Nat Rubio-Licht / The Deep View:
London-based enterprise AI video startup Synthesia raised a $200M Series E led by GV at a $4B valuation, up from $2.1B after raising $180M in January 2025  —  W  —  hile AI video generators like OpenAI's Sora, Google's Veo, and Kling are best known for creating “AI slop” …

John Keilman / Wall Street Journal:
Manufacturers say that AI is fundamentally changing how some new products are created, finding unexpected solutions and reducing R&D time from weeks to days  —  PPG, 3M and other manufacturers say digital tools can suggest counterintuitive solutions and do weeks of work within days

Zack Abrams / The Block:
Entropy, a decentralized crypto custodian that raised a $25M seed led by a16z in June 2022, is shutting down after “several pivots, and two rounds of layoffs”  —  Partner offers  —  Quick Take  — Entropy founder Tux Pacific announced the crypto startup is shutting down after four years …

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
Sources: Samsung enters the final qualification phase to supply its HBM4 chips to Nvidia, and targets mass production in February; Samsung's shares jumped 3.2%  —  Samsung Electronics Co. is getting close to securing certification from Nvidia Corp. for the latest version of its AI memory chip …

Andy Kemp / Gallup:
Gallup: 12% of employed US adults reported using AI daily in their job in Q4 2025, compared to 10% in Q3 and 8% in Q2; 49% say they never use AI in their role  —  The total percentage of employees using AI remains flat, but use varies meaningfully by industry and role type.

Jason Lemkin / SaaStr:
Many AI founders now find it necessary to raise at valuations requiring absolute domination of the field; Brex, once valued at $12B, shows the downsides of this  —  Capital One just announced it's acquiring Brex for $5.15 billion.  An incredible, top .1% “exit” in less than 10 years …

Bethan Staton / Financial Times:
A profile of Mercor, which pays ~$2M per day to ~30K experts training AI models at $95 per hour on average, with roles like radiologists earning up to $375/hour  —  Tens of thousands of professionals are joining tech start-up Mercor to hone technology in their skills  —  At first Lola thought the job ads were fake.

Tim McLaughlin / Reuters:
Power prices surge in Virginia, home to the world's largest data center hub; record demand is expected during the winter storm, partly due to data center needs  —  Power prices in the largest U.S. grid rose sharply on Sunday as demand in a region with the world's largest concentration …

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Meta's decision to deprioritize VR in favor of AI and internet-connected glasses has chilled the VR industry, leading to concerns about its future  —  Meta's deprioritizing virtual reality in favor of artificial intelligence and Internet-connected smart glasses has chilled the industry, leading to concerns about its future.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
A deep dive into Apple's AI strategy reset, as it prepares to announce a Gemini-powered personalized Siri next month and a reimagined chatbot-like Siri at WWDC  —  Apple shakes up its AI efforts with a Google partnership, management changes and two new versions of Siri.

Rani Molla / Sherwood News:
Q&A with David Liu, CEO of PlusAI, which is slated to go public next month, on the ongoing commercial trial of its autonomous truck driving software, and more  —  With his company set to hit the public markets in February, Liu envisions a future where most vehicles, commercial or not, are driving themselves.

Sherwood News:
Domain Name Stat: the number of .ai domains passes 1M; data suggests Anguilla, the UK territory managing the domain, made ~$70M in fees in the past year  —  Data from Domain Name Stat reveals that the top-level domain originally assigned to the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla passed the milestone in early January.

Manish Singh / India Dispatch:
HSBC: JioHotstar had 300M paying subscribers in India in 2025, compared with 65M for Amazon Prime Video and 20M for Netflix; ~24% of OTT users pay for content  —  And more than $900 million in annual revenue in India.  —  Amazon Prime Video has more than three times the subscribers as Netflix in India, according to HSBC.

Ross Andersen / The Atlantic:
Analysis: scientists who appeared to use LLMs posted 33% more papers on arXiv than those who didn't, as concerns grow over AI slop in scientific publishing  —  Peer review has met its match.  —  On a frigid Norwegian afternoon earlier this month, Dan Quintana, a psychology professor …

Federico Viticci / MacStories:
A look at Clawdbot, an open-source personal AI agent that runs locally on the user's computer and integrates with multiple LLMs and messaging services  —  For the past week or so, I've been working with a digital assistant that knows my name, my preferences for my morning routine …

Reuters:
EquipmentShare, which runs a jobsite tech and equipment rental platform for the construction industry, raised $747.3M in its IPO, valuing the company at $7.16B  —  EquipmentShare.com shares rose 16.3% in their Nasdaq debut on Friday, valuing the construction rental firm at $7.16 billion …

Aisha Down / The Guardian:
Tests show GPT-5.2 on ChatGPT is citing Grokipedia as a source on some obscure topics, including Iranian political structures  —  Guardian found OpenAI's platform cited Grokipedia on topics including Iran and Holocaust deniers  —  The latest model of ChatGPT has begun to cite Elon Musk's Grokipedia …

The Information:
Source: OpenAI mulls new tools to help business users understand the financial benefits of using its products and has made changes to its sales force strategy  —  Some of OpenAI's most attention-grabbing efforts over the past year have involved products for consumers, from a social app …

Matt Phillips / Sherwood News:
SanDisk's stock has surged ~1,000% since August, driven by AI demand for its data storage products; SanDisk has a cost advantage due to its JV with Kioxia  —  Soaring chip prices have fueled a nearly 1,000% run for Sandisk in a matter of months.  Industry insiders, prolific hedge fund managers …

CoinDesk:
Nifty Gateway, the NFT trading platform which had facilitated $300M in sales by mid-2021, enters withdrawal-only mode and plans to shut down on Feb. 23, 2026  —  What to know: … Nifty Gateway, the non-fungible token (NFT) trading platform that was once central to the 2021 digital art boom, will shut down on Feb. 23, 2026.