Chief Futurist
OpenAI disbanded its second safety team in two years. The first time was a scandal. This time, the leader got a title change. What happened between 2024 and 2026 wasn't that OpenAI changed — it's that everyone else stopped expecting it not to.
Anthropic raised a $30B Series G led by GIC and Coatue and co-led by D. E. Shaw, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, Iconiq, and MGX at a $380B post-money valuation
We have raised $30 billion in Series G funding led by GIC and Coatue, valuing Anthropic at $380 billion post-money. The round was co-led by D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, and ...
Z.ai launches GLM-5, saying its flagship open-weight model has “best-in-class performance among all open-source models” in reasoning, coding, and agentic tasks
We are launching GLM-5, targeting complex systems engineering and long-horizon agentic tasks. Scaling is still one of the most important ways …
OpenAI launches a research preview of GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, a smaller version of GPT-5.3-Codex that it claims generates code 15 times faster, for Pro users
ZDNET's key takeaways — OpenAI targets “conversational” coding, not slow batch-style agents. — Big latency wins: 80% faster roundtrip, 50% faster time-to-first-token.
Elon Musk announces xAI implemented a reorganization that “required parting ways with some people”, after two xAI co-founders said they were leaving this week
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday announced the the company's xAI artificial intelligence venture implemented a reorganization that …
Google updates Gemini 3 Deep Think to better solve modern science, research, and engineering challenges and expands it via the Gemini API to some researchers
Our most specialized reasoning mode is now updated to solve modern science, research and engineering challenges.
Sources: Palo Alto Networks ordered the removal of direct attributions to China from a Unit 42 report on a hacking campaign over fears of retaliation from China
Palo Alto Networks (PANW.O) opted not to tie China to a global cyberespionage campaign the firm exposed last week over concerns …
xAI all-hands: Nikita Bier says X hit $1B in ARR from selling $3- to $40-per-month subscriptions, but offered no details on ad revenue or other xAI financials
and both are smarter than expected. 😅Logan Jastremski /@loganjastremski:My main takeaway is that engineers need to run the show and someone needs a large hammer to unblock teams and push to increase t...
Google's TIG says Gemini has been inundated by “commercially motivated” actors who are trying to clone it, including one campaign that prompted it 100K+ times
Google says private companies and researchers are trying to copy Gemini's capabilities by repeatedly prompting it at scale.
Anthropic donates $20M to Public First, a super PAC pushing for AI guardrails and transparency in opposition to OpenAI-backed PACs, ahead of the US midterms
Anthropic and OpenAI now have their own well-funded political groups that will square off in the midterm elections over artificial intelligence safety and regulation.
IBM says it plans to triple entry-level hiring in the US in 2026 “for all these jobs that we're being told AI can do”
International Business Machines Corp. said it will triple entry-level hiring in the US in 2026, even as artificial intelligence appears to be weighing on broader demand for early-career workers.
Instacart reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $992M vs. $974M est., gross transaction value up 14% to $9.85B, gives strong Q1 guidance; CART jumps 14%+ after hours
Instacart shares climbed 14% during extended trading on Thursday after the grocery delivery company reported strong fourth-quarter revenue and upbeat guidance.
An interview with OpenAI president Greg Brockman on donating $50M to AI and pro-Trump super PACs, why such donations serve a larger AI mission, and more
In an interview with WIRED, Greg Brockman says supporting politicians who back AI is “bigger than the people that I happen to be employed with.”
Israeli authorities charge a reservist and a civilian for allegedly using classified information to bet on “the occurrence of military operations” on Polymarket
Civilian and reservist charged with security offences, bribery and obstructing justice after ‘red line’ crossed with online gambling
Spotify says AI is helping it speed up coding and product velocity and its best developers “have not written a single line of code since December”
Has AI coding reached a tipping point? That seems to be the case for Spotify at least, which shared this week during …
YouTube launches an app for the Apple Vision Pro, with standard videos, 180° and 360° videos, and YouTube Shorts; devices with the M5 chip can play 8K videos
Starting today, an official YouTube app is available on the Apple Vision Pro, allowing you to watch videos on a theater-sized screen …
Crypto transaction volume linked to suspected human trafficking, largely based in Southeast Asia, hit hundreds of millions of dollars in 2025, up 85% YoY
The intersection of cryptocurrency and suspected human trafficking intensified in 2025, with total transaction volume reaching hundreds …
ByteDance's new AI video generation model Seedance 2.0 goes viral in China, with one state-backed newspaper saying it is bigger than DeepSeek's “Sputnik moment”
ByteDance's new video-generating artificial intelligence model has already impressed the likes of Elon Musk and gone viral in China …
MiniMax releases M2.5, claiming the model delivers on the “intelligence too cheap to meter” promise, priced at $0.30/1M input tokens and $1.20/1M output tokens
Today we're introducing our latest model, MiniMax-M2.5. — Extensively trained with reinforcement learning …
Ever, which says it is the first “AI-native, full-stack” retail marketplace for electric vehicles, raised a $31M Series A led by Eclipse
If you want to buy or sell a used EV right now, what's the first step you'd take? — A startup called Ever wants to be the answer to that question.
AI tools like Claude Opus 4.6 make engineers 10x more productive and are addictive, but also drain developers' energy, causing increasingly widespread burnout
This was an unusually hard post to write, because it flies in the face of everything else going on.
Samsung says it sent the first commercial HBM4 shipments to customers; Samsung seeks to supply Nvidia and compete with memory rivals like SK Hynix and Micron
Samsung Electronics Co. claimed an early lead in the race to supply memory chips for Nvidia Corp. AI accelerators …
Russia confirms it has blocked WhatsApp, citing Meta's “unwillingness to comply with Russian law”, and proposes that Russians switch to the state-owned Max app
U.S. messenger app WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms (META.O), has been completely blocked in Russia for failing …
US FTC chair asks Tim Cook to review Apple News' ToS and curation, citing allegations that it promotes “left-wing” outlets and suppresses conservative sources
US regulator issues warning to iPhone maker about its News platform following controversy over Super Bowl half-time show
Meta's auditor Ernst & Young raised a red flag over the financial engineering Meta used to keep its $27B Hyperion data center project off its balance sheet
Meta Platforms' latest annual report contained an unusual, cautionary note for investors. — The tech giant's auditor …
US DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater says she is leaving, in a departure viewed as a victory for tech giants over some of MAGA's more populist voices
Gail Slater on Thursday said she is leaving the Justice Department, where she led the antitrust division.
An OpenAI researcher who helped shape how models were built and priced says she quit after two years due to “deep reservations” about ads and OpenAI's strategy
This week, OpenAI started testing ads on ChatGPT. I also resigned from the company after spending two years …
Airbnb reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $2.78B, vs. $2.72B est., Nights and Seats Booked up 10% to 121.9M, and forecasts Q1 revenue above estimates
Shares of Airbnb popped 5% in extended trading on Thursday after the company reported fourth-quarter results that beat analysts' expectations …
Highspot, which has raised $650M and makes AI-powered sales enablement software, plans to merge with rival Seismic; the combined company will be called Seismic
In a memo to US lawmakers, OpenAI accused DeepSeek of using distillation techniques to train the next generation of R1 and “free-ride” on leading US AI models
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods …
Coinbase reports Q4 revenue down 22% YoY to $1.78B, vs. $1.84B est., transaction revenue down 37% to $983M, a net loss of $667M, vs. a $1.3B profit in Q4 2024
Coinbase reported a down quarter for the end of 2025, with its investment portfolio plunging alongside Bitcoin and other crypto assets.
Pinterest reports Q4 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.32B, vs. $1.33B est., MAUs up 12% to 619M, and forecasts Q1 revenue below estimates; PINS drops 17%+ after hours
Pinterest shares dropped 19% in after-hours on Thursday after the social media company reported fourth-quarter earnings …
Didero, which provides an agentic AI layer that integrates with ERP systems to automate supply chains, raised a $30M Series A co-led by Chemistry and Headline
Tim Spencer realized just how complicated manufacturing procurement can be while running Markai, an e-commerce startup in Asia, during the pandemic.
Nvidia launches a native GeForce Now app on select Amazon Fire TV sticks, offering up to 1080p and 60fps gaming; Fire TV users previously had to sideload it
Roku reports Q4 revenue up 16% YoY to $1.39B, vs. $1.35B est., and an $80.5M net income, vs. a $35.5M loss in Q4 2024; ROKU jumps 9%+ after hours
The streaming hardware maker forecasts 16% revenue growth in 2026 — Shares of Roku climbed as much as 13% in after-hours trading on Thursday …
Cisco stock falls 12%+ as rising memory prices put pressure on the networking company's margins; it is the stock's worst day since 2022
Cisco Systems shares plunged as much as 12% Thursday as rising memory prices put pressure on the networking company's margins. It's the stock's worst day since 2022.
A profile of Applied Intuition, which makes self-driving simulation software and booked ~$800M in 2025 revenue at 80%+ gross margins, as it expands beyond cars
Applied Intuition CEO Qasar Younis (left) and CTO Peter Ludwig believe human-driven cars will soon seem dated.
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana expects the company to hit 1M+ paid weekly robotaxi rides in the US by the end of 2026, up from ~400K per week in six cities now
Waymo, Alphabet Inc.'s autonomous driving unit, will hit more than 1 million paid weekly robotaxi rides in the US by the end of this year …
ServiceNow is acquiring Pyramid Analytics, which makes business intelligence and analytics tools, sources say for hundreds of millions; Pyramid has raised $200M
Letter: the EU launched a new probe into Google for potentially “artificially increasing the clearing price” of ad auctions “to the detriment of advertisers”
Google, the target for billions of euros in European Union antitrust fines, has been hit by a fresh EU probe …
Opaque, which offers enterprise tools for data privacy in AI workflows, raised a $24M Series B at a $300M valuation, bringing its total raised to $55.5M
Confidential artificial intelligence platform provider Opaque Systems Inc. today announced that it has raised $24 million in new funding …
Google unveils WAXAL, a speech dataset under an open license for 21 African languages to drive inclusive tech development; African institutions own the dataset
A new 21-language dataset gives African institutions ownership and control in a field long dominated by Big Tech.
Dutch payments company Adyen reports H2 2025 net revenue up 17% YoY to €1.27B and forecasts 2026 net revenue growth at 20%-22%, vs 22.8% est.; ADYEN falls 15%+
Dutch payments giant Adyen's stock is down as much as 20% after the Dutch payments giant posted net revenue guidance that was slightly weaker than expected.
Waymo begins deploying its next-gen Ojai robotaxis, which it says can better navigate in harsh weather, starting with employees and their guests in SF and LA
Waymo on Thursday said it has begun using its sixth-generation driverless system to provide robotaxi rides to employees on Ojai vehicles …
SoftBank reports Q3 net profit of ~$1.6B, below est., and Vision Fund posts a ~$2.4B gain, after a ~$4.2B gain in its OpenAI investment helped it offset losses
SoftBank posted a $2.4 billion gain at its Vision Fund in the December quarter as a jump in the value of its OpenAI investment helped offset losses in some of its other bets.
Sony launches the $330 WF-1000XM6 earbuds, with AI-powered beamforming mics for enhanced voice call clarity, improved ANC, and hands-free Gemini on Android
Sony Group Corp. introduced its latest pair of premium wireless earbuds, offering a retooled design and active noise cancellation …
Grab agrees to acquire US fintech company Stash Financial in a deal initially valued at $425M and forecasts FY 2026 revenue of $4.04B-$4.1B, below $4.13B est.
Singapore's Grab (GRAB.O) forecast fiscal 2026 revenue below Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, signaling slower momentum …
Q&A with Stratechery's Ben Thompson on aggregation theory, AI, TikTok, ByteDance, AI agentic commerce, SaaS stocks, running Stratechery, TSMC, Stripe, and more
Ben Thompson, the internet's premier tech analyst, joins John for a wide-ranging conversation on the mechanics of the internet economy.
Simile, which uses AI to help companies predict human behavior, including guessing items customers might buy, raised $100M led by Index and emerges from stealth
- Simile is building a lab to help predict peoples' actions — The company is backed by Index, A* and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li
Z.ai says it will raise prices by at least 30% for new GLM coding plan subscribers to accommodate surging demand for its AI coding tools
Mustafa Suleyman says Microsoft is pursuing “true self-sufficiency” in AI by building models for enterprise and health care and reducing its reliance on OpenAI
Applied Materials reaches a $252M settlement with the US Commerce Department, resolving allegations it illegally exported chipmaking equipment to SMIC in China
Cisco reports Q2 revenue up 10% YoY to $15.35B, above $15.12B est., and forecasts Q3 adjusted EPS only in line with estimates; CSCO drops 7%+
Alibaba says Qwen's e-commerce service, offering a ~$3.60 voucher, generated 120M+ orders from Chinese users over the past six days, ahead of the Lunar New Year
Alibaba Group said its Qwen chatbot app's AI e-commerce service has generated more than 120 million orders from Chinese consumers …
Google told advertisers that it is integrating shopping features into Search's AI Mode and Gemini; users can now buy items from Etsy and Wayfair within Gemini
Internal messages: Amazon steers teams to use its in-house AI coding assistant Kiro for production, prompting criticism as ~1,500 employees push for Claude Code
- Amazon internally promotes Kiro over third-party AI coding tools including Claude Code. — Some employees have criticized …
YC's Garry Tan launches “Garry's List”, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting “moderate/pragmatic” political candidates and pro-growth policies in California
New operation is part-PAC, part-blog, part incubator for Silicon Valley politics — and latest entry in big-money network
AppLovin reports Q4 revenue up 66% YoY to $1.66B, above $1.61B est., and forecasts Q1 revenue and adjusted EBITDA above estimates; APP drops 6%+
Private equity and private credit groups' big bets on SaaS companies, the biggest area of PE activity in the past decade, risk being derailed by the rise of AI
Dealmakers and lenders are facing a ‘Darwinian moment’ as digital services risk being made obsolete by new technologies
NYC-based Brandlight, which develops tools that help brands monitor how AI models perceive them, raised a $30M Series A led by Pelion Venture Partners
Brandlight, which can monitor how AI models perceive companies, raised a $30 million Series A led by Pelion Venture Partners, CEO Imri Marcus tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Inertia, co-founded by ex-Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson to build one of the world's most powerful lasers for a grid-scale fusion power plant, raised a $450M Series A
TikTok US launches an opt-in Local Feed for content tied to travel, news, events, shopping, and dining near the user's current location, after changing its ToS
Microsoft fixes a Notepad vulnerability in Windows 11 that let attackers execute local or remote tools by tricking users into clicking malicious Markdown links
Microsoft has fixed a “remote code execution” vulnerability in Windows 11 Notepad that allowed attackers to execute local …
The US CBP signs a one-year Clearview AI deal to use facial recognition on 60B+ public images for “tactical targeting” and “strategic counter-network analysis”
US Border Patrol intelligence units will gain access to a face recognition tool built on billions of images scraped from the internet.
Multiple responses from DeepSeek's namesake chatbot confirm that the startup has expanded the context window of its flagship AI model from 128K tokens to 1M+
The upgrade will allow DeepSeek's AI model to remember and process more information in a single conversation or task
Sources: some OpenAI executives were surprised by a WSJ report that OpenAI was aiming to IPO in December; OpenAI hopes to triple its ~$13B 2025 revenue in 2026
The maker of ChatGPT hopes to triple its revenue in the coming year because it is planning to spend tens of billions of dollars.
Meta launches an AI feature that lets Threads users temporarily personalize their feed by specifying topics in a public post that begins with “Dear Algo”
A Dutch court orders an investigation into alleged mismanagement at Chinese-owned chip company Nexperia and upholds the suspension of CEO Zhang Xuezheng
Austin-based humanoid robot startup Apptronik raised $520M led by Google and others at a $5.5B+ valuation, up ~3x from when it raised $415M in February 2025
Coinbase rolls out Agentic Wallets, wallet infrastructure on the x402 protocol to let AI agents make autonomous crypto transactions “without human intervention”
Quick Take — Agentic Wallets builds on the x402 protocol developed to enable autonomous crypto payments “without human intervention.”
EssilorLuxottica says it sold over 7M Meta AI glasses in 2025, up from the 2M that the company sold in 2023 and 2024 combined
EssilorLuxottica's more than tripled its Meta artificial intelligence glasses sales last year, the Ray-Ban maker said on Wednesday in its fourth-quarter results.
BlockFills, a crypto liquidity provider and lender to ~2,000 institutional clients, halts deposits and withdrawals over “recent market and financial conditions”
Move comes during period of sustained volatility in digital asset markets — Susquehanna-backed crypto lender BlockFills …
Some of the biggest VC firms are backing both OpenAI and Anthropic; the growing trend of backing rival startups, once taboo, shows how AI has scrambled funding
Silicon Valley investors are breaking a longstanding taboo by investing in competing startups.
Disney agrees to pay $2.75M to settle California AG Rob Bonta's 2024 lawsuit alleging it violated the CCPA by failing to honor consumers' data opt-out requests
Anthropic says Claude users on the free plan can now create files, connect to external services, use skills, and more
Amazon Pharmacy plans to bring same-day prescription delivery to almost 4,500 US cities and towns by the end of 2026, adding nearly new 2,000 communities
Sources: the Pentagon is pushing OpenAI, Anthropic, and others to make their AI tools available on classified networks without the standard user restrictions
The Pentagon is pushing the top AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic to make their artificial-intelligence tools available …
Robinhood launches a public testnet for Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer 2 network on Arbitrum supporting 24/7 trading, with a broader rollout later in 2026
The Robinhood Chain, built on Ethereum-based Arbitrum, aims to become key plumbing for around-the-clock trading and plugging tokenized stocks into DeFi.
The US DOJ says Peter Williams, the former boss of L3Harris' Trenchant, stole and sold tools that can hack millions of computers worldwide to a Russian broker
The former boss of a U.S. maker of hacking and surveillance tools stole and sold technology that can hack millions of computers and people worldwide …
Sources: Apple's Siri upgrade has run into snags during testing, possibly pushing some personalization and other features from iOS 26.4 to iOS 26.5, due in May
Apple Inc.'s long-planned upgrade to the Siri virtual assistant has run into snags during testing in recent weeks …
Lenovo reports Q3 revenue up 18% YoY to $22.2B on strong PC sales ahead of expected memory price hikes and rising AI server demand; net income fell 21% to $546M
Meta plans to spend more than $10B to build a 1GW data center campus in Lebanon, Indiana, expected to be operational at the end of 2027 or in early 2028
Social media addiction trial in LA: Adam Mosseri says social media is not “clinically addictive” and that Meta is careful to test features used by young people
Instagram's chief executive said on Wednesday that social media was not “clinically addictive,” refuting claims …
Anthropic says it will upgrade US power grid infrastructure, generate new power, and cover consumer price increases to minimize the effects of its data centers
Leading AI company Anthropic said it would upgrade power grid infrastructure, generate new power, and cover consumer price increases …
Russia removes WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram from a Roskomnadzor-run online directory, essentially blocking them in the country, unless users rely on a VPN
xAI is now organized into four core areas: Grok's chatbot and voice product, Coding, Imagine, and Macrohard, an AI software company run by digital agents
Carmen Arroyo /Bloomberg:
Hong Kong-listed Chinese AI company stocks soared on February 12: Z.ai surged nearly 30% after releasing GLM-5 and MiniMax jumped 13.7% after launching M2.5
OpenAI says the US military will get access to ChatGPT via GenAI.mil; sources say the move came after months of deliberation among OpenAI employees
@ReedAlbergotti scoop https://www.semafor.com/...Miles Brundage /@miles_brundage:@AndrewCurran_ Update: OpenAI is the second to give in here. Not surprising but worth tracking - this is an important t...
Source: OpenAI disbanded its mission alignment team in recent weeks and transferred its employees; team lead Joshua Achiam will take on a “chief futurist” role
Casey Newton /Platformer:
GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark is OpenAI's first AI model to run on chips from Nvidia rival Cerebras; OpenAI says Codex has more than 1M weekly active users
OpenAI is releasing its first artificial intelligence model that runs on chips from semiconductor startup Cerebras Systems Inc. …
Anthropic says its run-rate revenue hit $14B, growing over 10x annually in the past three years, and Claude Code's run-rate revenue hit $2.5B
And Nvidia and Microsoft; parties we KNOW are not using real cash are cited as making up ‘a portion’ of that $30B but never which portion or how much.
Anthropic's latest funding round includes part of the $15B commitment from Microsoft and Nvidia in 2025; sources say the remainder was several times subscribed
George Hammond /Financial Times: