Techmeme
February 1, 2026, 8:50 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple execs question if it has the ingredients to win in AI-first era, new MacBook Pros are about to launch, Apple considers clamshell foldable iPhone  —  Apple's blockbuster holiday quarter was impressive — but it shouldn't give cover to avoid an AI reckoning.
Wall Street Journal:
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
Zijing Wu / Financial Times:
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  —  About three years ago, Stacey Tang, a manager in a pharmaceuticals company in Beijing, received a peculiar phone call.
James O'Donnell / MIT Technology Review:
Researchers detail how AI tools for generating deepfakes proliferated on Civitai before it banned them 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 …
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:
Inside Physical Intelligence, a startup co-founded by Stripe veteran Lachy Groom that is building general-purpose robotics foundation models and has raised $1B+  —  From the street, the only indication I've found Physical Intelligence's headquarters in San Francisco is a pi symbol that's …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
India proposes zero taxes for foreign cloud providers through 2047 on services sold outside the country as long as they run workloads from Indian data centers  —  As the global race to build AI infrastructure accelerates, India has offered foreign cloud providers zero taxes through 2047 …
Andrew Zucker / Wall Street Journal:
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  —  Thanks to a new iPhone feature, everyone now has an executive assistant in their pocket to filter unwanted calls
Matthew Gault / 404 Media:
A researcher says an exposed Moltbook database could have let anyone take control of the site's AI agents and post anything; the database has since been secured  —  Moltbook is a “social media” site for AI agents that's captured the public's imagination over the last few days.

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Accessibility in Zoho People: Our commitment to an inclusive HR experience  —  According to a recent statistic, nearly 1.3 billion people live with a disability.  In 2024, the employment rate for working-age people …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

The Social Radars:
Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Star Catcher's Andrew Rush: Harnessing The Sun To Build The First Energy Grid In Space
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
Why Countries Go to War
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Great Chat:
Are startup HR teams okay?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'The Pogue Feature', With David Pogue
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Everybody Goes Home: How technology is helping prevent wildfires from spreading
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:50 PM ET, February 1, 2026.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
More: PYMNTS.comX: @thestalwart and @thestalwart
LinkedIn: Antoine L. and Rachel GrafBluesky: @zachweinersmithForums: r/singularity
Debby Wu / Bloomberg: