Technology

Ant Group reports 30M MAUs for its AI health chatbot Ant Afu, which integrates appointments, test analysis, and insurance payments within Alipay's ecosystem (Viola Zhou/Rest of World)

Ant Group reports 30M MAUs for its AI health chatbot An...

Viola Zhou / Rest of World: Ant Group reports 30M MAUs for its AI health chatbot...

Sources: Apple lost at least four more AI researchers in recent weeks, two of whom went to Meta and one to DeepMind; a top Siri executive left for DeepMind (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Sources: Apple lost at least four more AI researchers i...

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple lost at least four more AI researchers i...

Sources: OnlyFans is in talks to sell a nearly 60% stake to Architect Capital in a deal that values the company at around $5.5B, including debt (Wall Street Journal)

Sources: OnlyFans is in talks to sell a nearly 60% stak...

Wall Street Journal: Sources: OnlyFans is in talks to sell a nearly 60% stake to...

Anthropic details how NASA engineers used Claude to plot out the route for Perseverance rover to navigate a ~400 meter path on the Martian surface (Anthropic)

Anthropic details how NASA engineers used Claude to plo...

Anthropic: Anthropic details how NASA engineers used Claude to plot out the rout...

The US government finalized forfeiture of $400M+ tied to Helix crypto mixer last week; Helix operator Larry Dean Harmon was sentenced to three years in 2024 (Vince Dioquino/Decrypt)

The US government finalized forfeiture of $400M+ tied t...

Vince Dioquino / Decrypt: The US government finalized forfeiture of $400M+ tied ...

Google's experience in India has become a proving ground to scale AI in education, as the country accounts for the highest global usage of Gemini for learning (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

Google's experience in India has become a proving groun...

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Google's experience in India has become a proving gr...

Filing: Chinese AI chipmaker Axera, which focuses on AI inference SoCs for on&device and edge computing, aims to raise up to ~$379.2M in a Hong Kong IPO (Reuters)

Filing: Chinese AI chipmaker Axera, which focuses on AI...

Reuters: Filing: Chinese AI chipmaker Axera, which focuses on AI inference SoCs ...

Source: SpaceX and xAI are in talks to merge ahead of a planned IPO this year; under the proposed deal, shares of xAI would be exchanged for shares in SpaceX (Reuters)

Source: SpaceX and xAI are in talks to merge ahead of a...

Reuters: Source: SpaceX and xAI are in talks to merge ahead of a planned IPO thi...

Appfigures: Sora's app downloads dropped 32% month&over&month in December and 45% in January to 1.2M; consumer spending on the app fell 32% MoM as of January (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Appfigures: Sora's app downloads dropped 32% month&over...

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Appfigures: Sora's app downloads dropped 32% month-ove...

Social media app UpScrolled hits #1 on Apple's US app store following allegations that TikTok suppresses anti&ICE videos; its founder says it crossed 1M users (Conor Murray/Forbes)

Social media app UpScrolled hits #1 on Apple's US app s...

Conor Murray / Forbes: Social media app UpScrolled hits #1 on Apple's US app sto...

Meta & Microsoft earnings reports underline huge AI spending, raise profitability questions

Meta & Microsoft earnings reports underline huge AI...

Both Meta Platforms and Microsoft shared their latest quarterly results on Wedne...

Letter: Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the US House Select Committee on China, says Nvidia helped DeepSeek hone AI models later used by the Chinese military (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)

Letter: Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the US House Sele...

Stephen Nellis / Reuters: Letter: Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the US House Sel...

Job listings show that DeepSeek hopes to broaden its AI offerings with a search engine capable of supporting multiple languages and more emphasis on agents (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)

Job listings show that DeepSeek hopes to broaden its AI...

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: Job listings show that DeepSeek hopes to broaden its AI...

US&based AI startup Arcee releases Trinity Large, a 400B&parameter open&weight model that it says compares to Meta's Llama 4 Maverick 400B on some benchmarks (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

US&based AI startup Arcee releases Trinity Large, a 400...

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: US-based AI startup Arcee releases Trinity Large, a 400...

German police search Deutsche Bank offices in money&laundering probe

German police search Deutsche Bank offices in money&lau...

German police searched Deutsche Bank's Frankfurt headquarters and its Berlin off...

Google DeepMind researchers unveil AlphaGenome, an AI model trained on molecular data to predict 11 different genomic processes, such as gene splicing (Carl Zimmer/New York Times)

Google DeepMind researchers unveil AlphaGenome, an AI m...

Carl Zimmer / New York Times: Google DeepMind researchers unveil AlphaGenome, an...

Slice, which uses AI agents to encode tax policies and legal rules across 60+ countries, raised a $25M Series A led by Insight, taking its total funding to $32M (Mary Ann Azevedo/This Week in Fintech)

Slice, which uses AI agents to encode tax policies and ...

Mary Ann Azevedo / This Week in Fintech: Slice, which uses AI agents to encode t...

Adaptive6, which treats cloud cost inefficiencies as security vulnerabilities to help companies cut bills, raised a $28M Series A, for $44M in total funding (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

Adaptive6, which treats cloud cost inefficiencies as se...

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: Adaptive6, which treats cloud cost inefficiencies ...

Sensitive agricultural products excluded from EU&India trade deal

Sensitive agricultural products excluded from EU&India ...

The EU and India have hailed their new free trade agreement as "the mother of al...

Internal documents from 2025: Microsoft expects its annual water consumption to reach 28B liters by 2030, up from 7.9B liters in 2020 and 10.4B liters in 2024 (New York Times)

Internal documents from 2025: Microsoft expects its ann...

New York Times: Internal documents from 2025: Microsoft expects its annual water...

Memo: Tim Cook told employees that he is "heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis" and calls for a "deescalation" (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Memo: Tim Cook told employees that he is "heartbroken b...

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Memo: Tim Cook told employees that he is “heartbroken b...

Amazon appears to mistakenly alert some AWS employees about planned layoffs in an email invite to a Wednesday "Project Dawn" meeting about company efficiency (Business Insider)

Amazon appears to mistakenly alert some AWS employees a...

Business Insider: Amazon appears to mistakenly alert some AWS employees about pl...

Sensitive agricultural products excluded from EU & India trade deal

Sensitive agricultural products excluded from EU & Indi...

The EU and India have hailed their new free trade agreement as "the mother of al...

What's in the India&EU trade deal?

What's in the India&EU trade deal?

After the presidents of the EU Commission and EU Council signed a free trade dea...

Abu Dhabi's top tech university MBZUAI launches K2 Think, a new model it says is capable of advanced reasoning, as part of the UAE's push into "sovereign" AI (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

Abu Dhabi's top tech university MBZUAI launches K2 Thin...

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Abu Dhabi's top tech university MBZUAI launches ...

Montreal&based Vention raised a $110M Series D to scale its physical AI platform into manufacturing plants worldwide, taking its total raised to ~$216M (Madison McLauchlan/BetaKit)

Montreal&based Vention raised a $110M Series D to scale...

Madison McLauchlan / BetaKit: Montreal-based Vention raised a $110M Series D to ...

Amazon agrees to pay a $309M settlement and return $600M to users in a US class action lawsuit over allegedly incorrectly denied refunds since September 2017 (Mike Scarcella/Reuters)

Amazon agrees to pay a $309M settlement and return $600...

Mike Scarcella / Reuters: Amazon agrees to pay a $309M settlement and return $60...

The US Army signs a $5.6B, 10&year contract with Salesforce to speed up outdated practices; as part of the deal, military recruiters will get access to Slack (Wall Street Journal)

The US Army signs a $5.6B, 10&year contract with Salesf...

Wall Street Journal: The US Army signs a $5.6B, 10-year contract with Salesforce...

YC updated its website to remove Canada from its list of approved jurisdictions for incorporation, leaving the US, Cayman Islands, and Singapore as options (Murad Hemmadi/The Logic)

YC updated its website to remove Canada from its list o...

Murad Hemmadi / The Logic: YC updated its website to remove Canada from its list...

Khosla Ventures' Vinod Khosla and Ethan Choi disavow Keith Rabois' comments on an ICE shooting; Rabois said the man killed by agents was committing a "felony" (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

Khosla Ventures' Vinod Khosla and Ethan Choi disavow Ke...

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Khosla Ventures' Vinod Khosla and Ethan Choi disavow Ke...

France set to fast&track under&15s social media ban

France set to fast&track under&15s social media ban

French President Emmanuel Macron wants to fast-track legislation to ban social m...

Interviews with 100+ therapists and psychiatrists on clients' AI chatbot usage show, while there are some upsides, conversations also deepened negative feelings (New York Times)

Interviews with 100+ therapists and psychiatrists on cl...

New York Times: Interviews with 100+ therapists and psychiatrists on clients' AI...

OpenAI says nearly 1.3M weekly users are discussing "advanced topics in hard science" in January, with an average of 8.4M ChatGPT messages on those topics (Ashley Gold/Axios)

OpenAI says nearly 1.3M weekly users are discussing "ad...

Ashley Gold / Axios: OpenAI says nearly 1.3M weekly users are discussing “advanc...

Sources: NY&based Tandem, which uses AI to automate the paperwork for writing and receiving medical prescriptions, raised a $100M Series B at a $1B valuation (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)

Sources: NY&based Tandem, which uses AI to automate the...

Rebecca Torrence / Bloomberg: Sources: NY-based Tandem, which uses AI to automat...

A profile of Mercor, which pays about $2M daily to ~30K...

Bethan Staton / Financial Times: A profile of Mercor, which pays about $2M daily...

Power prices surge in Virginia, home to the world's largest data center hub; record demand is expected during the winter storm, partly due to data center needs (Tim McLaughlin/Reuters)

Power prices surge in Virginia, home to the world's lar...

Tim McLaughlin / Reuters: Power prices surge in Virginia, home to the world's la...

Many AI founders now find it necessary to raise at valuations requiring absolute domination of the field; Brex, once valued at $12B, shows the downsides of this (Jason Lemkin/SaaStr)

Many AI founders now find it necessary to raise at valu...

Jason Lemkin / SaaStr: Many AI founders now find it necessary to raise at valuat...

France set to fast track under&15s social media ban

France set to fast track under&15s social media ban

French President Emmanuel Macron wants to fast-track legislation to ban social m...

HSBC: JioHotstar had 300M paying subscribers in India in 2025, compared with 65M for Amazon Prime Video and 20M for Netflix; ~24% of OTT users pay for content (Manish Singh/India Dispatch)

HSBC: JioHotstar had 300M paying subscribers in India i...

Manish Singh / India Dispatch: HSBC: JioHotstar had 300M paying subscribers in I...

Analysis: scientists who appeared to use LLMs posted 33% more papers on arXiv than those who didn't, as concerns grow over AI slop in scientific publishing (Ross Andersen/The Atlantic)

Analysis: scientists who appeared to use LLMs posted 33...

Ross Andersen / The Atlantic: Analysis: scientists who appeared to use LLMs post...

Domain Name Stat: the number of .ai domains has surpassed 1M; data suggests Anguilla, the UK territory managing the domain, made ~$70M in fees in the past year (Sherwood News)

Domain Name Stat: the number of .ai domains has surpass...

Sherwood News: Domain Name Stat: the number of .ai domains has surpassed 1M; dat...

Sources: the EU's executive arm is drafting new legislation aimed at promoting tech sovereignty and openly discussing the security risks posed by US tech (Wall Street Journal)

Sources: the EU's executive arm is drafting new legisla...

Wall Street Journal: Sources: the EU's executive arm is drafting new legislation...

Nifty Gateway, the NFT trading platform which had facilitated $300M in sales by mid&2021, enters withdrawal&only mode and plans to shut down on Feb. 23, 2026 (CoinDesk)

Nifty Gateway, the NFT trading platform which had facil...

CoinDesk: Nifty Gateway, the NFT trading platform which had facilitated $300M in...

Microsoft confirms it does provide BitLocker recovery keys for encrypted data if it receives a valid legal order and the user has stored the keys on its servers (Thomas Brewster/Forbes)

Microsoft confirms it does provide BitLocker recovery k...

Thomas Brewster / Forbes: Microsoft confirms it does provide BitLocker recovery ...

Sources: the Trump administration dismissed two Commerce Department officials, who focused on Chinese tech threats, raising concerns about a softening stance (Wall Street Journal)

Sources: the Trump administration dismissed two Commerc...

Wall Street Journal: Sources: the Trump administration dismissed two Commerce De...

A look at Kalshi and Polymarket's rise; reports say Polymarket had 491K monthly active traders in December 2025, and <0.04% of addresses took 70% of profits (Benjamin Wallace/New York Times)

A look at Kalshi and Polymarket's rise; reports say Pol...

Benjamin Wallace / New York Times: A look at Kalshi and Polymarket's rise; repor...

OpenAI and longtime US government contractor Leidos announce a partnership to roll out generative and agentic AI tools for specific missions at federal agencies (Miranda Nazzaro/FedScoop)

OpenAI and longtime US government contractor Leidos ann...

Miranda Nazzaro / FedScoop: OpenAI and longtime US government contractor Leidos ...

Source: Binance considers reintroducing stock tokens after removing them in 2021; OKX, Kraken, Bitget, and others are expanding their tokenized stock offerings (Yueqi Yang/The Information)

Source: Binance considers reintroducing stock tokens af...

Yueqi Yang / The Information: Source: Binance considers reintroducing stock toke...

Source: smart ring maker Oura plans a tender offer for early investors at a 25% discount to its $11B valuation from Series E, aiming to stay private longer (Bloomberg)

Source: smart ring maker Oura plans a tender offer for ...

Bloomberg: Source: smart ring maker Oura plans a tender offer for early investor...

Meta says it is pausing teens' access to its AI characters globally across all its apps as it develops a special version of an AI character for teens (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Meta says it is pausing teens' access to its AI charact...

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Meta says it is pausing teens' access to its AI charact...

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