Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors
Techmeme
February 4, 2026, 4:00 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Anthropic:
Anthropic says “Claude will remain ad-free”, its users “won't see ‘sponsored’ links adjacent to” conversations, and responses won't be influenced by advertisers  —  There are many good places for advertising.  A conversation with Claude is not one of them.
Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:
Anthropic plans a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl that parodies the prospect of intrusive ads in AI conversations, and will also air a 60-second pregame ad  —  Chatbot wars are heating up, with Anthropic's Claude highlighting the potential frustration of bringing ads into ChatGPT
Sam Altman / @sama:
Sam Altman says the Anthropic Super Bowl ads are funny but “dishonest”, and Anthropic serves a “product to rich people” while OpenAI is committed to free access
Connor Hart / Wall Street Journal:
Uber reports Q4 revenue up 20% YoY to $14.37B, Gross Bookings up 22% YoY to $54.1B, trips up 22% YoY to 3.8B, and a $296M net income, below est.; UBER falls 5%+  —  Ride-hailing company's quarterly profit falls on hefty charge  —  Uber Technologies fourth-quarter profit fell …
Ram Iyer / TechCrunch:
Uber promotes Balaji Krishnamurthy, its former VP of strategic finance and investor relations, to be its CFO, replacing Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Amazon rolls out Alexa+ to all Prime members in the US via any Alexa-enabled device, Alexa.com, and the Alexa app, and launches a free tier for non-Prime users  —  Amazon's revamped AI-powered assistant is now available to everyone in the US, with new tiers that include a free option for non-Prime users.
Kate Clark / Wall Street Journal:
AI voice startup ElevenLabs raised a $500M Series D led by Sequoia at an $11B valuation, taking its total funding to nearly $800M, and reports $330M in 2025 ARR  —  The startup is increasingly joining with creative stars and expanding its work with business customers
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google teases the Pixel 10a in a new 15-second video, revealing a completely flat dual-camera system on the back, and says preorders begin on February 18  —  Google this morning officially announced the Pixel 10a via a video teaser emphasizing the updated design.
Ian King / Bloomberg:
AI chipmaker Cerebras raised a ~$1B Series H led by Tiger Global at a $23B valuation, up from $8.1B in September 2025; Benchmark, Fidelity, and AMD invested too  —  AI chip provider Cerebras Systems Inc. has raised about $1 billion in a new funding round, bolstering the company's efforts to compete with Nvidia Corp.
Nick Turner / Bloomberg:
Texas Instruments agrees to acquire US chip company Silicon Labs for ~$7.5B, paying $231/share in cash, closing in H1 2027; Silicon Labs has a ~$4.5B market cap  —  Texas Instruments Inc. has reached an agreement to buy the US chip firm Silicon Laboratories Inc. for about $7.5 billion …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft says cybersecurity head Charlie Bell will move into a position focused on engineering quality; Hayete Gallot will return from Google to run security  —  Microsoft said Wednesday that top security leader Charlie Bell will take on a new role and that Hayete Gallot will return …
Jill R Shah / Financial Times:
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says Tether's target of raising $15B to $20B was a “misconception”; sources say Tether's advisers have floated raising as little as $5B  —  CEO Paolo Ardoino downplays the scale of $185bn stablecoin group's capital raise
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
TRM Labs, which helps law enforcement and companies track crypto and blockchains, raised a $70M Series C led by Blockchain Capital at a $1B valuation  —  When TRM Labs cofounders Esteban Castaño and Rahul Raina moved to San Francisco in 2018 to create a startup, their mentors told …
Coco Liu / Bloomberg:
Lunar Energy, which develops software that syncs batteries across homes into “virtual power plants” and began deploying its own batteries in 2025, raised $232M  —  Lunar Energy wants to expand its home storage business at a time when the grid is increasingly under strain.
Sabrina Ortiz / The Deep View:
Mistral debuts Voxtral Transcribe 2, a family of speech-to-text models with speaker diarization and ultra-low latency, under the Apache 2.0 open-weight license  —  AI assistants are going voice-first, and Mistral AI just launched its models to compete.  —  On Wednesday, the French AI startup …
More: VentureBeat, Mistral AI, and Wired
X: @simonw, @mistralai, and @mistralai.  Forums: Hacker News
Chris Tapsell / Eurogamer.net:
An interview with Epic Games Store VP Steven Allison, who says “we have a lot of things” to fix and “the launcher sucks”, on 2026 updates like social features  —  Steven Allison acknowledges some people will always say “F— Epic", as focus finally shifts to player experience.
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
A profile of game studio Obsidian, which Microsoft acquired in 2018, as it seeks to shorten development times and cut costs after releasing three titles in 2025  —  Microsoft's Obsidian Entertainment is searching for ways to make games more quickly and on smaller budgets.
Jyoti Mann / The Information:
Internal memos: Meta said Avocado is its “most capable pre-trained base model” and achieves 10x compute efficiency “wins” on text tasks vs. Llama 4 Maverick  —  Meta Platforms is sounding an increasingly bullish note about the first major AI model expected to emerge from its new AI group.
Financial Times:
Sources: the US Commerce Department finished reviewing Nvidia's H200 China license, but the State Department wants tougher restrictions, delaying final approval  —  The state department has pushed for close scrutiny before approving export licences  —  Michael Acton in San Francisco …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
On AMD's Q4 earnings call, CEO Lisa Su says Microsoft's next-gen Xbox “is progressing well to support a launch in 2027” and will feature an AMD semi-custom SoC

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
How WCAG compliance makes modern workplaces more accessible  —  A workplace's approach to inclusivity starts with its everyday tools.  Some of them can create barriers that inadvertently shut people out.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Sources:
 AWS CEO Matt Garman on building a $1 trillion business
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Cheeky Pint:
 Nik Storonsky: The most uncompromising banking CEO
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Big Technology Podcast:
 Jensen and The Honeypot
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Lenny's Podcast:
 Why PMs are suddenly valuable again | Tulsee Doshi (Head of Product, Gemini)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Machine Gods:
 The Purple Tsunami Against Data Centers
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
Invest Like the Best:
 Ramtin Naimi - The State of Venture
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:00 PM ET, February 4, 2026.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

The Hollywood Reporter:
Sources detail James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC ouster, including tensions with Skydance Motion Picture Group co-chairs Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg

Suzanne Monyak / Bloomberg Law:
A federal appeals court upholds an August 2025 ruling that Trump officials can't fire VOA director Michael Abramowitz without approval from an independent board

The Guardian:
The Guardian and ITV publish an investigation into TV presenter David Walliams, who lost a court bid to stop them from publishing sexual misconduct allegations

More News

Earlier Picks

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Adobe reverses its plans to discontinue Animate after creators expressed frustration, saying it won't get new features but will remain available “indefinitely”
Wall Street Journal:
Software and data stocks plunge over fears that new AI developments will supplant software; ADBE fell 7.31%, CRM 6.85%, and Thomson Reuters 15.83% on Tuesday
Alicia Tang / Bloomberg:
OpenAI names Dylan Scandinaro, who worked on AGI safety at Anthropic, as the company's “head of preparedness”, which has an up to $555K/year base salary
Max Knoblauch / Sherwood News:
Take-Two reports Q3 net bookings up 28% YoY to $1.76B, vs. $1.58B est., net revenue up 25% YoY to $1.7B, and raises its annual bookings forecast; TTWO drops ~5%
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter