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February 12, 2026, 4:25 PM
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| Anthropic: |
Anthropic raised a $30B Series G led by GIC and Coatue and co-led by D. E. Shaw, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, Iconiq, and MGX at a $380B post-money valuation — We have raised $30 billion in Series G funding led by GIC and Coatue, valuing Anthropic at $380 billion post-money.
More: The Information, San Francisco Business Times, Crunchbase News, TechCrunch, PitchBook, GIC, Simon Willison's Weblog, The Economic Times, Coatue, Implicator.ai, Barron's Online, and Pulse 2.0
X: @elonmusk, @shiringhaffary, @mikeisaac, and @danprimack
LinkedIn: Jazmin Medina, Yamini Bhandari, and Beatriz Cabrita
| Ashley Capoot / CNBC: |
Anthropic says its run-rate revenue hit $14B, growing over 10x annually in the past three years, and Claude Code's run-rate revenue hit $2.5B — OpenAI has the largest private tech fundraising round on record. Rival Anthropic now has the second. — Anthropic announced on Thursday … | Reuters: |
Sources: Palo Alto Networks ordered the removal of direct attributions to China from a Unit 42 report on a hacking campaign over fears of retaliation from China — Palo Alto Networks (PANW.O) opted not to tie China to a global cyberespionage campaign the firm exposed last week over concerns … | David Gewirtz / ZDNET: |
OpenAI launches a research preview of GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, a smaller version of GPT-5.3-Codex that it claims generates code 15 times faster, for Pro users — ZDNET's key takeaways — OpenAI targets “conversational” coding, not slow batch-style agents. — Big latency wins: 80% faster roundtrip, 50% faster time-to-first-token.
More: OpenAI, The New Stack, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, and Fast Company
X: @scaling01, @sama, @eliebakouch, @kevinweil, @_simonsmith, @derrickcchoi, @romainhuet, @openai, @skirano, @danshipper, @heccbrent, @embirico, @openai, @mweinbach, and @dimillian
Forums: r/singularity and r/OpenAI
| 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.
More: PCMag, 9to5Google, Simon Willison's Weblog, Bloomberg, The Decoder, and OfficeChai
X: @googledeepmind, @emollick, @thezvi, @teroterotero, @kevinroose, @sundarpichai, @bridgemindai, @oriolvinyalsml, @scaling01, @noamshazeer, @officiallogank, @arcprize, @officiallogank, @ai_for_success, @testingcatalog, @iterintellectus, @synthwavedd, @scaling01, @googledeepmind, @jeffdean, @googledeepmind, @google, @triswarkentin, @kimmonismus, @fchollet, @geminiapp, @tulseedoshi, @googleai, @lmthang, @oriolvinyalsml, @joshwoodward, and @rihardjarc
LinkedIn: Heng-Tze Cheng, Google DeepMind, and Hanzhao
Forums: Hacker News and r/singularity
| 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.
More: Google Cloud Blog, Ars Technica, CNET, Inc.com, The Record, and Moneycontrol
| 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: Benzinga, Axios, Tech Brew, Anthropic, The Information, Bloomberg, New York Times, Dow Jones Newswires, Techstrong.ai, CNBC, Implicator.ai, Reuters, Axios, Wall Street Journal, and Inc.com
X: @burgessev, @teddyschleifer, @shakeelhashim, @lisaabramowicz1, @shakeelhashim, @miles_brundage, @aricohn, @anthropicai, @santosh_arron, @adamkovac, @teddyschleifer, @corbtt, @deanwball, @neil_chilson, @cesarfernand3z, @ryangrim, @teddyschleifer, @emrwilkins, @tombibbys, @teddyschleifer, and @charalambos_the. Bluesky: @kevincollier. Forums: r/technology
| 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.
More: The Register, Mashable, The Ankler, BeInCrypto, The Rundown AI, and CNBC
| Maxwell Zeff / Wired: |
An interview with OpenAI president Greg Brockman on donating $50M to AI and pro-Trump super PACs, why such donations serve a larger AI mission, and more — In an interview with WIRED, Greg Brockman says supporting politicians who back AI is “bigger than the people that I happen to be employed with.”| 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: Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post, Gizmodo, Washington Examiner, New York Sun, Bloomberg, UPI, Protos, Decrypt, New York Magazine, crypto.news, NBC News, and The Block. Bluesky: @campuscodi.risky.biz
| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Spotify says AI is helping it speed up coding and product velocity and its best developers “have not written a single line of code since December” — Has AI coding reached a tipping point? That seems to be the case for Spotify at least, which shared this week during … | Joe Rossignol / MacRumors: |
YouTube launches an app for the Apple Vision Pro, with standard videos, 180° and 360° videos, and YouTube Shorts; devices with the M5 chip can play 8K videos — Starting today, an official YouTube app is available on the Apple Vision Pro, allowing you to watch videos on a theater-sized screen …
More: The Verge, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Thurrott, 9to5Mac, CNET, Bloomberg, AppleInsider, Tom's Guide, ZDNET, Engadget, Redmond Pie, Mashable, Neowin, TechRadar, MacStories, Justin Ryan ᯅ on YouTube, Cord Cutters News, The Mac Observer, and iPhone in Canada
X: @justinryanio, @parkerortolani, @samsheffer, @andruedwards, @spatiallyme, @mgsiegler, @zollotech, and @reneritchie
Forums: r/apple and MacRumors Forums
| 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: Ars Technica, Business Insider, iPhone in Canada, Washington Times, CBS News, CNBC, Federal Trade Commission, New York Sun, MacRumors, ZeroHedge News, Android Headlines, Telegraph, iClarified, TechCrunch, The Mac Observer, Deadline, 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: @robin.berjon.com, @mims, @tyleraking.com, and @marypcbuk
| 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 … | 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 …
More: Bloomberg, Wired, Wall Street Journal, The Verge, San Francisco Chronicle, Electrek, and High Capacity. X: @sawyermerritt
| 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 … | Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch: |
Ever, which says it is the first “AI-native, full-stack” retail marketplace for electric vehicles, raised a $31M Series A led by Eclipse — If you want to buy or sell a used EV right now, what's the first step you'd take? — A startup called Ever wants to be the answer to that question.| 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 …
More: VentureBeat. X: @minimax_ai, @openhandsdev, @bytebot, @eliebakouch, @thdxr, @zephyr_z9, @skylermiao7, @adonis_singh, @fanjiewang, @scaling01, @minimax_ai, @minimaxagent, @askokara, @initjean, @chatgpt21, @openrouterai, @gneubig, @thdxr, @gneubig, @skylermiao7, @openhandsdev, @altryne, @synthwavedd, @askokara, @openhandsdev, @openhandsdev, and @itetnaa
Forums: Hacker News and r/LocalLLaMA
| 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.
More: Futurism. X: @solarise_webdev, @badlogicgames, @sockdrawermoney, and @championswimmer
LinkedIn: Steve Yegge and Lars Tackmann
Forums: Hacker News 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. …
More: Samsung Newsroom, Motley Fool, Dow Jones Newswires, Techstrong IT, DigiTimes, Korea Joongang Daily, and Reuters
X: @hedgedworld, @jukan05, @techfund1, @trendforce, and @ns123abc
| 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 … | Axios: |
US DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater says she is leaving, in a departure viewed as a victory for tech giants over some of MAGA's more populist voices — Gail Slater on Thursday said she is leaving the Justice Department, where she led the antitrust division.| Kris Holt / Engadget: |
Nvidia launches a native GeForce Now app on select Amazon Fire TV sticks, offering up to 1080p and 60fps gaming; Fire TV users previously had to sideload it — Streaming quality tops out at 1080p and 60 fps, however. — NVIDIA's cloud gaming service, GeForce Now, has expanded to another platform.
More: NVIDIA, Thurrott, AFTVnews, PCWorld, 9to5Google, Cord Cutters News, PCGamesN, Digital Trends, Pocket-lint, PC Guide, and VideoCardz.com
| 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 … | Jo Constantz / Bloomberg: |
IBM says it plans to triple entry-level hiring in the US in 2026 “for all these jobs that we're being told AI can do” — International Business Machines Corp. said it will triple entry-level hiring in the US in 2026, even as artificial intelligence appears to be weighing on broader demand for early-career workers.
Bluesky: @marypcbuk
| Lola Murti / CNBC: |
Cisco stock falls 12%+ as rising memory prices put pressure on the networking company's margins; it is the stock's worst day since 2022 — Cisco Systems shares plunged as much as 12% Thursday as rising memory prices put pressure on the networking company's margins. It's the stock's worst day since 2022.| Taylor Soper / GeekWire: |
Highspot, which has raised $650M and makes AI-powered sales enablement software, plans to merge with rival Seismic; the combined company will be called Seismic — Seattle-based company Highspot plans to merge with Seismic in a deal that will combine two of the biggest players in sales and revenue enablement software.| 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| 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, Sherwood News, and The Information
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