Techmeme
February 2, 2026, 7:30 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
SpaceX acquires xAI; sources say the deal is all stock and values the combined company at $1.25T, with SpaceX valued at $1T and xAI at $250B  —  Elon Musk's SpaceX has acquired xAI, in a deal that encompasses the billionaire's increasingly costly ambitions to dominate artificial intelligence and space exploration.
David Gewirtz / ZDNET:
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Notepad++ and security researchers say Chinese state-sponsored threat actors were likely behind the hijacking of its update traffic from June to December 2025  —  Chinese state-sponsored threat actors were likely behind the hijacking of Notepad++ update traffic last year that lasted for almost half a year …
Raphael Satter / Reuters:
Wiz says Moltbook had a major flaw that exposed private messages, emails, and credentials; Wiz co-founder Ami Luttwak called the flaw a byproduct of vibe coding  —  A buzzy new social network where artificial intelligence-powered bots appear to swap code and gossip about their human owners …
Brian Barrett / Wired:
Newly-released emails between tech industry notables and Jeffrey Epstein kick off a renewed flurry of acrimonious social posts and lurid news coverage  —  The Department of Justice has released more than 3 million documents and photos related to Jeffrey Epstein.
More: 404 Media, Protos, 404 Media, The Verge, Wall Street Journal, The Verge, Forbes, Bloomberg, New York Times, Business Insider, New York Post, The Washington Free Beacon, Ars Technica, Cointelegraph, New York Times, Time, Decrypt, New York Magazine, People, ZeroHedge News, Gizmodo, and CBS News
Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg:
Waymo raised $16B led by Sequoia, DST Global, and Dragoneer at a $126B valuation and plans a rapid expansion across the US and into the UK this year  —  Waymo, Alphabet Inc.'s autonomous driving unit, raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation, a funding round that reflects its rapid ascent as a robotaxi pioneer.
Washington Post:
Inside Elon Musk's bet to hook X users that turned Grok into a porn generator; sources say xAI's AI safety team was just two or three people for most of 2025  —  Under pressure to boost its popularity, Elon Musk's xAI loosened its guardrails and relaxed controls on sexual content, setting off internal concern.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Mozilla says Firefox users will be able to disable all AI features in its desktop browser, starting with Firefox 148, rolling out on February 24  —  In response to user feedback on AI integration, Mozilla announced today that the next Firefox release will let users disable AI features entirely or manage them individually.
Reuters:
Sources: OpenAI is unsatisfied with some of Nvidia's AI chips used for inference and has sought alternatives since last year, including from Cerebras and Groq  —  OpenAI is unsatisfied with some of Nvidia's latest artificial intelligence chips, and it has sought alternatives since last year …
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Palantir reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $1.41B, vs. $1.33B est., and forecasts FY 2026 and Q1 revenue above estimates; PLTR jumps 6%+ after hours  —  Palantir topped Wall Street's fourth-quarter estimates as more businesses and the U.S. government race to buy its artificial intelligence tools.
Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post:
SEC complaint: a whistleblower alleges Google broke its ethics rules in 2024 to help an Israeli military contractor use AI to analyze drone surveillance video  —  A whistleblower complaint filed with the SEC claims that Google breached its own ethics rules to help an Israeli contractor apply AI to drone surveillance video.
Bloomberg:
Oracle is selling $25B of bonds to help finance its AI buildout, in what is set to be the biggest high-grade US offering since Meta's $30B bond sale last year  —  Oracle Corp. is selling $25 billion of investment-grade bonds on Monday to help finance infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence projects …
@oracle:
Oracle says the Nvidia-OpenAI deal has “zero impact” on its financial relationship with OpenAI and it is “highly confident in OpenAI's ability to raise funds”  —  The NVIDIA-OpenAI deal has zero impact on our financial relationship with OpenAI. We remain highly confident in OpenAI's ability to raise funds and meet its commitments.
Sabrina Ortiz / The Deep View:
Snowflake and OpenAI sign a multiyear, $200M deal to integrate OpenAI's models into Snowflake Cortex AI and the Snowflake Intelligence agent for enterprises  —  S  —  nowflake has established itself as a top data cloud provider.  Now, it's partnering with OpenAI to bring AI-powered data insights to users.
Priya Krishna / New York Times:
How food delivery is reshaping US mealtimes, as some users spend thousands; NRA data shows nearly 75% of 2024 restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant  —  Almost three of every four restaurant orders in the U.S. weren't eaten in a restaurant, according to recent data.
Bloomberg:
Trump unveils a $12B critical minerals stockpile, called Project Vault, to minimize reliance on China, with participation from 12+ companies, including Google  —  President Donald Trump formally announced plans to launch a $12 billion critical minerals stockpile, in his latest effort …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Adobe plans to discontinue its 2D animation software Animate on March 1; enterprise customers can receive support until March 2029, and others until March 2027  —  As Adobe ramps up its investments in AI, the company has decided to shut down its 2D animation software, Adobe Animate.
Alex Konrad / Upstarts Media:
Day AI, which is developing an AI-powered CRM service that can automate data entry, meeting prep, note-taking, and more, raised a $20M Series A led by Sequoia  —  Day AI enters general availability to take on CEO Christopher O'Donnell's former employer, HubSpot — and even Salesforce.
Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times:
AI conferences have rushed to restrict the use of LLMs for writing and reviewing research papers in recent months after being flooded with AI-generated slop  —  Conferences restrict use of LLMs after surge of low-quality AI-generated papers and reviews  —  Artificial intelligence researchers …
@xai:
xAI rolls out Grok Imagine 1.0, which it says can generate 720p 10-second videos with better audio, and says Imagine generated 1.245B videos in the past 30 days  —  Introducing Grok Imagine 1.0, our biggest leap yet. 1.0 unlocks 10-second videos, 720p resolution, and dramatically better audio. Imagine has generated 1.245 billion videos in the last 30 days alone. Try it now: https://grok.com/imagine [video]

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Sybille de La Hamaide / Reuters:
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica: