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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

A US jury finds Apple did not infringe Optis' 4G wireless technology patents, after two earlier trial verdicts Optis had won were overturned  —  Apple (AAPL.O)won a defense verdict on Thursday in a lawsuit by intellectual-property management company Optis Wireless, which had accused …

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.

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.”

Russia confirms it has blocked WhatsApp, citing Meta's “unwillingness to comply with Russian law”, and proposes that Russians switch to the state-owned Max app  —  U.S. messenger app WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms (META.O), has been completely blocked in Russia for failing …

Instacart reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $992M vs. $974M est., gross transaction value up 14% to $9.85B, gives strong Q1 guidance; CART jumps 14%+ after hours  —  Instacart shares climbed 14% during extended trading on Thursday after the grocery delivery company reported strong fourth-quarter revenue and forecast upbeat guidance.

Apple's stock dropped 5% on Thursday, its worst day since April, following FTC scrutiny of Apple News and reports about delays with Siri  —  Apple just wrapped up its worst day on the stock market since April after reports surfaced about delays with Siri and as the company's news app faced regulatory scrutiny.

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.

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

In a memo to US lawmakers, OpenAI accused DeepSeek of using distillation techniques to train the next generation of R1 and “free-ride” on leading US AI models  —  OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods …

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 …

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 …

Pinterest reports Q4 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.32B, vs. $1.33B est., MAUs up 12% to 619M, and forecasts Q1 revenue below estimates; PINS drops 17%+ after hours  —  Pinterest shares plunged as much as 20% after hours Thursday as CEO Bill Ready said the company “absorbed an exogenous shock …

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 …

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.

Amazon's Ring cancels its partnership with Flock that would have let law enforcement agencies request footage from Ring doorbell users, following backlash  —  After weeks of mounting pressure and a questionable Super Bowl ad, the Amazon-owned company has walked back its plan to integrate with the controversial surveillance company.

Applied Materials reports Q1 revenue down 2% YoY to $7.01B, vs. $6.86B est., and forecasts Q2 revenue above estimates; AMAT jumps 12%+ after hours  —  Applied Materials Inc. surged 10% in late trading after delivering a surprisingly upbeat sales forecast, signaling that demand …

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.

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.

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.

Didero, which provides an agentic AI layer that integrates with ERP systems to automate supply chains, raised a $30M Series A co-led by Chemistry and Headline  —  Tim Spencer realized just how complicated manufacturing procurement can be while running Markai, an e-commerce startup in Asia, during the pandemic.

Coinbase reports Q4 revenue down 22% YoY to $1.78B, vs. $1.84B est., transaction revenue down 37% to $983M, a net loss of $667M, vs. a $1.3B profit in Q4 2024  —  Coinbase reported a down quarter for the end of 2025, with its investment portfolio plunging alongside Bitcoin and other crypto assets.