The Soul Clause: Anthropic's Philosophical Hedge on Machine Consciousness
Anthropic is building AI governance for a world where we don't know if we're creating moral patients. Their competitors think this is absurd.
Sources: Apple is developing an AirTag-sized AI wearable pin with cameras, a speaker, microphones, and wireless charging, which it could launch as early as 2027
Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin the size of an AirTag that is equipped with multiple cameras, a speaker …
Intel reports Q4 revenue down 4% YoY to $13.7B, vs. $13.4B est., a $600M net loss, up from $100M in Q4 2024, Q1 guidance below est.; INTC drops 11%+ after hours
Intel reported fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations but offered soft guidance for the current quarter.
Sources: Apple plans to revamp Siri this fall in iOS 27 and macOS 27 by turning it into the company's first AI chatbot, replacing the current Siri interface
Apple Inc. plans to revamp Siri later this year by turning the digital assistant into the company's first artificial intelligence chatbot …
Anthropic overhauls Claude's “constitution” to enable the AI model to “generalize and apply broad principles rather than mechanically follow specific rules”
Anthropic is overhauling a foundational document that shapes how its popular Claude AI model behaves.
Sources: the US and China have approved the sale of TikTok's US business to a group of mostly US investors led by Oracle and Silverlake, set to close this week
The US and China have signed off on a deal to sell TikTok's US business to a consortium of mostly US investors led by Oracle and Silverlake …
Sources: Apple expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to manage design teams at the end of 2025, solidifying his status as a leading CEO candidate
Apple Inc. has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to include design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender …
Google rolls out Personal Intelligence in AI Mode, an opt-in feature that uses Gmail and Photos data for more tailored responses, for US AI Pro and Ultra users
AI Mode, Google's conversational Search feature for complex questions, is getting more personalized.
A look at Craig Federighi's approach to AI at Apple; sources say he led a push to use other companies' models to help launch a revamped Siri later in 2026
The Information:
Waymo launches its robotaxi service in Miami, its sixth market, initially covering a 60-square-mile area, and partners with Moove for fleet management
Alphabet's Waymo said Thursday that its robotaxi service is now open to paying riders in Miami, kicking off a 2026 market expansion.
The curl project plans to end its HackerOne bug bounty program at the end of January, citing a surge in low-quality AI-generated vulnerability reports
The developer of the popular curl command-line utility and library announced that the project will end its HackerOne security bug bounty program …
NYT and CCDH analysis: Grok created and shared 1.8M+ sexualized images of women between December 31 and January 8, after Elon Musk promoted the feature on X
Over nine days, Elon Musk's Grok chatbot generated and posted 4.4 million images, of which at least 41 percent were sexualized images of women.
Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, and 800+ creatives launch “Stealing Isn't Innovation” to protest unauthorized AI training, backed by RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, and others
Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, George Saunders, and other creatives say that AI companies are …
Substack launches its Substack TV app for Apple TV and Google TV in beta for free and paid subscribers, with access matched to their current subscription levels
Taking subscriber video to the bigger screen — Today we're launching the Substack TV app for Apple TV and Google TV.
South Korea's Kospi stock index breaks through the record 5,000 level, driven by chip stocks, led by Samsung, up ~3x, and SK Hynix, up ~4x, in the past year
Kospi is up almost 20% in 2026 as reforms to woo investors spur market — South Korea's Kospi benchmark has broken through …
Elon Musk says Tesla launched robotaxi rides in Austin with no human safety driver; Tesla's AI lead says Tesla is “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles”
Tesla is offering passengers robotaxi rides in Austin without a human safety driver in the front seat.
Capital One agrees to acquire Brex, which specializes in tech to administer corporate credit cards, expenses, and rewards, for $5.15B in cash and stock
Deal would give credit-card issuer access to technology used by thousands of companies for corporate credit cards
Inside the turmoil at Thinking Machines; sources say Meta discussed buying TML, and CTO Barret Zoph had been in talks since October 2025 about an OpenAI return
Defections, secret conversations, deal talks that fizzled and a battle for control: The turmoil at Thinking Machines Lab …
Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch calls claims that Chinese AI startups lag behind the US a “fairy tale”, and China's open-source tech is “probably stressing” US CEOs
Claims that Chinese technology for artificial intelligence lags the US are a “fairy tale,” Arthur Mensch, the chief executive officer of Mistral, said.
Q&A with Yann LeCun on his new Paris-based startup Advanced Machine Intelligence, leaving Meta, real-world applications for world models, robotics, and more
Yann LeCun is a Turing Award recipient and a top AI researcher, but he has long been a contrarian figure in the tech world.
LiveKit, which offers tools for building voice, video, and physical AI models, including for ChatGPT's voice mode, raised a $100M Series C at a $1B valuation
Funding round led by Index Ventures values company at $1 billion — LiveKit, a startup that provides software underpinning voice …
Yelp acquires Hatch, which charges a monthly fee for AI-powered agents that can respond to customer inquiries and make appointments, for $300M
Recommendation app Yelp on Wednesday said it agreed to acquire AI agent startup Hatch for $300 million, or roughly 12 times the startup's annual recurring revenue.
Spotify expands its AI-powered Prompted Playlists beta to Premium subscribers in the US and Canada, following initial testing in New Zealand
Spotify is rolling out Prompted Playlists, a new AI playlist creation tool, to Premium subscribers in the U.S. and Canada.
Google launches free SAT practice exams in the Gemini app, providing students with performance analysis and detailed explanations for incorrect answers
Prepping for the SAT is nobody's idea of fun, but Google aims to make it less stressful with AI. The company announced that it's …
An analysis of 5,290 AI research papers at NeurIPS: 141, or ~3%, had US-China AI lab collaboration, vs. 134/4,497 in 2024; Llama featured in 106 Chinese papers
WIRED analyzed more than 5,000 papers from NeurIPS using OpenAI's Codex to understand the areas where the US and China actually work together on AI research.
Analysis: the top US tech companies spent $109M on DC lobbying in 2025, topping $100M for the first time; Meta spent $26.29M, Amazon $17.78M, and Google $13.1M
Silicon Valley has learned how to succeed in Donald Trump's Washington: Spend record amounts. Visit the White House.
Source: Google DeepMind signs a licensing deal with Hume AI, which builds emotionally intelligent voice interfaces, to hire CEO Alan Cowen and ~7 top engineers
Hume AI's CEO, Alan Cowen, will join Google DeepMind along with several top engineers as part of a major licensing deal.
Epic v. Google: Epic and Google have a secret deal involving Unreal Engine, Fortnite, and Android, with Epic spending $800M over six years on Google services
“Sorry, I'm blowing this confidentiality.” … In a hearing in San Francisco today, the court revealed that Epic and Google …
The US BOP releases Caroline Ellison, the former FTX executive and ex-girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried, after about 14 months; she had a two-year sentence
- Caroline Ellison, the exec involved in the FTX scandal, has been released from federal custody. — The former Alameda Research CEO …
Snap updates its Family Center tool to let parents view daily screen time averages and a breakdown of time spent by specific app segment like Snap Map
Two days after settling a lawsuit accusing Snapchat of causing social media addiction and mental health issues, Snap announced that it's introducing new parental controls.
Sources: the US Senate's crypto market structure bill is likely to be delayed by several weeks as key lawmakers shift their focus to a housing legislation push
A sweeping US crypto market bill is likely to be delayed by at least several weeks as key lawmakers shift their focus …
Q&A with recently departed OpenAI VP of Research Jerry Tworek, who claims OpenAI's shift toward more cautious ways made high-risk, pioneering work harder
Are all the AI superpowers playing it too safe? — ∙ Paid — On January 5th, famed AI researcher Jerry Tworek stunned world+dog …
South Korea enacts the AI Basic Act, which it says includes the world's first comprehensive set of laws regulating AI, as startups warn of compliance burdens
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+
Railway, a cloud platform for software deployment, raised a $100 million Series B led by TQ Ventures, founder and CEO Jake Cooper tells Axios Pro.
A US House panel okays a bipartisan bill pushing congressional oversight of AI chip exports and banning Nvidia Blackwell sales to China for at least two years
Congress is one step closer to gaining the authority to review artificial intelligence chip sales to China, a move likely to open a rift …
Survey: over 40% of executives said AI saved them more than eight hours per week, while two-thirds of non-management staff said they saved less than two hours
How much time workers say the technology saves them on the job is vastly different from what executives report — Largest divergence:
Binance files for a European MiCA license in Greece, where it has also set up a holding company
Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, has formally applied for a pan-European license known as MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) that digital asset firms operating in the continent must ...
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
Inferact, an AI startup formed by the creators of open-source software vLLM, has raised $150 million in a seed funding round that values the company at $800 million.
Cambio, creator of AI-powered commercial real estate software for institutional investors, raised an $18M Series A led by Maverick Ventures at a $100M valuation
Cambio, a startup that has built AI-powered commercial real estate software for institutional investors, has raised $18 million …
Superstate raised an $82.5M Series B to expand from tokenized Treasury offerings into SEC-registered equities on Ethereum and Solana
Partner offers — Quick Take — Superstate has raised $82.5 million in a Series B funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global.
Adobe rolls out Firefly Foundry, which creates AI-generated “commercially safe” images, video, and more grounded in a brand or franchise's creative universe
Adobe is rolling out a new AI offering aiming to create common ground among major talent agencies, top filmmakers …
Autodesk plans to cut about 1,000 jobs, or ~7% of its workforce, as part of a global restructuring plan seeking to strengthen sales and marketing
The move is the final phase of efforts by the maker of AutoCAD to streamline customer engagement and bolster its sales channels.
Circana: the Switch 2 ended December and 2025 as the US' best-selling video game hardware, offsetting declines among rivals to lift overall hardware spend by 9%
Q&A with Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on Netflix's stock roller coaster, viewer engagement, ads, the WBD acquisition, regulation, competition, Hollywood, and more
How Google, Huawei, Microsoft, and Nvidia, as well as startups and university research teams, spent millions of dollars to develop AI weather forecasting tools
Google, Microsoft and Nvidia are among the names vying to make forecasts more accurate for longer.
Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga says the Lithuania-based secondhand retailer plans to spend tens of millions of dollars to expand in the US in the coming months
Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Indian online food delivery service Zomato and its parent Eternal, steps down and will be succeeded by Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa
Deepinder Goyal, the co-founder and CEO of food delivery service Zomato and its parent Eternal, is stepping down from his role …
Austin-based Neurophos, which develops a photon-based “Optical Processing Unit” to replace GPUs in AI training, raised $110M led by Bill Gates' Gates Frontier
Bill Gates' VC fund, Microsoft Corp.'s investment arm and Saudi Arabia's Aramco Ventures are investing $110 million in Neurophos Inc. …
Ukrainian-founded language learning marketplace Preply raised a $150M Series D led by WestCap at a $1.2B valuation; out of 750 employees, ~150 are based in Kyiv
Jensen Huang says that AI is already bringing economic benefits and needs more investment, and “the AI bubble comes about because the investments are large”
Israeli startup Claroty, which makes security tech for hospitals, manufacturing, and industrial systems, raised a $150M Series F, sources say at a $3B valuation
AheadComputing, which develops a breakthrough RISC-V CPU architecture for AI, raised a $30M Seed2 led by Eclipse, Toyota, and Cambium, for $53M in total funding
Lightning AI merges with data center operator Voltage Park to create an “AI cloud” with a $2.5B+ valuation, managing 35K+ Nvidia GPUs across six data centers
OpenEvidence, which is building “ChatGPT for doctors”, raised $250M led by Thrive and DST at a $12B valuation, up from $6B in October and $1B in February 2025
Filing: PhonePe reports H1 FY 2026 revenue up 22% YoY to ~$427.5M, a ~$157M loss, and 657.6M users; the payments company plans to sell 50.7M shares in its IPO
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
Applecart, a marketing technology startup, raised $100 million in a minority funding round led by Blackstone Inc.'s growth equity business.
ElevenLabs launches an album of original tracks made by artists like Liza Minnelli and Art Garfunkel in “collaboration” with its Eleven Music AI model
Adobe updates Acrobat to add new AI features, including presentation generation, file editing, and creating podcast summaries from docs stored in Adobe Spaces
Chinese AI startup Zhipu says it is limiting GLM Coding Plan access after strong demand, taking only 20% of its current daily new subscriptions from January 23
Memo: Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines Lab cofounder who rejoined OpenAI last week, will lead OpenAI's enterprise push, as part of a broader reorganization
Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines Lab cofounder who rejoined OpenAI in a swirl of controversy last week, will lead the company's push …
A look at the entry-level hiring squeeze in marketing, communications, and customer service as executives increasingly argue AI can absorb much of the workload
German exchange operator Deutsche Boerse agrees to acquire European fund distribution platform Allfunds for about $6.2B in cash and stock
Deutsche Boerse AG agreed to acquire European fund distribution platform Allfunds Group Plc for about €5.3 billion ($6.2 billion) in cash and stock.
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
US colleges like Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech are using AI to streamline admissions; Virginia Tech says AI that scores essay questions saved ~8,000 hours
Japanese NAND flash maker Kioxia's stock is up ~800% over the past 12 months, as AI demand and constrained NAND flash supply boost the chipmaker's pricing power
X unveils Bluesky-like “Starterpacks” to help users find accounts that match their interests, curated by X and rolling out in the coming weeks
Bluesky's “Starter Packs,” the curated lists of suggested users to follow, have proven a popular way to help people connect with others …
Vimeo is laying off staff for the second time since September 2025, when it cut 10% of its workforce; Bending Spoons acquired Vimeo for ~$1.38B in November 2025
- Vimeo is laying off staffers globally in a new round of cuts. — The job cuts arrived a few months after tech holding company Bending Spoons bought Vimeo.
A year after the DeepSeek shock following R1's release, US tech companies still lead in AI chips, model quality, and sales, with no change in investment trends
About the author: Chris Miller is the author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology.LinkedIn:Chris MillerLinkedIn:Chris Miller:One year has passed since the Chinese AI lab Dee...
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan publishes his annual letter, saying YouTube aims to reduce “AI slop” and has strengthened parental controls, and teases Shorts updates
The executive published his annual letter to the YouTube community Wednesday, outlining his priorities for the video platform.
Meta plans to expand ads on Threads to all users globally starting next week; Threads began testing ads in the US and Japan in January 2025
Sony launches the $230 LinkBuds Clip, open-style earbuds that sit outside the ear canal, with IPX4 water resistance and a 9-hour battery life, available now
Sources: OpenAI has begun offering its chatbot ads to dozens of advertisers, initially charging based on ad view, not ad click, asking for <$1M in commitments
Sources: Anthropic projected a 40% gross margin from selling AI to companies and developers in 2025, down from est. of 50%, due to 23% higher inference costs
www.theinformation.com/articles/ ant... …
Neynar, a startup focused on decentralized social media infrastructure, is acquiring Ethereum-based social media project Farcaster from R&D firm Merkle
- Decentralized social media infrastructure firm Neynar is acquiring Farcaster, the Ethereum-based protocol that was last valued at $1 billion.
Sources: AI chip startup SambaNova is seeking to raise $300M to $500M after talks to sell the company to Intel for about $1.6B, including debt, stalled
Sources: Sam Altman recently visited and held early talks with investors in the Middle East, looking to raise $50B+ for OpenAI at a ~$750B to ~$830B valuation
OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has been meeting with top investors in the Middle East to line up funding for a new investment round …
Unsealed docs: Spotify and labels sued Anna's Archive over plans to release scraped Spotify data; a US court grants a temporary order taking down some domains
Spotify and several major record labels, including UMG, Sony, and Warner, have taken legal action against the unknown operators of Anna's Archive.
Ubisoft cancels six games and delays others amid a restructuring into five genre-specific “creative houses”, and expects net bookings of ~€1.5B for FY 2025-2026
Ubisoft Entertainment SA is canceling game projects, shutting down studios and cutting its guidance …
BitGo raises $212.8M in its IPO, selling 11.8M+ shares at $18 each, above the $15 to $17 range, giving it a ~$2.1B market value, in 2026's first crypto US IPO
BitGo Holdings Inc. and some of its backers raised $212.8 million in a US initial public offering, pricing its shares above the marketed range.
A Canadian federal court overturned a 2024 order that would have shuttered TikTok Canada's business operations over national security concerns
“We welcome the decision to set aside the order to shut down TikTok Canada, and look forward to working with the Minister towards a resolution that's …
Blue Origin unveils TeraWave, a satellite communications network for enterprise, data center, and government customers, and plans to begin deployment in Q4 2027
Jeff Bezos' space venture Blue Origin announced Wednesday it plans to deploy 5,408 satellites in space for a communications network that will take on SpaceX and Amazon.
xAI engineer Sulaiman Ghori says he has “left” the startup, after saying on a podcast last week that xAI has skirted regulations while building its data centers
Interesting timing. — Sulaiman Ghori, an engineer at Elon Musk's AI startup xAI, went on the podcast Relentless …
Sources: Anthropic's revenue run rate hit $9B+ at the end of 2025, up from $4B in July 2025; Iconiq, Lightspeed, and Menlo are set to join its new funding round
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says creators will be able to generate Shorts using their AI likenesses later in 2026, and touts AI tools for making games and music
Jay Peters /The Verge: