User Error
Amazon's AI coding tool caused at least two AWS outages, including a 13-hour disruption. Amazon's response: "user error, not AI error." Its own engineers had warned them. Fifteen hundred of them pushed for a different tool.
Phil Spencer will retire after 38 years at Microsoft; Asha Sharma, the president of product in Microsoft's Core AI business, will become the CEO of gaming
Microsoft's head of gaming, Phil Spencer, is leaving the software maker following a 38-year tenure, as the company faces increased challenges in its Xbox business.
Xbox President Sarah Bond, long thought to be Phil Spencer's heir, is leaving; Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is promoted to Chief Content Officer
Spencer's run with Xbox ends just months shy of the brand's 25th anniversary. — Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer …
Sources: OpenAI has 200+ people working on AI devices, including a smart speaker with a camera costing $200 to $300, possibly smart glasses and a smart lamp
OpenAI has more than 200 people working on a family of AI-powered devices that will include a smart speaker and possibly smart glasses and a smart lamp …
Sources: Amazon's AI tools have caused at least two AWS outages, including a 13-hour disruption in December; Amazon says it was “user error, not AI error”
Tech giant blames ‘user error, not AI error’ for incident in December involving its Kiro tool — Amazon's cloud unit has suffered …
Anthropic launches Claude Code Security, which “scans codebases for security vulnerabilities and suggests targeted software patches”; cybersecurity stocks fall
Shares of cybersecurity software companies tumbled Friday after Anthropic PBC introduced a new security feature into its Claude AI model.
Tech stocks rise slightly from their morning lows after the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump lacked the authority to impose sweeping global tariffs
Shares of tech goods makers rose off their morning lows on news of the high court's ruling. Tech goods have been some of the least …
Claude's C Compiler shows AI elevates the role of human judgment and vision; it's a milestone, but closely mirrors LLVM/GCC, and hard codes things to pass tests
Compilers occupy a special place in computer science. They're a canonical course in computer science education. Building one is a rite of passage.
Scott Myers, the head of Snap's AR glasses subsidiary Specs, leaves after six years; sources say Myers left after a “blow-up” with Evan Spiegel over strategy
My chat with CEO Dylan Field ahead of today's earnings call. Also: Snap loses its head of Specs right before the big launch …
Sources: OpenAI staff raised concerns about a Canadian mass shooting suspect months ago; OpenAI says her activity didn't meet the bar for reporting to police
ChatGPT maker opted against informing authorities about Jesse Van Rootselaar's descriptions of violence last June
A US judge rejects Tesla's bid to overturn a $243M jury verdict over a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash, a blow for Tesla as it faces a growing wave of lawsuits
A federal judge has rejected Tesla's bid to overturn a $243 million jury verdict over a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash in Florida …
Sources: OpenAI is telling investors it's targeting ~$600B in total compute spend by 2030, months after Sam Altman touted $1.4T in infrastructure commitments
OpenAI is telling investors that it's now targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, months …
Code Metal, which uses AI to let engineers translate legacy code into modern languages, raised a $125M Series B led by Salesforce Ventures at a $1.25B valuation
The Boston startup uses AI to translate and verify legacy software for defense contractors, arguing modernization can't come at the cost of new bugs.
Sources: Google may invest $100M in Fluidstack at a $7.5B valuation and has backstopped crypto miners that are building datacenters, seeking to expand TPU use
As more AI companies consider Google's chips, the company wants to use deals with external partners to expand the potential market
Sources: SoftBank plans to form a consortium to build a $33B power plant in Ohio, set to produce 9.2 GW for AI data centers, as part of the US-Japan trade deal
TOKYO — SoftBank Group will form a consortium to carry out a $33 billion gas-fired power plant project in the U.S. …
Peak XV, which split from Sequoia in 2023, raised $1.3B across new India- and Asia-focused funds, bringing its total assets under management to over $10B
Jagmeet Singh /TechCrunch:
Avantos, which makes an AI-native client management system for financial institutions, raised a $25M Series A led by Bessemer, taking its total funding to $35M
Avantos, a company developing an AI-native system for financial institutions, announced the completion of a US$25 million series …
OpenAI says users aged 18 to 24 account for nearly 50% and under-30s represent 80% of ChatGPT messages in India; 35% of chats are related to professional tasks
OpenAI seems to have found product-market fit with young Indians. The company said on Friday that users between 18 and 24 years …
Pepper, which offers a digital storefront for independent food distributors, raised a $50M Series C led by Lead Edge Capital, taking its total funding to $100M
Pepper, a business platform developer for independent food distributors, raised a $50 million Series C led by Lead Edge Capital, CEO Bowie Cheung tells Axios Pro exclusively.
General Catalyst plans to invest $5B in India over five years, an increase from the $500M to $1B it previously announced, after merging with a local VC in 2024
General Catalyst, a Silicon Valley-based venture firm with more than $43 billion in assets under management, has announced it plans …
Google rejected 1.75M policy-violating Android apps and blocked 80K+ developer accounts from Google Play in 2025, down from 2.36M apps and 158K accounts in 2024
Fewer bad actors are targeting Google Play with malicious apps, the company says, a shift that the tech giant credits …
Sources: Emerald AI, which develops software to curb data center energy demand, is raising a $25M seed extension at a ~$250M post-money valuation
Microsoft's AI safety team proposed technical standards for detecting AI-generated content, but its CSO declined to commit to using them across its platforms
AI-enabled deception now permeates our online lives. There are the high-profile cases you may easily spot …
How some political candidates and activists across ideologies and professions are pushing back on the spread of data centers and AI in the US
One icy morning in February, nearly 200 people gathered in a church in downtown Richmond, Va. Most had awakened before dawn and driven in from across the state.LinkedIn:Dr. Alicia M. Johnson.
Uber's market cap fell to ~$150B, down ~25% in six months, as investors weigh robotaxi disruption and see the market as a two-horse race between Waymo and Tesla
Waymo's momentum is undeniable, but Uber's scale is being undervalued in AI-driven selloff — Uber can't seem to emerge from the shadow of what's to come.
Docs: the US DHS has signed a five-year, $1B blanket purchase agreement with Palantir, letting agencies like CBP and ICE skip the competitive bidding process
“If you are interested in helping shape and deliver the next chapter of Palantir's work across DHS, please reach out,” a Palantir executive wrote …
CZ returned to the US for the first time since his 2024 prison release to attend a World Liberty Financial event at Mar-a-Lago with Brian Armstrong and others
A US grand jury indicted two former Google engineers and one of their husbands for allegedly stealing trade secrets relating to the Tensor chip for Pixel phones
Two former Google engineers and one of their husbands were indicted for allegedly stealing trade secrets relating to the company's Tensor processor for Pixel phones.
Reddit is testing an AI search feature that takes community recommendations and shows matching products from some of its advertising partners in the results
Sony shuts down Bluepoint Games, the PlayStation subsidiary behind remakes of older games like Demon's Souls and Uncharted; ~70 employees will lose their jobs
The PlayStation subsidiary previously made remakes of games like 'Demon's Souls' — Sony Group Corp. is shutting down Bluepoint Games …
New York pulls a proposal that would have allowed robotaxi services outside NYC, a blow to Waymo, which aims to reach 1M paid weekly US rides by the end of 2026
Natalie Lung /Bloomberg:
Tech companies are increasingly building private power plants to fuel off-grid data centers, a move some warn has reliability challenges and hurts climate goals
Tech companies are building data centers with their own private power plants, a risky bet that will increase carbon emissions and other pollution.
Cleveland-based Eagle Wireless, which makes cellular modules used in IoT devices, raised a $30M Series B as the US seeks to reduce its reliance on China
Toronto-based chip startup Taalas, which hardwires AI models into custom silicon to achieve faster inference, raised $169M, bringing its total funding to $219M
Toronto-based chip startup Taalas said on Thursday it had raised $169 million and has developed a chip capable …
Meta says it is “explicitly separating” Quest VR from its Worlds platform, making Worlds “almost exclusively mobile” to better compete with Roblox and Fortnite
Horizon Worlds is now going to be a platform that's ‘almost exclusively mobile.’
Perplexity's retreat from ads signals a strategic shift as it recognizes its product is not for a mass audience and expects growth to come from enterprise sales
The AI search startup once predicted advertising would be a massive business. Now it's betting on a smaller, more valuable audience.
Block employees describe a deteriorating culture, as morale plunges amid rolling layoffs and Jack Dorsey pushes generative AI tools to maximize productivity
Workers describe a deteriorating culture at Block, the company behind Square and Cash App, where layoffs continue and employees are expected to use AI tools daily.
Inside the “gay tech mafia” that mixes social and professional lives, as 51 investors, entrepreneurs, and executives detail gay influence in Silicon Valley
Gay men have long been rumored to run Silicon Valley. WIRED investigates. — No one can say exactly when, or if, gay men started running Silicon Valley.
Sources: AMD agrees to backstop a $300M loan from Goldman Sachs for Crusoe to buy AMD's AI chips, the first known example of AMD chips used as debt collateral
Austin-based Ownwell, which helps homeowners appeal property taxes, raised a $50M Series B, including $30M in equity, bringing its total equity funding to $54M
Sources: Nvidia is close to finalizing an up to $30B investment into OpenAI, replacing 2025's long-term $100B commitment; the deal could be closed this weekend
Chipmaker swaps last year's complex framework with AI start-up in favour of equity cheque — Nvidia is close to finalising …
Sources: Meta cuts its annual distribution of stock options by ~5% for most of its staff, equating to tens of thousands of employees, after a ~10% cut in 2025
Most employees will receive 5% less in equity rewards as Mark Zuckerberg slashes costs to fund huge AI spending
Los Angeles County sues Roblox, alleging it engaged in deceptive business practices that exposed children to sexual content, exploitation, and online predators
Roblox faces a lawsuit by Los Angeles County that alleges the gaming platform engaged in unfair and deceptive business practices …
ZaiNar, a developer of a GPS alternative that uses Wi-Fi and 5G to provide location data, raised $10M at a $1B valuation, bringing its total funding to $100M
Amsterdam-based Stacks, which builds AI software to automate accounting workflows, raised a $23M Series A led by Lightspeed, after a €10M seed in 2025
Google rolls out Gemini 3.1 Pro, which it says is “a step forward in core reasoning”, for all users in the Gemini app; the .1 increment is a first for Google
In November, Google introduced Gemini 3 Pro in preview, with Gemini 3 Flash following a month later.
FreeForm, which is building an AI native 3D printing system that uses 18 lasers to fuse metal powders into precision components, raised a $67M Series B
ByteDance is currently hiring for nearly 100 US-based roles within its Seed AI team across San Jose, LA, and Seattle to develop LLMs, drug discovery, and more
Klarna reports Q4 revenue up 38% YoY to $1.08B, a $26M net loss, down from a $40M net profit in Q4 2024, provision for credit losses up 59%; KLAR drops 26.9%
West Virginia's AG sues Apple for allegedly violating consumer protection law by not implementing tools like PhotoDNA to detect CSAM stored and shared on iCloud
The state's attorney general said in a lawsuit filed on Thursday that the company declined to use tools that recognize the material stored on iCloud.