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February 12, 2026, 12:00 PM
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| Lora Kolodny / CNBC: |
Elon Musk announces xAI implemented a reorganization that “required parting ways with some people”, after two xAI co-founders said they were leaving this week — SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday announced the the company's xAI artificial intelligence venture implemented a reorganization that …
More: Wall Street Journal, The Register, Business Today, RTÉ, Financial Times, Silicon UK, Moneycontrol, Sources, The Information, and New York Times
X: @xai, @elonmusk, @chace_agi, @textangel, @_tomhoward, @globalaffairs, @techau, @xdnibor, @ptrubey, @liuyunlong63318, @tetsuoai, @drphiltill, @scaling01, @edwinboyan, @parsatajik, @owensparks, @marionawfal, @davidpattersonx, @autismcapital, @hadas_gold, @giffmana, @tetsuoai, @sawyermerritt, @katiemiller, @tetsuoai, @xfreeze, @iterintellectus, @ramez, @autismcapital, and @ramez. Threads: @carnage4life
| Theo Wayt / The Information: |
xAI all-hands: Nikita Bier says X hit $1B in ARR from selling $3- to $40-per-month subscriptions, but offered no details on ad revenue or other xAI financials — X recently hit $1 billion in annualized recurring revenue from selling subscriptions, head of product Nikita Bier said in an xAI all-hands meeting on Tuesday.
| Michael Acton / Financial Times: |
US FTC chair asks Tim Cook to review Apple News' ToS and curation, citing allegations that it promotes “left-wing” outlets and suppresses conservative sources — US regulator issues warning to iPhone maker about its News platform following controversy over Super Bowl half-time show
More: Telegraph, CNBC, TechCrunch, Reuters, Android Authority, New York Sun, MacRumors, Android Headlines, iClarified, Deadline, MacDailyNews, ZeroHedge News, The Mac Observer, 9to5Mac, Just The News, The Wrap, and New York Post
X: @afergusonftc, @brendancarrfcc, @adamthierer, @bendreyfuss, @tomcottonar, @matthewstoller, @mrddmia, @davidbozell, @adamscochran, @schneider_dc, @robertfreundlaw, @schneider_dc, @mirandadevine, @cernovich, @andyjungtech, @greta, @franklinh3000, and @cernovich
Bluesky: @tyleraking.com, @mims, @robin.berjon.com, and @marypcbuk. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. Forums: MacRumors Forums
| Reuters: |
Z.ai says it will raise prices by at least 30% for new GLM coding plan subscribers to accommodate surging demand for its AI coding tools — Chinese artificial intelligence startup Zhipu on Thursday said it was raising prices for subscriptions to its GLM coding plan to accommodate a rapid increase …
| Z.ai: |
More: South China Morning Post, WinBuzzer, Latent.Space, The Rundown AI, blog.e01.ai, Reuters, and Bloomberg
X: @zai_org, @artificialanlys, @scaling01, @zai_org, @chrmanning, @lukaspet, @rasbt, @mervenoyann, @andonlabs, @artificialanlys, @artificialanlys, @minyangtian1, @ollama, @ml_angelopoulos, @jietang, @koylanai, @theo, @zai_org, @arena, @theo, @artificialanlys, @theahmadosman, @teortaxestex, @teksedge, @unslothai, @zephyr_z9, @theo, @zixuanli_, @carolglms, @ankrgyl, @vince_chow1, @vercel_dev, @zhuokaiz, @iamnitinr, @dorialexander, @lmsysorg, @kimmonismus, @_simonsmith, @weswinder, @scaling01, @eliebakouch, @louszbd, @arena, @lintool, @zai_org, @zai_org, @zai_org, @mweinbach, @altryne, @bridgemindai, @zephyr_z9, @scaling01, @thestalwart, and @zai_org
Forums: Hacker News, r/LocalLLaMA, r/singularity, and Lobsters
| Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: |
Samsung says it sent the first commercial HBM4 shipments to customers; Samsung seeks to supply Nvidia and compete with memory rivals like SK Hynix and Micron — Samsung Electronics Co. claimed an early lead in the race to supply advanced memory for AI accelerators like those made by Nvidia Corp. … | Kevin Collier / NBC News: |
Google's TIG says Gemini has been inundated by “commercially motivated” actors who are trying to clone it, including one campaign that prompted it 100K+ times — Google says private companies and researchers are trying to copy Gemini's capabilities by repeatedly prompting it at scale.| Theodore Schleifer / New York Times: |
Anthropic donates $20M to Public First, a super PAC pushing for AI guardrails and transparency in opposition to OpenAI-backed PACs, ahead of the US midterms — Anthropic and OpenAI now have their own well-funded political groups that will square off in the midterm elections over artificial intelligence safety and regulation.
More: The Hill, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg, CNBC, New York Times, Axios, Implicator.ai, Anthropic, Reuters, The Information, Wall Street Journal, Axios, and Inc.com
X: @miles_brundage, @teddyschleifer, @teddyschleifer, @tombibbys, @shakeelhashim, @adamkovac, @shakeelhashim, @corbtt, @santosh_arron, @burgessev, @lisaabramowicz1, @aricohn, @anthropicai, @teddyschleifer, @deanwball, @neil_chilson, @cesarfernand3z, @ryangrim, @emrwilkins, @teddyschleifer, and @charalambos_the
| Chainalysis: |
Crypto transaction volume linked to suspected human trafficking, largely based in Southeast Asia, hit hundreds of millions of dollars in 2025, up 85% YoY — The intersection of cryptocurrency and suspected human trafficking intensified in 2025, with total transaction volume reaching hundreds … | Eugene Kim / Business Insider: |
Internal messages: Amazon steers teams to use its in-house AI coding assistant Kiro for production, prompting criticism as ~1,500 employees push for Claude Code — - Amazon internally promotes Kiro over third-party AI coding tools including Claude Code. — Some employees …
More: tildeweb.nl. X: @gergelyorosz, @bryanrbeal, @vikhyatk, @chrismunns, @ns123abc, @eugenekim222, @kylebrussell, and @astuyve
| Eduardo Baptista / Reuters: |
ByteDance's new AI video generation model Seedance 2.0 goes viral in China, with one state-backed newspaper saying it is bigger than DeepSeek's “Sputnik moment” — ByteDance's new video-generating artificial intelligence model has already impressed the likes of Elon Musk and gone viral in China …
More: Fast Company, The Verge, TechNode, MIT Technology Review, and Reuters
| CNBC: |
Waymo begins deploying its next-gen Ojai robotaxis, which it says can better navigate in harsh weather, starting with employees and their guests in SF and LA — Waymo on Thursday said it has begun using its sixth-generation driverless system to provide robotaxi rides to employees on Ojai vehicles … | Jonathan Weil / Wall Street Journal: |
Meta's auditor Ernst & Young raised a red flag over the financial engineering Meta used to keep its $27B Hyperion data center project off its balance sheet — Meta Platforms' latest annual report contained an unusual, cautionary note for investors. — The tech giant's auditor … | Financial Times: |
Russia removes WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram from a Roskomnadzor-run online directory, essentially blocking them in the country, unless users rely on a VPN — Move follows months of pushing users to state-controlled app — Millions of Russians were abruptly cut off …
More: Reuters, Engadget, The Record, PCMag, CBS News, Washington Examiner, 9to5Mac, BBC, CNBC, The Guardian, CyberInsider, UPI, The Moscow Times, Ukrainian National News, Gizmodo, Coinpaper, and The Verge
X: @whatsapp, @jsrailton, @russiaspivot, @jsrailton, @jsrailton, @jsrailton, @aaronbastani, @lwazimbk, @annafromua_yt, and @gloooud. Bluesky: @justinhendrix
| Financial Times: |
Israeli authorities charge a reservist and a civilian for allegedly using classified information to bet on “the occurrence of military operations” on Polymarket — Civilian and reservist charged with security offences, bribery and obstructing justice after ‘red line’ crossed with online gambling
More: Jerusalem Post, Decrypt, Associated Press, NBC News, crypto.news, The Block, and Bloomberg. Bluesky: @campuscodi.risky.biz
| Steve Yegge: |
AI tools like Claude Opus 4.6 make engineers 10x more productive and are addictive, but also drain developers' energy, causing increasingly widespread burnout — This was an unusually hard post to write, because it flies in the face of everything else going on.
X: @solarise_webdev, @badlogicgames, @sockdrawermoney, and @championswimmer
LinkedIn: Steve Yegge and Lars Tackmann
Bluesky: @swallez.com and @hunterwalk.com
Forums: Hacker News and Lobsters
| Financial Times: |
Private equity and private credit groups' big bets on SaaS companies, the biggest area of PE activity in the past decade, risk being derailed by the rise of AI — Dealmakers and lenders are facing a ‘Darwinian moment’ as digital services risk being made obsolete by new technologies
More: Insurance Business, Bloomberg, and Bloomberg
| New York Times: |
Social media addiction trial in LA: Adam Mosseri says social media is not “clinically addictive” and that Meta is careful to test features used by young people — Instagram's chief executive said on Wednesday that social media was not “clinically addictive,” …
More: BBC, Moneycontrol, GameRevolution, Raleigh News & Observer, Bloomberg, TechRadar, CNBC, Dexerto, iPhone in Canada, BMI, ABC News, Gamereactor UK, The Guardian, CNN, Rolling Stone, Business Insider, New York Post, The Wrap, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, SBS News, The National, Bloomberg, Overturned, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters
| Bloomberg: |
Some of the biggest VC firms are backing both OpenAI and Anthropic; the growing trend of backing rival startups, once taboo, shows how AI has scrambled funding — Silicon Valley investors are breaking a longstanding taboo by investing in competing startups.
More: The Information and Pulse 2.0
| Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch: |
The US DOJ says Peter Williams, the former boss of L3Harris' Trenchant, stole and sold tools that can hack millions of computers worldwide to a Russian broker — The former boss of a U.S. maker of hacking and surveillance tools stole and sold technology that can hack millions of computers …
Bluesky: @campuscodi.risky.biz and @zackwhittaker.com. Mastodon: @lorenzofb@infosec.exchange. Forums: Slashdot
| Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg: |
Simile, which uses AI to help companies predict human behavior, including guessing items customers might buy, raised $100M led by Index and emerges from stealth — - Simile is building a lab to help predict peoples' actions — The company is backed by Index, A* and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li
More: PYMNTS.com and Index Ventures
| John Collison / Cheeky Pint: |
Q&A with Stratechery's Ben Thompson on aggregation theory, AI, TikTok, ByteDance, AI agentic commerce, SaaS stocks, running Stratechery, TSMC, Stripe, and more — Ben Thompson, the internet's premier tech analyst, joins John for a wide-ranging conversation on the mechanics of the internet economy.| MiniMax: |
MiniMax releases M2.5, claiming the model delivers on the “intelligence too cheap to meter” promise, priced at $0.30/1M input tokens and $1.20/1M output tokens — Today we're introducing our latest model, MiniMax-M2.5. — Extensively trained with reinforcement learning …
X: @skylermiao7, @bytebot, @minimax_ai, @gneubig, @gneubig, @fanjiewang, @openhandsdev, @openhandsdev, @openhandsdev, @openhandsdev, @altryne, @openrouterai, @thdxr, @skylermiao7, @minimax_ai, @eliebakouch, @thdxr, @adonis_singh, @zephyr_z9, @itetnaa, @askokara, @initjean, @synthwavedd, @chatgpt21, @askokara, @scaling01, and @minimaxagent
Forums: Hacker News and r/LocalLLaMA
| Jared Perlo / NBC News: |
Anthropic says it will upgrade US power grid infrastructure, generate new power, and cover consumer price increases to minimize the effects of its data centers — Leading AI company Anthropic said it would upgrade power grid infrastructure, generate new power, and cover consumer price increases …
More: Anthropic, Forbes, The Register, Tom's Hardware, Yahoo Finance, Techstrong IT, Crain's Chicago Business, Business Today, Newser, Capacity, Silicon UK, Benzinga, Business Insider, and E&E News
X: @anthropicai, @_arohan_, @timmlatimer, @edzitron, @natolambert, @jigarshahdc, @aakashgupta, @aaronbergman18, @joefioti, @matthewberman, @morqon, @wholemars, @joshdcaplan, @generic_void, @corbtt, @daniellefong, @arcorren, @mattscottcap, @techau, @0xdevshah, @ramez, and @kyliebytes. Bluesky: @awpiitr
Forums: r/ArtificialInteligence and Slashdot
| Reuters: |
Sources: the Pentagon is pushing OpenAI, Anthropic, and others to make their AI tools available on classified networks without the standard user restrictions — The Pentagon is pushing the top AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic to make their artificial-intelligence tools available … | Chris Welch / Bloomberg: |
Sony launches the $330 WF-1000XM6 earbuds, with AI-powered beamforming mics for enhanced voice call clarity, improved ANC, and hands-free Gemini on Android — Sony Group Corp. introduced its latest pair of premium wireless earbuds, offering a retooled design and active noise cancellation … | The Keyword: |
Google updates Gemini 3 Deep Think to better solve modern science, research, and engineering challenges and expands it via the Gemini API to some researchers — Our most specialized reasoning mode is now updated to solve modern science, research and engineering challenges.| Dell Cameron / Wired: |
The US CBP signs a one-year Clearview AI deal to use facial recognition on 60B+ public images for “tactical targeting” and “strategic counter-network analysis” — US Border Patrol intelligence units will gain access to a face recognition tool built on billions of images scraped from the internet.
More: Defense One and FedScoop
Bluesky: @newshoundellen, @markriedl, @dell, @rmac, @couts, and @dell. Mastodon: @MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva …
Forums: r/politics and r/fednews
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