The $180 Billion Principle
On the same day Anthropic raised $30 billion and reported $14 billion in run-rate revenue, the Pentagon published a document adding the company to a Chinese military list. Two days later, the Pentagon threatened to sever ties over Anthropic's refusal to build autonomous weapons. Five days later, Anthropic revealed it will owe $180 billion to cloud providers and training costs through 2029. The most principled AI company needs the most money.
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.
Amazon's Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety, which would have let law enforcement agencies request footage from Ring doorbell users, after backlash
After weeks of mounting pressure and a questionable Super Bowl ad, the Amazon-owned company has walked back its plan to integrate with the controversial surveillance company.
Memo: Meta considered adding facial recognition to its smart glasses during a “dynamic political environment” in the US when civil society groups are distracted
In an internal memo last year, Meta said the political tumult in the United States would distract critics from the feature's release.
Apple says 74% of iPhones launched in the last four years and 66% of all iPhones are running iOS 26; 68% of iPhones were running iOS 18 as of Jan. 21, 2025
Apple has shared updated iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 adoption figures, revealing how many iPhones and iPads are running those software versions.
Anthropic adds Chris Liddell, a former Microsoft and GM exec who helped GM IPO and worked in Trump's first administration, to its board ahead of a potential IPO
The former Microsoft and GM executive Chris Liddell has previously worked for the Trump administration
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 …
As OpenAI retires GPT-4o, some users say they are angry and grieving to lose the flirty, quirky companion
Its human partners said the flirty, quirky GPT-4o was the perfect companion - on the eve of Valentine's Day, it's being turned off for good. How will users cope?
The MPA urges ByteDance to curb its AI video model Seedance 2.0, after an AI-generated video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting on a rooftop went viral
The Motion Picture Association on Thursday denounced the newest AI video generator, Seedance 2.0 …
OpenAI debuts 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 ChatGPT 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.
Q&A with Dario Amodei on getting close to “a country of geniuses in a data center”, how AI will diffuse through the economy, frontier lab profits, China, more
“That's why I'm sending this message of urgency” — Dario Amodei thinks we are just a few years away from “a country of geniuses in a data center”.
Apple's stock fell 5% on February 12, its worst day since April 2025, following FTC scrutiny of Apple News and reports of delays to Siri's anticipated AI update
Apple just wrapped up its worst day on the stock market since April after reports surfaced about delays with Siri and as the company's news app faced regulatory scrutiny.
Sources: Binance in late 2025 fired employees who uncovered evidence that Iran received $1B+ through Binance between March 2024 and August 2025
In 2023, the crypto exchange Binance pleaded guilty to violating anti-money laundering and know-your-customer laws as well as sanctions violations.
Google warns that the EU risks undermining its own competitiveness drive with the “tech sovereignty package” the bloc is set to present in the spring
Europe risks undermining its own competitiveness drive through curbs on US groups, tech company says
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 …
A US court sentences Praetorian Group CEO Ramil Ventura Palafox to 20 years in prison for operating a $200M bitcoin Ponzi scheme that defrauded 90K+ investors
Quick Take — Praetorian Group International CEO, Ramil Ventura Palafox, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for operating a $200 million bitcoin Ponzi scheme.
Some former employees blame xAI's staff exodus on xAI's focus on NSFW Grok and disregard for safety, constantly playing catch up to OpenAI, infighting, and more
Former employees say the restructuring followed tensions over safety and being “stuck in the catch-up phase.”
A US jury finds Apple did not infringe Optis' 4G wireless technology patents, after two earlier trial verdicts Optis had won were overturned
Apple (AAPL.O)won a defense verdict on Thursday in a lawsuit by intellectual-property management company Optis Wireless, which had accused …
The suspect believed to be behind the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, Canada made a Roblox game simulating a mall shooting; Roblox says it removed the account
Jesse Van Rootselaar, the 18-year-old suspected of killing eight people and injuring 25 in a mass shooting in a secondary school in Canada …
YouTube launches an app for the Apple Vision Pro, with standard videos, 180° and 360° videos, and YouTube Shorts; the M5-powered Vision Pro 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 …
Coinbase reports Q4 revenue down 22% YoY to $1.78B, vs. $1.84B est., transaction revenue down 37% YoY to $983M, and a $667M loss, 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.
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.
Applied Materials reports Q1 revenue down 2% YoY to $7.01B, vs. $6.86B est., net income up 71% YoY to $2B, and forecasts Q2 revenue above est.; AMAT jumps 10%+
Applied Materials Inc. surged 10% in late trading after delivering a surprisingly upbeat sales forecast, signaling that demand …
Sources: the US FTC accelerated a probe into whether Microsoft illegally monopolized the enterprise computing market with its cloud software and AI offerings
The US Federal Trade Commission is accelerating scrutiny of Microsoft Corp. as part of an ongoing probe into whether …
Instacart reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $992M, vs. $974M est., gross transaction value up 14% YoY to $9.85B, and gives strong Q1 guidance; CART jumps 15%+
Instacart shares climbed 14% during extended trading on Thursday after the grocery delivery company reported strong fourth-quarter revenue and forecast upbeat guidance.
Sources: ByteDance is in advanced talks to sell game studio Moonton, the developer of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, to Saudi Arabia's Savvy Games for $6B to $7B
ByteDance is in advanced talks to sell Shanghai Moonton Technology, the studio behind the popular mobile game Mobile Legends …
Airbnb reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $2.78B, vs. $2.72B est., Nights and Seats Booked up 10% YoY to 121.9M, and forecasts Q1 revenue above estimates
Shares of Airbnb were up about 2% in extended trading Thursday after the company reported fourth-quarter results that beat expectations …
The US DoD published and then deleted a document adding Alibaba, Baidu, and BYD to a list of companies with alleged connections to the Chinese military
The companies are among a number the Pentagon believes could pose a threat to American national security
Pinterest reports Q4 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.32B, vs. $1.33B est., MAUs up 12% YoY to 619M, vs. 613M est., and forecasts Q1 revenue below est.; PINS drops 20%+
Pinterest shares plunged as much as 20% after hours Thursday as CEO Bill Ready said the company “absorbed an exogenous shock …
Roku reports Q4 revenue up 16% YoY to $1.39B, vs. $1.35B est., and an $80.5M net income, vs. a $35.5M net loss in Q4 2024
The streaming hardware maker forecasts 16% revenue growth in 2026 — Shares of Roku climbed as much as 13% in after-hours trading on Thursday …
PitchBook estimates that 25%+ of VC-backed unicorns have become “undercorns,” startups once valued at $1B or more by VCs but now valued below that threshold
New valuation data from PitchBook suggests that more than one-quarter of VC-backed “unicorns” have lost their horns …
An interview with OpenAI President Greg Brockman on donating $50M to AI and pro-Trump super PACs, how 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.”
Blockchain-based lending company Figure confirms a data breach; ShinyHunters hacking group published 2.5GB of data, saying Figure refused to pay a ransom
Figure Technology, a blockchain-based lending company, confirmed it experienced a data breach. — On Friday, Figure spokesperson …
Sources: the Trump administration has shelved tech security measures against China, including data center equipment curbs, ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting in April
The Trump administration has shelved a number of key tech security measures aimed at Beijing ahead of an April meeting between the two countries' presidents.
Companies like Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are letting workers cash out before their IPOs, a move once seen as taboo and lacking long-term commitment
Companies from Stripe to OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks and SpaceX are increasingly giving employees the ability to sell some of their shares
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”, affecting a wide range of departments
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.
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
Anna's Archive quietly starts releasing millions of tracks from its Spotify scrape, despite a preliminary injunction against distributing the copyrighted works
February investor memo: Cohere hit ~$240M in ARR in 2025, above its $200M target, with QoQ growth of 50%+ and gross margins averaging around 70% throughout 2025
Artificial intelligence startup Cohere has told investors that it's seeing momentum with enterprise customers, even as rivals like Google …
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 …
Anthropic says its run-rate revenue hit $14B, growing over 10x annually in each of the past three years, and Claude Code's run-rate revenue has grown to $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.Forums:r/FundriseInvestors:Anthropic Closes $30B F...
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
Sources: Grafana Labs, which makes cloud and AI monitoring tools, is in talks to raise at a $9B valuation, up from $6.6B in 2024; its ARR hit $400M in Sept.
Grafana Labs, a software startup that helps companies monitor cloud and AI activity and spending, is finalizing a new funding round …
Baidu plans to let its search app's 700M MAUs opt-in to message OpenClaw and integrate OpenClaw's capabilities into its e-commerce business and other services
BEIJING — Baidu plans to give users of its main smartphone app direct access to the wildly popular artificial intelligence tool OpenClaw …
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 …
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
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 …
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
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
Cisco's stock closed down 12.3% on February 12 as rising memory prices put pressure on the networking company's margins; it was the stock's worst day since 2022
Israeli authorities charge a reservist and a civilian for allegedly using classified information to bet on “the occurrence of military operations” on Polymarket
OpenAI says GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark is its first AI model that runs on Cerebras chips, after they signed a $10B+ deal in January; Codex has 1M+ weekly active users
at 1,000 tokens/s. [video]@openaidevs:Introducing GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, our ultra-fast model purpose built for real-time coding. We're rolling it out as a research preview for ChatGPT Pro users in the ...
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”
all production-ready. 15-sec multi-shot output with dual-channel audio. Film, advertising, gaming content costs about to crater. [video]@lentils80:Seedance 2.0 officially launches https://seed.bytedan...
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
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 …
A look at Higgsfield, an AI video startup that grew to $300M ARR within 11 months, as it faces a creator backlash over aggressive and shocking marketing tactics
CEO Alex Mashrabov, originally from Uzbekistan, cofounded Higgsfield in 2023 as a ChatGPT for video-style mobile app.
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
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
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:
Crypto transaction volume linked to suspected human trafficking, largely based in Southeast Asia, hit hundreds of millions of dollars in 2025, up 85% YoY
Ever, which says it is the first “AI-native, full-stack” retail marketplace for electric vehicles, raised a $31M Series A led by Eclipse
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
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
Q&A with Stratechery's Ben Thompson on aggregation theory, AI, TikTok, ByteDance, AI agentic commerce, SaaS stocks, running Stratechery, TSMC, Stripe, and more
ServiceNow is acquiring Pyramid Analytics, which makes business intelligence and analytics tools, sources say for hundreds of millions; Pyramid has raised $200M
Anthropic adds Chris Liddell, an ex-Microsoft and GM exec who helped GM IPO and worked in Trump's first administration, to its board ahead of a potential IPO
The former Microsoft and GM executive Chris Liddell has previously worked for the Trump administration