The Swap
Microsoft paid $13 billion for exclusive access to OpenAI. Three years later, the flagship product runs on Anthropic's Claude. The model was never the moat.
Thoughts on the MacBook Neo, as Apple expands its superpremium tier via “Ultra” products; sources say Apple plans to 3D-print aluminum for the Watch and iPhone
Apple has taken the wraps off its $599 MacBook Neo, entering new territory in a way that could shake up the computer market.
Anthropic sues to block the DOD from designating it a supply chain risk, says the designation is unlawful and violates its free speech and due process rights
Anthropic on Monday filed a lawsuit to block the Pentagon from placing it on a national security blacklist, escalating …
Jay Graber is stepping down as Bluesky CEO, saying a “seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution” is needed; VC Toni Schneider is named interim CEO
Venture capitalist Toni Schneider will take over as interim CEO as Bluesky's board of directors hunts for a permanent replacement.
Microsoft launches E7, which bundles Office tools and Copilot, for $99/user/month, a 65% jump; of its 450M+ business users in January, ~3% also paid for Copilot
Microsoft Corp. is launching a new bundle of workplace software with the aim of getting more people to use its artificial intelligence tools for the office.
OpenAI agrees to acquire Promptfoo, which fixes security issues in AI systems being built and is “trusted by 25%+ of Fortune 500”, to fold into OpenAI Frontier
Accelerating agentic security testing and evaluation capabilities in OpenAI Frontier
Microsoft launches Copilot Cowork, integrating Anthropic's Claude Cowork tech into Microsoft 365 Copilot and using Work IQ to ground its actions in work data
AUDIENCE — Try Microsoft 365 Copilot — Available on desktop and mobile devices — If you have used Copilot …
iPad Air (M4) review: M4 is powerful, iPadOS 26 improves multitasking, and the hardware is robust, but its screen could be better, no Face ID, and can be pricey
The iPad Air is extremely powerful and portable, but it's past time for it to have a nicer screen.
MacBook Pro 16" (M5 Max) review: “Super core” architecture and 40-core GPU deliver beastly performance, but still retains a five-year-old design
Outstanding — THE BOTTOM LINE — Pros & Cons — “Super core” architecture delivers incredible performance
Kalshi aims to broaden its user base, winning over women by enlisting female influencers and more; 26% of its current users are women, up from 13% in May 2025
Kalshi wants to get more young women interested in the prediction-market platform, looking to expand beyond sports and its core male customer base.
Anthropic debuts Code Review for Claude Code, which uses agents to check pull requests for bugs, and says a code review could average $15-$25 in token usage
iPhone 17e review: MagSafe, 256GB of base storage, and the camera are great, but no always-on display and 60Hz makes the iPhone 17 a better deal for $200 more
The iPhone 17E is a better value than the 16E was when it arrived, but that should matter to basically nobody.
Sources: Apple delayed the release of its smart home display, planned for this month, until later this year to let the company finish work on the new Siri
UK data center developer Nscale raised a $2B Series C led by Aker and 8090 Industries at a $14.6B valuation and adds Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg to its board
Nscale, a UK developer for artificial intelligence data centers, has raised $2 billion in funding and added a trio …
Nasdaq partners with Kraken to develop a framework for 24/7 tokenized stock trading, targeting a 2027 launch, focusing on corporate governance like proxy voting
Nasdaq sought approval in September to let investors trade tokenized versions of its listed stocks and other exchange-traded products
The DOJ reaches a settlement in its antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation in a case that alleged an illegal monopoly over live events in the US
Qualcomm unveils the Arduino Ventuno Q, a single-board computer for AI and robotics applications, powered by Dragonwing IQ8 processor and 16GB of RAM
NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters: just 26% had a positive view of AI, while 46% had a negative view, the third worst net negative score of all topics
Artificial intelligence has permeated nearly every part of daily American life. It's being adopted across the professional sphere …
Kalshi partners with XP, Brazil's largest brokerage firm with 4.8M active clients in December 2025, to list event contracts, its first international expansion
Prediction market platform Kalshi Inc. is expanding outside the US for the first time, partnering with Brazil's XP Inc. to list event contracts.
HPE reports Q1 revenue up 18% YoY to $9.3B, vs. $9.37B est., Cloud and AI revenue down 2.7% YoY to $6.3B but reports an AI server backlog of $5B
ZyG, whose software coordinates AI agents across SEO, marketing, and more for DTC brands, raised a $58M seed co-led by Bessemer, Viola Ventures, and Lightspeed
SoftBank's stock is down ~48% since Nov. 3, as scrutiny into the scale of its OpenAI involvement grows; on Monday, SoftBank fell 9.8% on Stargate delay reports
A study finds LLMs from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI can facilitate academic fraud, specifically helping non-researchers submit fabricated papers to arXiv
- Elizabeth Gibney — Search author on: — PubMed Google Scholar — All major large language models (LLMs) …
German quick grocery delivery startup Flink raised $100M led by Prosus, a source says at a $900M valuation; Flink was reportedly valued at $5B in May 2022
UK's AI drive, touted since 2024 and featuring splashy NScale and CoreWeave deals, to build datacenters is riddled with phantom investments and shaky accounting
Aisha Down /The Guardian:NEWForums:Hacker News,r/unitedkingdom, andr/ukpoliticsForums:Hacker News:Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on ‘phantom investments’r/unitedkingdom:Revealed: UK's m...
A profile of Emil Michael, who made his name as an aggressive dealmaker for Uber, as he takes a leading role in the Pentagon's dispute with Anthropic
Emil Michael made his name in Silicon Valley a decade ago as an aggressive dealmaker for a startup — Uber Technologies Inc. …
Source: UK cyber security company Darktrace names Ed Jennings, who previously led work management platform Quickbase, as CEO, its third chief in 18 months
UK-based cyber security group hires Ed Jennings as private equity owners push for faster growth — Darktrace has appointed …
Samsung's consumer device chief TM Roh says it is “open to strategic co-operation” with more AI groups, having recently added Perplexity to its mobile OS
Korean giant's device chief says its future Galaxy devices will host multiple models as users mix and match AI tools
Sources: Palmer Luckey's ModRetro, which wants to sell updated versions of 1990s consoles like the Nintendo 64, is in talks to raise funding at a $1B valuation
Australia's online age restrictions take effect, requiring platforms to verify users are 18+ before they can access content including porn and R-rated games
In short: — New online safety codes requiring R-rated games and websites to verify users' ages are now in effect.
Caitlin Kalinowski, who led OpenAI's robotics team, resigns over concerns about domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons after OpenAI's US DOD contract
Caitlin Kalinowski, who had been leading hardware and robotic engineering teams at OpenAI since November 2024, announced she has left the company.
A look at the countries moving to ban social media for kids in recent months, like Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Spain
Guild.ai, which helps companies develop, deploy, and observe AI agents, raised a $14M seed and $30M Series A, both led by GV, and is now valued at $300M
As cheap, powerful GPS jammers proliferate, a look at some alternatives to GPS, including using supersensitive, quantum-based magnetic sensors
Nexperia's Chinese subsidiary says it has begun producing its own chips using 12-inch wafers, a further step toward independence from its Dutch parent
Lawsuit documents: two DOGE employees used ChatGPT to identify National Endowment for the Humanities grants, worth $100M+, to be cut for being related to DEI
Documents show how A.I. was used to cancel most previously approved grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities as the agency embraced President Trump's agenda.
Nvidia and ABB partner to bring ABB's robot training software to Nvidia's Omniverse simulation platform and build autonomous robots, which Foxconn is trialing
Industrial robots that can be trained in virtual conditions are being trialled by Foxconn — Nvidia and ABB Robotics are partnering …
Stablecoin payments startup KAST raised an $80M Series A; sources say the raise is at a $600M valuation and KAST expects a $100M annual revenue run rate in 2026
KAST, a stablecoin payments firm, has raised $80 million in its latest funding round, as venture capitalists continue to pour money …
Uber expands its Women Drivers matching feature nationwide, including in major US markets like New York City, Philadelphia, and DC, amid mounting assault cases
Uber Technologies Inc. said that a feature designed to match female riders and drivers will be available nationwide …
London-based Isembard, which helps hardware makers in defence, aerospace, and robotics make components, raised a $50M Series A to build “AI-powered factories”
Isembard, a London startup that's built a platform to help hardware makers in defence, aerospace and robotics manufacture components …
How Circle, Stripe, Coinbase, and others are building stablecoin-based agentic payments infrastructure that makes microtransactions between AI agents economical
Luma AI debuts Uni-1, an image model that combines image understanding and generation in a single architecture, topping Nano Banana 2 on logic-based benchmarks
Ask about this article... Like Google's Nano Banana Pro and GPT Image 1.5, Uni-1 is built on an autoregressive transformer …
South Korean giant Coupang is lobbying the US to represent its interests as it faces 10+ data leak probes; Coupang Korea CEO Harold Rogers attended Trump's SOTU
Coupang leans on its US domicile to lobby Washington against probes from Seoul — Coupang, the online retailer, once called itself a “proud Korean company”.
Sources: Chinese AI circuit board maker Victory Giant plans a Hong Kong IPO as soon as April that may raise $2B+; China's regulator approved the IPO last week
Victory Giant Technology (Huizhou) Co., a Chinese maker of printed circuit boards, is preparing for a Hong Kong listing …
A Lloyds-commissioned study of 5,000 people in the UK finds that 50%+ of adults use generative AI platforms for financial advice; ChatGPT was the most used
Millions of people are already turning to chatbots such as ChatGPT to plan their retirement — When Dan, a 41-year-old …
OpenClaw mania hits China: AI labs launch tools to help users deploy OpenClaw, a Shenzhen district drafts a policy encouraging free OpenClaw services, and more
Chinese software shares surged Monday after local government agencies joined tech leaders such as Tencent Holdings Ltd …
A study of 1,488 US workers finds AI use can reduce burnout but also cause “AI brain fry”, a mental fatigue from using AI tools beyond one's cognitive capacity
On New Year's Day, programmer Steve Yegge launched Gas Town, an open-source platform that lets users orchestrate swarms …
Advice to developers: build API-first and make software that agents want, as AI agents, not humans, will become the primary users of all software in the future
Building for trillions of agents — Over the past few months, something big has started to happen with agents.
The US-led war in Iran is complicating plans by Gulf nations to spend $300B+ on AI investments, putting at risk a potential source of funding for tech companies
The war in Iran is complicating plans by Gulf nations to spend more than $300 billion on data centers, chips and other AI investments …
How some US midterms candidates are using social media posts and niche buzzwords on their websites to signal to crypto and AI super PACs they want their cash
The A.I. and crypto industries entered this year with nearly $250 million combined to spend on politics, and a battle plan to shape the regulatory landscape in their favor.
The US and Israel are using AI to wage war on Iran with unprecedented speed and precision in attacks, even as the cost of badly informed decisions remains high
a trend linked with the phrase ‘The computer said to do this.’” [embedded post]
Iran targeting commercial datacenters in the UAE and Bahrain signals a new frontier in asymmetric warfare and raises doubts over the Gulf as a global AI hub
Why Kuwait, UAE, and Saudi Arabia Are Now a No-Go for TravelersAssociated Press:Mideast's water supply at risk as Bahrain and Iran say their desalination plants were attacked amid expanding warRenju J...
Leading the Future, a pro-AI PAC backed by Palantir-cofounder Joe Lonsdale, hit pro-regulation Democrat Alex Bores with attack ads over Bores' work for Palantir
and building a strategy that other politicians will have to contend with. https://www.politico.com/...Katie Fossett /@katelynfossett:“Leading the Future's goal is not actually to kill Alex's race. The...
A profile of Nscale founder Josh Payne, a former coal miner from Australia who moved to London and started the data center company in 2024 amid the AI boom
After leaving high school in an industrial area of Australia, Josh Payne took an unlikely path to becoming the head …
Apple Studio Display XDR review: great reference picture modes, much improved camera, and 120Hz support on newer Macs, but expensive at $3300 and only for Macs
but there's a catchNikias Molina /Nikias Molina on YouTube:MEGA Unboxing: New MacBook Air, MacBook Pro & Studio Display (2026)iJustine on YouTube:New Studio Display and Studio Display XDR — worth the ...
More than 30 staffers from OpenAI and Google, including DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, file an amicus brief in support of Anthropic in its fight with DOD
Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean is among the AI researchers and engineers rushing to Anthropic's defense.
Filing: Anthropic says it had $5B+ in all-time revenue since 2023 and could lose billions after clients paused deal talks due to supply-chain risk designation
Now billions of dollars in revenue for just this year is at stake and customers/prospects are already asking for new terms or backing out. — www.wired.com/story/anthro...