-
CNBC: 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: 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 -
About Amazon: 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 -
Anthropic: 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 -
Axios: Anthropic says new DOD “contract language” made “virtually no progress” on preventing Claude's use for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons -
Jennifer Jacobs / CBS News: The Pentagon says it has offered compromises to Anthropic, including putting in writing that laws already bar the military from mass surveillance of Americans -
Washington Post: Sources detail how the standoff between the Pentagon and Anthropic escalated after discussions about using Claude during hypothetical nuclear missile attacks -
Wall Street Journal: Sources: multiple federal agencies raised concerns about Grok's safety and reliability in recent months, before DOD approved Grok for use in classified settings -
Financial Times: 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 -
Axios: 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” -
Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal: 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 -
Annie Palmer / CNBC: 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%+ -
Reuters: 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 -
CNBC: 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%+ -
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: 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 -
Tripp Mickle / New York Times: 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 -
Luke Barr / ABC News: CISA's interim director Madhu Gottumukkala is reassigned as DHS' director of strategic implementation; executive assistant director Nick Andersen will take over -
25 minutes ago Christine Wang / Axios: 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 -
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: French e-commerce marketplace ManoMano notifies its customers of a data breach affecting 38M; the company said the incident involved a third party subcontractor -
The Information: 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 -
The Information: 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 -
Financial Times: 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 -
John Yoon / New York Times: South Korea approves Google's request to export detailed geographic data overseas, reversing a longstanding policy that made Google Maps largely nonfunctional -
Tamsin McMahon / Bloomberg: 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 -
Mickey Djuric / Politico: OpenAI says it will overhaul safety protocols and establish direct contact with Canadian police, after not alerting authorities about the Tumbler Ridge suspect -
Elizabeth Howcroft / Reuters: 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 -
New! Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: 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 -
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: 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