Technology

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...

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...

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...

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

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

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

Sources: China's review of Meta's Manus deal was spurred by what officials called "selling young crops", a concern over cross&border transfer of emerging tech (Financial Times)

Sources: China's review of Meta's Manus deal was spurre...

Financial Times: Sources: China's review of Meta's Manus deal was spurred by wha...

Netflix co&CEO Greg Peters expects Netflix to win WBD, says Paramount's bid "doesn't pass the sniff test" and a "very small" number of WBD holders backed it (Financial Times)

Netflix co&CEO Greg Peters expects Netflix to win WBD, ...

Financial Times: Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters expects Netflix to win WBD, says Par...

Sources: Fei&Fei Li's World Labs is in discussions with investors to raise hundreds of millions at a valuation of $5B; World Labs was last valued at $1B in 2024 (Bloomberg)

Sources: Fei&Fei Li's World Labs is in discussions with...

Bloomberg: Sources: Fei-Fei Li's World Labs is in discussions with investors to ...

Inferact, founded by the creators of vLLM to create a commercial AI product for cross&hardware efficiency, raised a $150M seed led by a16z at an $800M valuation (Agnee Ghosh/Bloomberg)

Inferact, founded by the creators of vLLM to create a c...

Agnee Ghosh / Bloomberg: Inferact, founded by the creators of vLLM to create a c...

Mistral's CEO says claims that Chinese AI startups lag behind the US are a "fairy tale," and China's open&source tech is "probably stressing" US CEOs (Bloomberg)

Mistral's CEO says claims that Chinese AI startups lag ...

Bloomberg: Mistral's CEO says claims that Chinese AI startups lag behind the US ...

Railway, a cloud platform for software deployment, raised a $100M Series B led by TQ Ventures, bringing its total funding to $130M+, says it has ARR of $10M+ (Chris Metinko/Axios)

Railway, a cloud platform for software deployment, rais...

Chris Metinko / Axios: Railway, a cloud platform for software deployment, raised...

Marketing tech startup Applecart raised $100M in a minority funding round led by Blackstone's growth equity business, a source says at a ~$700M valuation (Myles Miller/Bloomberg)

Marketing tech startup Applecart raised $100M in a mino...

Myles Miller / Bloomberg: Marketing tech startup Applecart raised $100M in a min...

BitGo raises $212.8M in its US IPO at $18 per share, above the marketed range of $15 to $17 per share, giving it a market value of about $2.1B (Bloomberg)

BitGo raises $212.8M in its US IPO at $18 per share, ab...

Bloomberg: BitGo raises $212.8M in its US IPO at $18 per share, above the market...

xAI engineer Sulaiman Ghori says he has "left" the company days after appearing on a podcast last week where he claimed that xAI had been skirting regulations (AJ Dellinger/Gizmodo)

xAI engineer Sulaiman Ghori says he has "left" the comp...

AJ Dellinger / Gizmodo: xAI engineer Sulaiman Ghori says he has “left” the compa...

Sources: Elon Musk is pushing for a SpaceX IPO by July, seems eager to beat OpenAI and Anthropic to market, and views it as a way to help xAI catch its rivals (Wall Street Journal)

Sources: Elon Musk is pushing for a SpaceX IPO by July,...

Wall Street Journal: Sources: Elon Musk is pushing for a SpaceX IPO by July, see...

Adobe updates Acrobat to add new AI features, including presentation generation, file editing, and creating podcast summaries from docs stored in Adobe Spaces (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Adobe updates Acrobat to add new AI features, including...

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Adobe updates Acrobat to add new AI features, including...

Upscale AI, which is building AI networking infrastructure, raised $200M led by Tiger, Premji Invest, and Xora Innovation at a $1B valuation to take on Cisco (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)

Upscale AI, which is building AI networking infrastruct...

Dina Bass / Bloomberg: Upscale AI, which is building AI networking infrastructur...

LinkedIn data shows sluggish overall hiring but a surge in AI&related jobs

LinkedIn data shows sluggish overall hiring but a surge...

A new report by professional social media platform LinkedIn shows that while job...

The EC introduces draft revisions to the EU's Cybersecurity Act to phase out equipment from high&risk suppliers in critical sectors, a move criticized by Huawei (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

The EC introduces draft revisions to the EU's Cybersecu...

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters: The EC introduces draft revisions to the EU's Cybersecur...

G42 CEO Peng Xiao says AI chip shipments from Nvidia, AMD, and Cerebras are set to arrive in the UAE within the next few months, as the UAE builds a 200MW hub (Bloomberg)

G42 CEO Peng Xiao says AI chip shipments from Nvidia, A...

Bloomberg: G42 CEO Peng Xiao says AI chip shipments from Nvidia, AMD, and Cerebr...

Sources: Applied Compute, which lets companies customize models with their own data, is in talks to raise funding at a $1.3B valuation, up from $500M in October (The Information)

Sources: Applied Compute, which lets companies customiz...

The Information: Sources: Applied Compute, which lets companies customize models...

One year since Trump's return to the White House: The US's two&track economy

One year since Trump's return to the White House: The U...

It's been one year since Donald Trump started his second term as US president, a...

Humans&, founded by ex&Anthropic, xAI, and Google staff to build collaborative AI, raised a $480M seed from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and others at a $4.48B valuation (Cade Metz/New York Times)

Humans&, founded by ex&Anthropic, xAI, and Google s...

Cade Metz / New York Times: Humans&, founded by ex-Anthropic, xAI, and Google st...

Sensor Tower: Reels accounted for 50%+ of all Instagram ads in 2025, up from 35% in 2024; Reels accounted for 46% of time spent on Instagram in the US in 2025 (Zach Vallese/CNBC)

Sensor Tower: Reels accounted for 50%+ of all Instagram...

Zach Vallese / CNBC: Sensor Tower: Reels accounted for 50%+ of all Instagram ads...

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says selling AI chips to China is a blunder with "incredible national security implications", calling it a "big mistake" and "crazy" (Christina Kyriasoglou/Bloomberg)

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says selling AI chips to Chi...

Christina Kyriasoglou / Bloomberg: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says selling AI ch...

Anthropic's Claude Cowork launch has revived fears about disruption that weighed on SaaS stocks in 2025; Morgan Stanley SaaS index is down 15% so far in 2026 (Ryan Vlastelica/Bloomberg)

Anthropic's Claude Cowork launch has revived fears abou...

Ryan Vlastelica / Bloomberg: Anthropic's Claude Cowork launch has revived fears ...

The UK launches a consultation on whether to ban under&16s from using social media, alongside restrictions on addictive app features like infinite scrolling (Kiran Stacey/The Guardian)

The UK launches a consultation on whether to ban under&...

Kiran Stacey / The Guardian: The UK launches a consultation on whether to ban un...

Q&A with Razer CEO Min&Liang Tan on the use of AI in game development, the gaming community's pushback against AI, partnering with Grok, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

Q&A with Razer CEO Min&Liang Tan on the use of AI i...

Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan on the use of AI in ga...

Chinese media: phone makers Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Transsion trimmed their 2026 shipment targets, with Oppo cutting up to 20%, due to the memory chip shortage (Maggie Eastland/Bloomberg)

Chinese media: phone makers Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Tra...

Maggie Eastland / Bloomberg: Chinese media: phone makers Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and...

Chinese smartphone shipments fell 1.6% YoY in Q4 2025 and 0.6% YoY for 2025 due to weak demand, rising prices, and memory shortages; iPhone shipments rose 28% (Counterpoint Research)

Chinese smartphone shipments fell 1.6% YoY in Q4 2025 a...

Counterpoint Research: Chinese smartphone shipments fell 1.6% YoY in Q4 2025 and...

Sources: political appointees at the US CISA blocked Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala's attempt to oust the agency's Chief Information Officer Robert Costello (John Sakellariadis/Politico)

Sources: political appointees at the US CISA blocked Ac...

John Sakellariadis / Politico: Sources: political appointees at the US CISA bloc...

Inside the 2026 National Retail Federation conference in New York City, where integrating AI into retail businesses was the overarching theme on the expo floor (New York Times)

Inside the 2026 National Retail Federation conference i...

New York Times: Inside the 2026 National Retail Federation conference in New Yor...

CoinGecko: over 53% of the 20.2M crypto tokens launched since 2021 are now inactive, with 7.7M tokens failing in Q4 2025, after Oct. 10 "liquidation cascade" (Helene Braun/CoinDesk)

CoinGecko: over 53% of the 20.2M crypto tokens launched...

Helene Braun / CoinDesk: CoinGecko: over 53% of the 20.2M crypto tokens launched...

Similarweb: Threads had 141.5M DAUs on iOS and Android as of January 7, driven by Instagram promotions, while X had 125M DAUs; X continues to lead on the web (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Similarweb: Threads had 141.5M DAUs on iOS and Android ...

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Similarweb: Threads had 141.5M DAUs on iOS and Android...

A look at the making of The Thinking Game, a documentary about Google DeepMind and its CEO Demis Hassabis, garnering 285M+ views on YouTube since November 2025 (Ben Cohen/Wall Street Journal)

A look at the making of The Thinking Game, a documentar...

Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal: A look at the making of The Thinking Game, a do...

OpenAI's former Head of Policy Research Miles Brundage ...

Jeremy Kahn / Fortune: OpenAI's former Head of Policy Research Miles Brundage an...

4
5
6
7
8

Weather, 25 August

+21

High: +22^° Low: +13^°

Humidity: 74%

Wind: NE - 10 KPH

Stockholm Weather

+15

High: +16^° Low: +9^°

Humidity: 72%

Wind: SSW - 24 KPH

California Weather

+31

High: +32^° Low: +23^°

Humidity: 61%

Wind: SSE - 13 KPH

+20

High: +23^° Low: +14^°

Humidity: 58%

Wind: NNE - 17 KPH

Cape Town Weather

+17

High: +19^° Low: +12^°

Humidity: 68%

Wind: N - 16 KPH

Toronto Weather

+30

High: +32^° Low: +24^°

Humidity: 61%

Wind: WSW - 25 KPH

+11

High: +15^° Low: +9^°

Humidity: 71%

Wind: WSW - 19 KPH

Karachi Weather

+30

High: +30^° Low: +26^°

Humidity: 67%

Wind: W - 40 KPH