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Techmeme
February 4, 2026, 8:55 PM
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Alphabet:
Alphabet reports Q4 revenue up 18% YoY to $113.83B, vs. $111.43B est., Google Cloud revenue up 48% to $17.66B, vs. $16.18B est., net income up 30% to $34.46B  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - February 4, 2026 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2025.
Stephen Morris / Financial Times:
Alphabet says it expects 2026 capex to be in the range of $175B to $185B, vs. ~$120B est., up from $91.4B in 2025; Q4 capex was $27.9B, up from $14B a year ago  —  Search giant reports more than $400bn in annual revenue for the first time  —  Google said it plans to double its capital expenditure …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Alphabet reports YouTube's Q4 ad revenue rose 9% YoY to $11.38B, vs. $11.84B est., and YouTube's annual revenue “surpassed $60B across ads and subscriptions”
Anthropic:
Anthropic says “Claude will remain ad-free”, its users “won't see ‘sponsored’ links adjacent to” conversations, and responses won't be influenced by advertisers  —  There are many good places for advertising.  A conversation with Claude is not one of them.
Sam Altman / @sama:
Sam Altman says Anthropic's Super Bowl ads are funny but “dishonest”, and Anthropic serves a “product to rich people” while OpenAI is “committed to free access”  —  First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed. But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest. Our most important principle for ads says that we won't do exactly this; we would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic
Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:
Anthropic plans a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl that parodies the prospect of intrusive ads in AI conversations, and will also air a 60-second pregame ad  —  Chatbot wars are heating up, with Anthropic's Claude highlighting the potential frustration of bringing ads into ChatGPT
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google teases the Pixel 10a in a new 15-second video, revealing a completely flat dual-camera system on the back, and says preorders begin on February 18  —  Google this morning officially announced the Pixel 10a via a video teaser emphasizing the updated design.
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Uber says it plans to expand its robotaxi services to Hong Kong, Madrid, Houston, and Zurich in 2026; Hong Kong will be Uber's first autonomous market in Asia  —  Uber Technologies Inc. will expand its robotaxi services to include Hong Kong and Madrid as the ride-hailing giant pours hundreds …
Connor Hart / Wall Street Journal:
Uber reports Q4 revenue up 20% YoY to $14.37B, Gross Bookings up 22% YoY to $54.1B, trips up 22% YoY to 3.8B, and a $296M net income, below est.; UBER drops 5%
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Amazon rolls out Alexa+ to all Prime members in the US via any Alexa-enabled device, Alexa.com, and the Alexa app, and launches a free tier for non-Prime users  —  Amazon's revamped AI-powered assistant is now available to everyone in the US, with new tiers that include a free option for non-Prime users.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft says cybersecurity head Charlie Bell will move into a position focused on engineering quality; Hayete Gallot will return from Google to run security  —  Microsoft said Wednesday that top security leader Charlie Bell will take on a new role and that Hayete Gallot will return …
Kate Clark / Wall Street Journal:
AI voice startup ElevenLabs raised a $500M Series D led by Sequoia at an $11B valuation, taking its total funding to nearly $800M, and reports $330M in 2025 ARR  —  The startup is increasingly joining with creative stars and expanding its work with business customers
Daniel Kuhn / The Block:
Multicoin co-founder and Managing Partner Kyle Samani says he is stepping back from the VC firm and has transitioned to an advisory role  —  Quick Take  — Kyle Samani, known for his early investment in Solana as part of Multicoin, is stepping back from the crypto-focused venture capital firm.
Reuters:
Qualcomm reports Q1 revenue up 5% YoY to $12.25B, vs. $12.21B est., and projects Q2 revenue below est. due to memory supply shortage; QCOM drops 9%+ after hours  —  Chip supplier Qualcomm (QCOM.O) forecast second-quarter revenue and profit below Wall Street estimates on Wednesday …
Ian King / Bloomberg:
AI chipmaker Cerebras raised a ~$1B Series H led by Tiger Global at a $23B valuation, up from $8.1B in September 2025; Benchmark, Fidelity, and AMD invested too  —  AI chip provider Cerebras Systems Inc. has raised about $1 billion in a new funding round, bolstering the company's efforts to compete with Nvidia Corp.
Sabrina Ortiz / The Deep View:
Mistral debuts Voxtral Transcribe 2, a family of speech-to-text models with speaker diarization and ultra-low latency, under the Apache 2.0 open-weight license  —  AI assistants are going voice-first, and Mistral AI just launched its models to compete.  —  On Wednesday, the French AI startup …
Coco Liu / Bloomberg:
Lunar Energy, which develops software that syncs batteries across homes into “virtual power plants” and began deploying its own batteries in 2025, raised $232M  —  Lunar Energy wants to expand its home storage business at a time when the grid is increasingly under strain.
Bloomberg:
Filing: Baidu announces a stock buyback program of as much as $5B through the end of 2028, and plans to issue its first dividend in 2026  —  Baidu Inc. announced a three-year stock buyback program of as much as $5 billion and plans to issue its first dividend in 2026, establishing a major shareholder return plan.

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:55 PM ET, February 4, 2026.

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From Mediagazer

Reuters:
Independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta plans to shut down after 30+ years, following pressure from Russian authorities and the persecution of its reporters

Gavin Blair / The Hollywood Reporter:
The Association of Japanese Animations: Japan's anime industry revenue grew 15.8% YoY to a record ~$28.5B in 2025, with overseas revenue reaching ~$16B

Selome Hailu / Variety:
Sources: Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine lays off about 30 employees, roughly 50% of its staff, as it focuses on film and TV projects and its book club brand

More News

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Snap reports Q4 revenue up 10% YoY to $1.72B, vs. $1.7B est., DAUs up 5% to 474M, vs. 478M est., and announces a $500M share buyback; SNAP jumps 5%+ after hours
Jyoti Mann / The Information:
Internal memos: Meta said Avocado is its “most capable pre-trained base model” and achieves 10x compute efficiency “wins” on text tasks vs. Llama 4 Maverick
Jeff Horwitz / Reuters:
Two US Senators introduce the SCAM Act, a bipartisan bill requiring social media platforms to verify advertiser identities to combat fraudulent advertising
Chris Tapsell / Eurogamer.net:
An interview with Epic Games Store VP Steven Allison, who says “we have a lot of things” to fix and “the launcher sucks”, on 2026 updates like social features

Earlier Picks

Nick Turner / Bloomberg:
Texas Instruments agrees to acquire US chip company Silicon Labs for ~$7.5B, paying $231/share in cash, closing in H1 2027; Silicon Labs has a ~$4.5B market cap
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
A profile of game studio Obsidian, which Microsoft acquired in 2018, as it seeks to shorten development times and cut costs after releasing three titles in 2025
Max Knoblauch / Sherwood News:
Take-Two reports Q3 net bookings up 28% YoY to $1.76B, vs. $1.58B est., net revenue up 25% YoY to $1.7B, and raises its annual bookings forecast; TTWO drops ~5%
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