The Red Lines
On the day OpenAI closed $110 billion at a $730 billion valuation, Sam Altman told staff the company shares Anthropic's "red lines" on military AI — while pursuing the defense contract that Anthropic is facing the Defense Production Act for refusing.
President Trump calls Anthropic a “radical left, woke company” and says he is directing every federal agency in the US to stop using its products
The Trump administration has decided to blacklist Anthropic in the most consequential and controversial policy decision to date …
Dario Amodei says Anthropic cannot “in good conscience” accede to DOD's request to remove safeguards and will work to ensure a smooth transition if offboarded
I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries.
OpenAI raised $110B at a $730B pre-money valuation, up from $500B in a secondary financing in Oct.; Amazon invested $50B, Nvidia and SoftBank invested $30B each
OpenAI has closed a $110 billion funding round, a financing that's more than double the size of its last raise a year ago, which was a record for a private tech company.
Sam Altman says OpenAI shares Anthropic's red lines with respect to AI use by the military, which are “an issue for the whole industry”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a memo to staff that he will draw the same red lines that sparked a high-stakes fight between rival Anthropic …
Block says it is laying off 4,000+ of its 10,000+ employees, saying AI tools have changed “what it means to build and run a company”; XYZ jumps 15%+
Block said Thursday it's laying off more than 4,000 employees, or about half of its headcount.
Amazon will invest $15B in OpenAI initially, followed by $35B if certain conditions are met; OpenAI commits to consuming ~2 GW of Trainium capacity through AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and OpenAI will co-create a Stateful Runtime Environment powered by OpenAI models …
Paramount agrees to acquire WBD, paying $31 per share in cash, giving WBD an enterprise value of $110B; Paramount paid a $2.8B breakup fee to Netflix
Netflix backed away from its $87.2 billion deal on Thursday. … The two companies formally unveiled the deal Friday after Netflix formally bowed …
Google rolls out Nano Banana 2, aka Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, with faster image generation, advanced world knowledge, and precision text rendering and translation
Our latest image generation model offers advanced world knowledge, production-ready specs, subject consistency and more, all at Flash speed.
Sources: SpaceX weighs filing confidentially for an IPO as soon as March, targeting a June listing that could raise up to $50B at a $1.75T valuation
SpaceX is targeting filing confidentially for an initial public offering as soon as next month, according to people familiar with the matter …
Letter: 100+ Google DeepMind and other AI employees urge Jeff Dean to block US military deals that use Gemini for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons
More than 100 Google A.I. employees sent a letter to Jeff Dean, a chief scientist, opposing Gemini's use for U.S. surveillance and some autonomous weapons.
Court docs from a New Mexico trial reveal internal divisions at Meta as Instagram teen safety initiatives conflicted with growth and engagement goals
For years, employees acknowledged a problem with potential child groomers, but prioritized growth over fixes.
Security researchers detail AirSnitch, a series of attacks that bypass Wi-Fi client isolation, enabling machine-in-the-middle attacks in modern Wi-Fi networks
That guest network you set up for your neighbors may not be as secure as you think. — It's hard to overstate the role that Wi-Fi plays in virtually every facet of life.
OpenAI fired an employee for insider trading on prediction markets like Polymarket; Unusual Whales has flagged 77 suspected insider trades around OpenAI events
India-based Ultrahuman launches the $479 Ring Pro, available for pre-order globally, excluding the US, after the ITC ruled in favor of Oura in a patent dispute
Ultrahuman on Friday unveiled a new smart ring with longer battery life and a redesigned form factor, as the Bengaluru-based wearable maker seeks …
In a newly released deposition in Elon Musk's case against OpenAI, Musk attacked OpenAI's safety record, saying nobody “committed suicide because of Grok”
In a newly released deposition filed in Elon Musk's case against OpenAI, the tech executive attacked OpenAI's safety record …
Suno CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman says the AI music company hit 2M paid subscribers and $300M ARR; pitch deck: it had 1M paid subscribers in November 2025
The AI startup reports rapid growth, strong retention rates and rising engagement. … On Wednesday, Suno CEO …
Flux, which offers an AI-powered platform to design PCBs for electronic devices, raised $37M, including a $27M Series B led by 8VC and a $10M Series A
Senior Finance Reporter And Author Of Term Sheet — In 2018, Matthias Wagner was leading a 100-person Burning Man camp called Hotel California.
Sources: Jeff Bezos' Project Prometheus is raising tens of billions to buy companies hit by AI; it was valued at ~$30B in November 2025 when it raised $6.2B
Project Prometheus in new talks with Abu Dhabi and JPMorgan over vehicle to buy up businesses disrupted by the technology
TMTG says it is in talks to spin off Truth Social into a public company, following the close of its previously announced merger with nuclear fusion startup TAE
Trump Media & Technology Group said Friday it is in talks to spin off Truth Social into a new publicly traded company.
TikTok returns to Albania after a year-long ban, ostensibly linked to the death of a teenage boy, expired; Albania says TikTok has tightened safety measures
Deepinder Goyal, who stepped down as Zomato's CEO, raised $54M at a $190M valuation for Temple, which aims to make high-performance wearables for elite athletes
Tether says it has frozen $4.2B of its crypto token over links to “illicit activity”, including $3.5B since 2023 and $61M linked to pig-butchering scams
El Salvador-based stablecoin issuer Tether said it has frozen about $4.2 billion of its crypto tokens over links to …
French e-commerce marketplace ManoMano notifies its customers of a data breach affecting 38M; the company said the incident involved a third party subcontractor
DIY store chain ManoMano is notifying customers of a data breach that was caused by hackers compromising a third-party service provider.
Equinix and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board agree to acquire atNorth Holding, a pan-Nordic data center operator, valuing atNorth at $4B including debt
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Equinix Inc. have agreed to acquire atNorth Holding AB, a pan-Nordic data center operator owned by Partners Group Holding AG.
South Korea approves Google's request to export detailed geographic data overseas, reversing a longstanding policy that made Google Maps largely nonfunctional
South Korea approved Google's request to export detailed map data, reversing a longstanding restriction that made the tool largely nonfunctional.
Plaid allowed employees to sell some of their shares at an $8B valuation, up 31% from the $6.1B valuation in April 2025 and 40% below its $13.4B peak in 2021
Plaid, a company that connects financial applications to users' bank accounts, enabling payments and data verification …
California DMV records show Tesla has logged zero autonomous test miles on the state's roads since 2019, despite Musk's claims of an imminent CA robotaxi launch
For more than a year, Elon Musk has repeatedly said Tesla (TSLA.O) is months away from launching a driverless robotaxi service in California …
Driverless truck startup Einride raised a $113M PIPE at a $1.35B pre-money valuation, down from $1.8B initially attached to its upcoming SPAC deal
The Japanese government plans to invest ~$1.6B in Rapidus over the next two fiscal years to help it mass-produce 2nm logic chips and potentially challenge TSMC
Japan's Rapidus Corp. secured investment totaling ¥267.6 billion ($1.7 billion) from the government and dozens …
Encord, whose software helps companies developing AI models manage training data for robots and other uses, raised $60M at a $500M pre-money valuation
CISA's interim director Madhu Gottumukkala is reassigned as DHS' director of strategic implementation; executive assistant director Nick Andersen will take over
The nominee to serve as CISA director has not yet received a hearing. — The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) …
Duolingo reports Q4 revenue up 35% YoY to $282.9M, forecasts FY 2026 bookings below est. as it shifts focus to faster user growth; DUOL drops 20%+ after hours
Duolingo (DUOL.O) forecast first-quarter and 2026 bookings below expectations on Thursday as it shifts strategy toward faster user growth …
Intuit reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $4.65B, vs. $4.53B est., and forecasts Q3 revenue growth of ~10% and EPS below expectations
The company's profit guidance for its third quarter - which overlaps with peak tax season - came in short of Wall Street's expectations
xAI co-founder Toby Pohlen is leaving the company, the seventh of 12 xAI co-founders to depart; Elon Musk put Pohlen in charge of Macrohard earlier this month
xAI co-founder Toby Pohlen said he is leaving Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, the latest founding executive to depart …
OpenAI says it will overhaul safety protocols and establish direct contact with Canadian police, after not alerting authorities about the Tumbler Ridge suspect
Following meetings with the governments of Canada and British Columbia this week, OpenAI says it is committed “to help prevent tragedies like this in the future.”
Viture, which ranked top in XR glasses shipments in the US in Q3 2025, per IDC, raised $100M, bringing its funding in the past six months to $200M
eBay says it plans to cut ~800 jobs, or ~6% of its full-time employees, after laying off ~500 people in early 2023 and ~1,000 staff in early 2024
Social media addiction trial: 20-year-old plaintiff KGM testifies her social media use, which began in childhood, exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts
A young woman who is battling against social media giants took the stand Thursday to testify about her experience using the platforms …
Q&A with Terence Tao on AI-generated Erdős solutions, “cheap wins”, hybrid human AI contributions, push-of-a-button workflows, new ways of doing math, and more
Terence Tao, the legendary mathematician, explains the promise of generative AI.
Apple says iPhone and iPad on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 have become the first consumer devices NATO approved for use up to the “restricted” level of classified data
ZDNET's key takeaways — iPhone and iPad are approved to handle NATO ‘restricted’ classified data.
A Greek court sentences four people, including spyware maker Intellexa's founder, to prison, for using spyware to target journalists, politicians, and others
AI coding agents made a huge leap forward since December, completing complex projects with minimal oversight, meaning “programming is becoming unrecognizable”
Rowspace, which builds AI tools for PE firms and hedge funds to organize unstructured data for decision-making, launches with $50M in seed and Series A funding
Burger King launches Patty, an OpenAI-powered voice chatbot in headsets that offers coaching, meal prep help, and evaluates interactions for “friendliness”
Block reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $6.25B, gross profit up 24% to $2.87B, driven by a 33% surge in Cash App, and forecasts Q1 gross profit up 22% to $2.8B
Block (XYZ.N) on Thursday said it will cut over 4,000 jobs, nearly half its workforce, as part of an overhaul …
Sources: two members of Thinking Machines Lab's founding team, Christian Gibson and Noah Shpak, left the startup and have been working at Meta for a few weeks
- Two founding team members left Thinking Machines Lab for Meta in recent weeks. — The exits add to a wave of departures from the high-profile $12 billion AI startup.
Sources: US semiconductor companies face worsening rare earth shortages, as shipments still rarely make it to the US despite an October 2025 detente with China
Sources: PayPal isn't in talks to sell itself, to Stripe or anyone, and has been preparing for months for a potential activist campaign or unwanted takeover bid
Nvidia stock closes down 5.49%, as investor concerns around the AI infrastructure boom dampen enthusiasm about its better-than-expected earnings
Total on-chain ransomware payments fell 8% YoY to $820M in 2025, despite a record 50% rise in claimed victims; the median payment grew 368% YoY to nearly $60K
Netflix walks away from a deal to buy WBD's studio and streaming assets after WBD deemed Paramount's $31/share bid to be superior; NFLX jumps 8%+
Netflix is walking away from a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming assets after the WBD board on Thursday deemed …
Source: Meta has signed a multiyear deal to rent Google's TPUs to develop new models and has also been in talks to buy TPUs for its data centers as soon as 2027
Meta Platforms has signed a deal to rent Google's AI chips, known as tensor processing units, to develop new AI models, according to a person involved in the talks.
IDC: global smartphone shipments will fall 12.9% YoY to 1.12B units in 2026, the market's largest-ever decline, as surging memory prices drive up device costs
The global smartphone market is poised to suffer its biggest decline ever in 2026, sinking to a more than decade low in shipments …
Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity is partnering with brands like Gap, Visa, and Tinder to market its World ID human verification product
Tools for Humanity aims to promote World ID beyond the tech and crypto sets via partnerships with household names — Sam Altman's project …
Dell reports Q4 revenue up 39% YoY to $33.4B, vs. $31.73B est., and forecasts FY 2027 revenue above estimates; DELL jumps 20%+
Dell (DELL.N) forecast fiscal 2027 revenue above Wall Street estimates on Thursday, betting on growing demand for its artificial intelligence-optimized servers …
The head of Intel Foundry, Kevin O'Buckley, leaves to join Qualcomm after just two years at the company; Intel Foundry will now be headed by Naga Chandrasekaran
Anthropic retired Claude Opus 3, its first model to undergo a new “retirement interview” process, and says Opus 3 asked to write weekly essays for a newsletter
CoreWeave reports Q4 revenue up 110% YoY to $1.57B, vs. $1.55B est., and adjusted loss of $284M, vs. $258.9M est.; CRWV drops 19%+
CoreWeave (CRWV.O) beat Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, benefiting from the artificial intelligence boom that has driven companies …
Instagram says it will alert parents if their teen repeatedly searches for terms related to self-harm or suicide in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia
Citadel rebuts Citrini's viral article, arguing that AI deployment is constrained by the marginal cost of compute vs. human labor, and needs far more compute
Revolut says 58% of reported job scams globally came from Telegram in 2025, dwarfing other platforms for these cases, based on an analysis of 10B+ transactions
Anthropic says new DOD “contract language” made “virtually no progress” on preventing Claude's use for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Thursday said there has been “virtually no progress” on negotiations with the Pentagon.
The Pentagon says it has offered compromises to Anthropic, including putting in writing that laws already bar the military from mass surveillance of Americans
Add CBS News on Google — As the U.S. military's partnership with artificial intelligence giant Anthropic teeters on the edge of collapse …
Sources: DOD was in talks with leading AI companies about building AI tools to automate reconnaissance of China's power grids, utilities, and sensitive networks
Financial Times:
Some AI policymakers and lawyers warn that DOD's threats to Anthropic are contradictory and could chill partnerships between the government and Silicon Valley
Anthropic's high-stakes conflict with the Pentagon gets to the heart of just how far AI can shape the future of war www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
Google says Nano Banana 2 can create images with a resolution ranging from 512px to 4K, and will become the default image generation model in the Gemini app
Ivan Mehta /TechCrunch:
Sources: Meta last week scrapped the most advanced AI chip it was developing, after struggling with the design, and shifted its focus to a less complicated chip
The Information:
Sources detail how the standoff between the Pentagon and Anthropic escalated after discussions about using Claude during hypothetical nuclear missile attacks
Start-up Anthropic and the U.S. military are careening toward a clash over government use of artificial intelligence — and whether it should be allowed to kill.
Note to staff: Sam Altman says OpenAI seeks a DOD deal, except for use cases like domestic surveillance, and wants to “help de-escalate” DOD-Anthropic fight
Keach Hagey /Wall Street Journal:
OpenAI says ChatGPT has 900M+ weekly active users, 50M+ consumer subscribers, and weekly Codex users have more than tripled since the start of the year to 1.6M
openai.com/index/scalin... …George Pearkes /@peark.es:OpenAI round from strategic partners. — $110bn raised, $730bn valuation. $30B from SoftBank, $30B from NVIDIA, and $50B from Amazon. — More i...
Sources: multiple federal agencies raised concerns about Grok's safety and reliability in recent months, before DOD approved Grok for use in classified settings
Warnings about xAI's safety and reliability preceded Pentagon decision to approve Grok for use in classified settings.
Sources: multiple federal agencies raised concerns about Grok's safety and reliability in recent months, before DOD approved Grok for use in classified settings
Wall Street Journal:
As part of the Amazon-OpenAI deal, the companies plan a “stateful runtime environment” for AWS, letting agents carry context forward to handle ongoing projects
A deal with OpenAI could put Amazon first to market with a new type of AI service for developers …
Source: OpenAI expects to raise an additional $10B from financial investors by the end of March 2026, bringing its post-investment valuation to $850B
www.theinformation.com/briefings/ op... [embedded post]
Amazon is paying ~16x Microsoft's price per OpenAI percentage point, while getting none of Microsoft's exclusives, showing the cost of being late in AI
Om Malik /On my Om:
Two coalitions of workers, including employees of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, ask their companies to join Anthropic in refusing DOD's demands
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directs the DOD to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, barring military contractors from doing business with the company
This week, Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon. Our position has never w...