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Maxwell Zeff / Wired: A source close to Thinking Machines Lab alleges ex-CTO Barret Zoph, who is returning to OpenAI, had shared confidential company information with competitors -
Hayden Field / The Verge: Andrea Vallone, who left OpenAI in November as the head of its safety research team, joins Anthropic's alignment team — Andrea Vallone has joined Anthropic's alignment team. -
Wired: Source: at least two more Thinking Machines staffers are expected to join OpenAI soon; some researchers say they are exhausted by the industry's constant drama -
Emma Roth / The Verge: The Wikimedia Foundation says Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral joined Wikimedia Enterprise to get “tuned” API access; Google is already a member -
Emma Roth / The Verge: Wikimedia celebrates Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, marking its growth from 100 pages to 65M+ articles with nearly 15B monthly views, and releases a docuseries -
Tim Culpan / Culpium: Sources: Apple now needs to fight for TSMC production capacity amid the AI boom; Nvidia was likely TSMC's top customer in at least one or two quarters in 2025 -
Reuters: TSMC reports Q4 net profit up 35% YoY to a record ~$16B, above $15.17B est., as it benefited from surging demand for AI chips and hit $100B in 2025 revenue -
Bloomberg: ASML hits a $500B+ market cap for the first time, the third European company to reach the milestone, after TSMC reported strong earnings; ASML is up 18% YTD -
Bloomberg: TSMC projects $52B to $56B in 2026 capital spending, up 25%+ from 2025, and forecasts close to 30% YoY revenue growth in 2026, both above analyst estimates -
Kif Leswing / CNBC: The US says Taiwanese companies will invest $250B+ in chip production in the US as part of a trade deal, with Taiwanese government guaranteeing $250B in credit -
CNBC: Replit launches Mobile Apps on Replit, which enables vibe-coding of iOS apps with integrated Stripe monetization — AI coding startup Replit is now letting users create … -
Bloomberg: Sources: Replit is in advanced discussions to raise about $400M in a new round of funding that would roughly triple its valuation to $9B -
Financial Times: Source: Apple's Gemini deal is a cloud contract where it pays Google several billion dollars; a source says OpenAI declined to be Apple's custom model provider -
Adamya Sharma / Android Authority: OpenAI quietly rolls out ChatGPT Translate, a standalone website that supports plain text translations across 50+ languages and features prompt customization -
André Beganski / Decrypt: X revises its developer API policies to “no longer allow apps that reward users for posting on X (aka 'infofi')”, amid a backlash about increasing AI slop on X -
CNBC: Amazon files an objection to Saks Global's bankruptcy financing plan, and says its $475M investment in the department store is now effectively “worthless” -
Ben Sherry / Inc: Symbolic.ai, founded by ex-eBay CEO Devin Wenig and Ars Technica cofounder Jon Stokes, partners with News Corp to offer AI tools to WSJ, Barron's, and others -
Suzanne Smalley / The Record: Google agrees to pay $8.25M to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging its AdMob SDK illegally collected data from children under age 13 -
Ciara O'Brien / The Irish Times: Equal1, which was spun out from University College Dublin, raised $60M to deploy its new quantum server for data centers, bringing its total funding to $85M -
Ionut Arghire / SecurityWeek: WitnessAI, whose service helps organizations govern and protect their AI operations, raised $58M led by Sound Ventures, taking its total funding to $85M+ -
Ike Swetlitz / Bloomberg: Brain-computer interface startup Merge Labs, which Sam Altman co-founded, raised a $252M seed from OpenAI, Bain Capital, Gabe Newell, and others -
The Keyword: Google releases TranslateGemma, a suite of Gemma 3-based open translation models available in 4B-, 12B-, and 27B-parameter sizes, with support for 55 languages -
Cade Metz / New York Times: Scientists say that AI has become a powerful and rapidly improving research tool, and that whether it is generating ideas on its own is, for now, a moot point -
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Mytra, which is building autonomous robots for warehouses that can move loads up to 3,000 pounds, raised a $120M Series C led by Avenir Growth -
Financial Times: Anthropic researchers say rich countries' higher AI adoption risks deepening economic disparities and widening living standard gaps, assuming productivity gains -
New York Times: Sources: the US cyberattack that plunged Caracas into darkness during the Maduro mission shows its offensive capabilities; Senators plan to question officials -
Krystal Hu / Reuters: AI video startup Higgsfield raised an $80M Series A extension from Accel and others at a $1.3B+ valuation, and says it hit a $200M annualized revenue run rate -
30 minutes ago Boone Ashworth / Wired: As Meta shifts resources away from its Supernatural VR fitness service, users mourn the loss of a community built around the platform and its coaches -
Ryan Dezember / Wall Street Journal: AWS signs a two-year supply deal with Rio Tinto to access its Arizona copper mine, the US' first new source in 10+ years, as AI data centers create huge demand -
Wired: Researchers detail WhisperPair, vulnerabilities in Google's Fast Pair protocol affecting 17 audio device models from 10 brands; Google rolled out updates -
Bloomberg: OpenAI says it issued a request for proposals to US-based hardware manufacturers as it seeks to push into consumer devices, robotics, and cloud data centers