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February 12, 2026, 2:40 PM
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Mediagazer
memeorandum
WeSmirchTop News
| Anthropic: |
Anthropic raised a $30B Series G from GIC, Coatue, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Nvidia, and others 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. The round was co-led by D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, and MGX.
X: @shiringhaffary, @mikeisaac, and @danprimack
| Bloomberg: |
More: The Information and The Information
| 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: @sama, @scaling01, @eliebakouch, @kevinweil, @skirano, @romainhuet, @heccbrent, @_simonsmith, @embirico, @derrickcchoi, @mweinbach, @dimillian, @openai, @openai, and @danshipper. LinkedIn: Julien Simiand. Forums: r/singularity
| Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: |
GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark is OpenAI's first AI model to run on chips from Nvidia rival Cerebras; OpenAI says Codex has more than 1M weekly active users — OpenAI is releasing its first artificial intelligence model that runs on chips from semiconductor startup Cerebras Systems Inc. …
X: @benbajarin, @mweinbach, @openaidevs, and @openaidevs
| Reuters: |
Sources: Palo Alto ordered the removal of direct attributions to China from a Unit 42 report on a global hacking campaign due to 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 … | 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, CNET, Android Authority, The Record, and Moneycontrol
| 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, @thezvi, @teroterotero, @sundarpichai, @joshwoodward, @tulseedoshi, @officiallogank, @kevinroose, @officiallogank, @bridgemindai, @jeffdean, @noamshazeer, @oriolvinyalsml, @scaling01, @arcprize, @ai_for_success, @testingcatalog, @iterintellectus, @synthwavedd, @scaling01, @googledeepmind, @googledeepmind, @google, @triswarkentin, @kimmonismus, @fchollet, @geminiapp, @googleai, @lmthang, @oriolvinyalsml, and @rihardjarc
LinkedIn: Hanzhao, Heng-Tze Cheng, and Google DeepMind
Forums: Hacker News and r/singularity
| 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: Tech Brew, Axios, The Information, Bloomberg, Dow Jones Newswires, New York Times, Techstrong.ai, Anthropic, CNBC, Entrepreneur, 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
| 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: Business Insider, Telegraph, CBS News, CNBC, TechCrunch, Mobile World Live, Federal Trade Commission, New York Sun, MacRumors, ZeroHedge News, Android Headlines, iClarified, 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
| 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, Bloomberg, CNET, AppleInsider, ZDNET, 9to5Mac, Engadget, MacStories, iPhone in Canada, The Mac Observer, Cord Cutters News, TechRadar, and Justin Ryan ᯅ on YouTube
X: @reneritchie, @mgsiegler, @spatiallyme, @zollotech, @parkerortolani, @andruedwards, @samsheffer, and @justinryanio
Forums: r/apple and MacRumors Forums
| 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, Decrypt, New York Sun, UPI, New York Magazine, Al Jazeera, NBC News, crypto.news, and The Block. Bluesky: @campuscodi.risky.biz
| 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. … | 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, @openhandsdev, @eliebakouch, @thdxr, @zephyr_z9, @adonis_singh, @fanjiewang, @scaling01, @minimaxagent, @askokara, @initjean, @chatgpt21, @openrouterai, @thdxr, @minimax_ai, @skylermiao7, @openhandsdev, @altryne, @synthwavedd, @askokara, @openhandsdev, @openhandsdev, and @itetnaa
Forums: Hacker News and r/LocalLLaMA
| 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
| 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.
| Lora Kolodny / CNBC: |
More: Wall Street Journal, The Register, Futurism, The Rundown AI, Financial Times, Sources, The Information, Bloomberg, and New York Times
X: @xai, @elonmusk, @chace_agi, @textangel, @_tomhoward, @globalaffairs, @techau, @xdnibor, @ptrubey, @drphiltill, @scaling01, @edwinboyan, @parsatajik, @owensparks, @marionawfal, @davidpattersonx, @liuyunlong63318, @tetsuoai, @autismcapital, @hadas_gold, @giffmana, @tetsuoai, @sawyermerritt, @katiemiller, @tetsuoai, @xfreeze, @iterintellectus, @ramez, @autismcapital, and @ramez. LinkedIn: Emil Protalinski. Threads: @carnage4life
| 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: The Verge, Fast Company, Forbes, Deadline, Android Headlines, and MIT Technology Review
| 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 … | 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
Bluesky: @swallez.com and @hunterwalk.com
Forums: Hacker News and Lobsters
| 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.
More: New York Post, The Verge, The Information, New York Times, The Hill, Reuters, Bloomberg, Washington Examiner, Politico, Washington Times, The Wrap, Media Play News, NBC News, Washington Post, NewsMax.com, Financial Times, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, and Variety
X: @gailaslater, @hshaban, @nancyscola, and @adamwren
| 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, PCWorld, 9to5Google, PCGamesN, Digital Trends, VideoCardz.com, Cord Cutters News, Pocket-lint, and PC Guide
| Globes: |
ServiceNow is acquiring Pyramid Analytics, which makes business intelligence and analytics tools, sources say for hundreds of millions; Pyramid has raised $200M — The acquisition price is estimated to be a few hundred million dollars, giving investors a low return.
More: CTech and Constellation Research
| Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg: |
Letter: the EU launched a new probe into Google for potentially “artificially increasing the clearing price” of ad auctions “to the detriment of advertisers” — Google, the target for billions of euros in European Union antitrust fines, has been hit by a fresh EU probe … | 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| 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: 9to5Mac, Engadget, The Moscow Times, Straight Arrow News, CBS News, The Kyiv Independent, BBC, Washington Examiner, CNBC, CyberInsider, The Record, PCMag, UPI, TRT World, Euronews, Ukrainian National News, Gizmodo, Coinpaper, and The Verge
X: @whatsapp, @jsrailton, @russiaspivot, @jsrailton, @jsrailton, @jsrailton, @aaronbastani, @lwazimbk, @annafromua_yt, and @gloooud. Bluesky: @justinhendrix
| 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.| 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 …
More: Moneycontrol and Fortune
| 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 … | 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: @[email protected]. Forums: Slashdot
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| Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: |
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