation
Egypt plans to ban Roblox in a bid to curb kids' exposure to potentially harmful online material; the Middle East's most populous nation joins Qatar and Turkey
Egyptian regulators moved to ban Roblox Corp.'s gaming platform, as the Middle East's most populous nation says it's making …
Match reports Q4 revenue up 2% YoY to $878M, above $871M est., net income up 32% YoY to $210M, and paying users down 5% to 13.8M; MTCH jumps 7%+ after hours
Two US Senators introduce the SCAM Act, a bipartisan bill requiring social media platforms to verify advertiser identities to combat fraudulent advertising
U.S. Senators Ruben Gallego and Bernie Moreno have introduced anti-scam legislation requiring social media platforms to vet their advertisers.
Sources: Texas Instruments is in advanced talks to buy chip designer Silicon Laboratories for ~$7B, a premium to Silicon Labs' market cap of $4.4B as of Tuesday
An interview with Epic Games Store VP Steven Allison, who says “we have a lot of things” to fix and “the launcher sucks”, on 2026 updates like social features
Steven Allison acknowledges some people will always say “F— Epic", as focus finally shifts to player experience.
Ares Interactive, which makes cross-platform, free-to-play games with plans for a new baseball game in 2026, raised a $70M Series A led by General Catalyst
Galaxy Digital reports a Q4 net loss of $482M, above $282M est., driven primarily by the crypto market crash, and says its trading volumes declined ~40% QoQ
Billionaire Michael Novogratz said he remains optimistic even after Galaxy Digital Inc. posted a wider-than-expected loss …
Sources: Reno-based chip startup Positron raised a $230M Series B from the QIA and others to build high-speed memory chips, taking its total funding to $300M+
Semiconductor startup Positron has secured $230 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Tomorrow.io raised $175M at a $1B+ valuation to deploy an AI-driven LEO satellite network for weather forecasting, bringing its total funding to ~$500M
Prosus signs a three-year AWS cloud and AI deal that runs into “hundreds of millions of dollars”, as it reorganizes to focus on Europe, India, and Latin America
Prosus NV reached a multi-year cloud and artificial-intelligence deal with an Amazon.com Inc. unit that will consolidate contracts …
Sources: banks are marketing $56B+ in investment-grade data center construction loans tied to Oracle's future leases, as they seek out new buyers for the loans
Rare investment-grade rating helps attract insurers and private credit funds to construction debt
Q&A with Stardew Valley developer Eric Barone, aka ConcernedApe, on the game turning 10, evolving as a developer, working solo, cozy game growth, and more
We spoke to the game's creator about the journey of the last 10 years, and why he keeps returning to the valley.
Global fintech VC funding rose 27% YoY in 2025 to $51.8B; Y Combinator was the most active investor in the space, participating in 151 deals, up 24.8% YoY
Global venture funding to fintech startups increased by 27% in 2025 to its highest level in several quarters, boosted by later-stage deals, Crunchbase data shows.
Q&A with Kai-Fu Lee on his startup 01.ai, which builds agentic AI tools for companies, why China will beat the US in consumer AI, open-source models, and more
Chinese AI pioneer talks about the competition between the technology's two superpowers and why companies need to be more proactive in adopting it
Lotus Health, which uses AI to offer free, 24/7 primary care in 50 languages, raised a $35M Series A led by CRV and Kleiner Perkins, taking its funding to $41M
German chipmaker Infineon reports Q1 revenue up 7% YoY to €3.66B, vs. €3.62B est., plans to raise investments to ~€2.7B in 2026, and forecasts growing AI demand
Infineon Technologies AG said it will ramp up its investment in technology for artificial intelligence …
AI agent social network Moltbook grew from 30K+ users on January 30 to 1.5M+ on February 2; researchers say some of the viral posts were likely human-scripted
Y Combinator says it will let founders receive their customary funding allotment, typically ~$500K, in Circle-issued USDC, starting with the Spring 2026 cohort
A profile of game studio Obsidian, which Microsoft acquired in 2018, as it seeks to shorten development times and cut costs after releasing three titles in 2025
Microsoft's Obsidian Entertainment is searching for ways to make games more quickly and on smaller budgets.
Sources: US-based Arcee AI is pitching investors on a $200M+ funding round valuing it at over $1B, as it plans to train an open-weight model with 1T+ parameters
The American startup is pitching investors on a $1 billion+ valuation to train a model over a trillion parameters …
Grindr is testing Edge, a subscription tier with AI-powered personalized matches and insights, no ads, and more, with prices ranging from $80 to $220 per week
Crypto.com launches prediction market platform OG ahead of the Super Bowl, following 40-fold WoW growth in its event contracts business over the past six months
EA reports Q3 net bookings up 38% YoY to $3.05B, above $2.86B est., driven by strong Battlefield 6 sales, and a $88M net income, down from $293M in Q3 2025
Salesforce's Tableau President & CEO Ryan Aytay leaves after 19 years at the company, just two months after Slack CEO Denise Dresser left to become OpenAI's CRO
The chief of Salesforce Inc.'s data visualization unit, Tableau, has left the company, raising some concerns on Wall Street about executive churn at the software maker.
Filing: OpenAI accuses xAI of systematically destroying evidence in its antitrust case by directing employees to use autodeleting “ephemeral messaging tools”
OpenAI accused Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company of “systematic and intentional destruction” …
NYC-based Alaffia Health, which provides agentic AI tools for health plan claims operations, raised a $55M Series B led by Transformation Capital
Agentic artificial intelligence for health plan claims operations startup Alaffia Health Inc. announced today that it has raised $55 million in new funding to accelerate growth …
Sources: the US Commerce Department finished reviewing Nvidia's H200 China license, but the State Department wants tougher restrictions, delaying final approval
The state department has pushed for close scrutiny before approving export licences — Michael Acton in San Francisco …
The UK ICO launches a new investigation into X and xAI over “serious concerns” about Grok's data use and “its potential to produce harmful sexualized” content
Tech billionaire and platform's former chief Linda Yaccarino summoned for ‘voluntary interviews’ in April
Microsoft launches the Publisher Content Marketplace in partnership with Condé Nast, Hearst, AP, and others, to let publishers license content to AI companies
At the Cisco AI Summit, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan says the company plans to build GPUs and has already hired a chief GPU architect
Recon Analytics: Copilot's US market share as paid users' first choice fell from 18.8% in July 2025 to 11.5% in January 2026; Gemini's rose from 12.8% to 15.7%
Microsoft's Pivotal AI Product Is Running Into Big Problems After leaning on its partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft is playing catch-up in the chatbot race.
Adobe reverses its plans to discontinue Animate after creators expressed frustration, saying it won't get new features but will remain available “indefinitely”
It won't get new features, but it will still be available. … Adobe is no longer planning to discontinue Adobe Animate on March 1st.
KKR and Singtel agree to acquire the remaining 82% stake in data center operator STT GDC for ~$5.1B, giving it a ~$10.86B enterprise value; KKR will own 75%
Private equity firm KKR and Singapore Telecommunications will acquire the remaining 82% stake in data center operator ST Telemedia Global Data Centres …
Sources: HP CEO Enrique Lores leaving to become PayPal CEO blindsided HP, whose board rushed to launch a CEO search process; Lores had worked for HP since 1989
Source: Anthropic is planning an employee tender offer at a $350B+ pre-money valuation, the same valuation discussed in the startup's ongoing $20B fundraising
Anthropic is working on a deal to let some employees sell shares in the company at a valuation of at least $350 billion …
Sources: Alphabet plans a new complex in Bengaluru, India, which can accommodate up to 20K extra staff, amid US visa restrictions and proposed H-1B fee hikes
Alphabet Inc. is plotting to dramatically expand its presence in India, with the possibility of taking millions of square feet …
Disney names Josh D'Amaro, head of its theme parks and consumer products division, as CEO, replacing Bob Iger, effective March 18; D'Amaro joined Disney in 1998
Software and data stocks plunge over fears that new AI developments will supplant software; ADBE fell 7.31%, CRM 6.85%, and Thomson Reuters 15.83% on Tuesday
From Legalzoom.com and Expedia to Ares and Apollo, shares of companies that sell or invest in software fell sharply on Tuesday
Sources: Nvidia is nearing a deal to invest $20B in OpenAI as part of OpenAI's $100B round; both CEOs publicly said they remain committed to working together
Nvidia Corp. is nearing a deal to invest $20 billion in OpenAI as part of its latest funding round, according to people familiar with the matter, marking the chipmaker's single biggest investment in t...
Take-Two reports Q3 net bookings up 28% YoY to $1.76B, vs. $1.58B est., net revenue up 25% YoY to $1.7B, and raises its annual bookings forecast; TTWO drops ~5%
“Grand Theft Auto” and “NBA 2K” maker Take-TwoTTWO $223.50 (-4.23%) reported results for its fiscal third quarter on Tuesday.
A profile of Sam Altman, who says “we basically have built AGI, or very close to it” before dialing back his claim to “a spiritual statement, not a literal one”
As CEO of OpenAI, the 40-year-old billionaire unleashed ChatGPT, mainstreaming artificial intelligence and creating a $500 billion behemoth.
US v. Google: the DOJ and a group of states will appeal the September 2025 ruling in the Search antitrust case in which Google dodged a forced sale of Chrome
A group of states led by Colorado will appeal a federal judge's ruling that imposed only modest limits on Alphabet Inc.'s Google contracts related …
OpenAI names Dylan Scandinaro, who worked on AGI safety at Anthropic, as the company's “head of preparedness”, which has an up to $555K/year base salary
In December, OpenAI made headlines when it posted a job listing for a “head of preparedness” with an eye-watering base pay range of as much as $555,000 a year.
Super Micro reports Q2 net sales up 123% YoY to $12.7B, above $10.43B est., and expects Q3 net sales above estimates; SMCI jumps ~7% after hours
The AI server company just released its fiscal Q2 results. — Super Micro ComputerSMCI $31.26 (0.20%) just released its fiscal Q2 results:
If assumptions hold, SpaceX-xAI could own a full stack of capabilities, from launch to orbital bandwidth to frontier AI models, and offer AI on demand anywhere
Apple brings agentic coding to Xcode, starting with version 26.3, letting developers use Anthropic's Claude Agent and OpenAI's Codex, and integrates MCP support
Apple is bringing agentic coding to Xcode. On Tuesday, the company announced the release of Xcode 26.3, which will allow developers to use agentic tools …
Uber plans to expand its robotaxi services to Hong Kong, Madrid, Houston, and Zurich in 2026; Hong Kong will be Uber's first autonomous market in Asia
Uber Technologies Inc. will expand its robotaxi services to include Hong Kong and Madrid as the ride-hailing giant pours hundreds of millions of dollars into the emerging industry.
Uber promotes Balaji Krishnamurthy, its former VP of strategic finance and investor relations, to be its CFO, replacing Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah
Thank you for standing by. My name is Greg and I will be your conference operator today.The Economic Times:Uber appoints Indian-origin Balaji Krishnamurthy as CFOConnor Hart /Dow Jones Newswires:Uber...
Sam Altman says Anthropic's Super Bowl ads are funny but “dishonest”, and Anthropic serves a “product to rich people” while OpenAI is “committed to free access”
and rattled businessJean Leon /Android Headlines:Anthropic Roasts OpenAI Promising Ad-Free Claude AI ExperienceTimothy Beck Werth /Mashable:Anthropic Super Bowl LX ads mock ChatGPT
Alphabet says it expects 2026 capex to be in the range of $175B to $185B, vs. ~$120B est., up from $91.4B in 2025; Q4 capex was $27.9B, up from $14B a year ago
Stephen Morris /Financial Times:
Alphabet reports YouTube's Q4 ad revenue rose 9% YoY to $11.38B, vs. $11.84B est., and YouTube's annual revenue “surpassed $60B across ads and subscriptions”
although it's impossible to compare businesses — BUT that's still about $10 billion LESS than what Reels ~alone~ generated in annual run rate.Julia Alexander /@loudmouthjulia:Also in Alphabet's earnin...