Techmeme
February 3, 2026, 8:45 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
SpaceX acquires xAI; sources say the all-stock deal values the combined company at $1.25T, with SpaceX valued at $1T and xAI at $250B; xAI burns ~$1B per month  —  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.
Wall Street Journal:
New York Times:
Liv McMahon / BBC:
Paris prosecutors say they raided X's French offices with assistance from Europol; Elon Musk and ex-CEO Linda Yaccarino have been summoned to April hearings  —  Offices belonging to Elon Musk's social media platform, X, in France are being raided by the Paris prosecutor.
David Gewirtz / ZDNET:
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 …
@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.
Brian Barrett / Wired:
The US DOJ releasing emails between tech industry notables and Jeffrey Epstein kicks 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, The Verge, Garbage Day, Protos, The Verge, Ars Technica, Wired, 404 Media, Wall Street Journal, The Standard, Axios, Financial Times, NewsMax.com, New York Times, Bloomberg, New York Times, Forbes, New York Magazine, Time, New York Times, People, ZeroHedge News, Gizmodo, and CBS News
Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg:
Waymo raised $16B led by Sequoia, DST, and Dragoneer at a $126B valuation, plans an expansion across the US and into the UK in 2026, and has 400K+ weekly rides  —  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.
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Nintendo reports Q3 revenue of $5.2B, below $5.45B est., a net profit of $1.03B, vs. $950M est., and maintains its 19M Switch 2 sales forecast for fiscal 2026  —  Nintendo maintained its full-year Switch 2 sales forecast on Tuesday allaying some fears that the flagship console was losing momentum.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Nintendo says the Switch 1 sold 155.37M units as of December 31 since its 2017 launch, topping the DS' 154.02M units, becoming its best-selling console ever  —  The DS has been overthrown, 12 years after it was discontinued. … The original Switch is officially Nintendo's best-selling console …
Paige Smith / Bloomberg:
PayPal names HP CEO Enrique Lores as CEO, replacing Alex Chriss on March 1, and reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $8.7B, missing est.; PYPL falls 15% pre-market  —  PayPal Holdings Inc. said HP Inc. Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lores will take the top job from Alex Chriss …
Matthew Green / A Few Thoughts …:
A look at WhatsApp's E2E encryption and whether it protects from metadata and chat backup leaks, after a lawsuit alleges Meta can read users' private data  —  It's not every day that we see mainstream media get excited about encryption apps!  For that reason, the past several days have been fascinating …
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
Sources: OpenAI is prioritizing ChatGPT over long-term research, prompting senior staff departures; Sora and DALL-E teams felt neglected and under resourced  —  Resources at $500bn company are being redirected from long-term research towards improving the flagship chatbot
More: Benzinga.  X: @thedataroom and @thedataroom.  Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to
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 …
Isaac Rouse / Polygon.com:
Crunchyroll is raising its US prices by $2 per month; the cheapest tier gets its first price increase since 2019 and now offers offline downloads on one device  —  If you didn't secure a Crunchyroll subscription when it was on sale during Black Friday, we have some bad news, anime fans: The price has officially gone up.

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