Bethan Staton / Financial Times:
A profile of Mercor, which pays about $2M daily to ~30K experts training AI models at $95/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 has surpassed 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.

Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Microsoft confirms it does provide BitLocker recovery keys for encrypted data if it receives a valid legal order and the user has stored the keys on its servers  —  The tech giant said it receives around 20 requests for BitLocker keys a year and will provide them to governments in response to valid court orders.

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the EU's executive arm is drafting new legislation aimed at promoting tech sovereignty and openly discussing the security risks posed by US tech  —  Trump's Greenland threats inject urgency into region's efforts to reduce its reliance on American technology

Melos Ambaye / Bloomberg:
Elliptic: ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5 surpassed $100B in transactions in under a year, but demand cooled and daily volume fell from a peak of $1.5B+ to ~$500M  —  The ruble-backed stablecoin created to circumvent sanctions on Russia has surpassed $100 billion in transactions in less …

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Counterpoint: India smartphone shipments were flat YoY at ~153M; Apple shipped 14M iPhones, raising its share of shipments to a record 9%, up from 7% in 2024  —  Apple's iPhone is gaining ground fast in India, shipping about 14 million units in 2025, based on market data shared exclusively with TechCrunch.

Benjamin Wallace / New York Times:
A look at Kalshi and Polymarket's rise; reports say Polymarket had 491K monthly active traders in December 2025, and <0.04% of addresses took 70% of profits  —  Two months after quitting his job as a corporate C.P.A. to trade full time in prediction markets, Joel Holsinger, 26, was well along the road to making his first $100,000.

Miranda Nazzaro / FedScoop:
OpenAI and longtime US government contractor Leidos announce a partnership to roll out generative and agentic AI tools for specific missions at federal agencies  —  While AI is increasingly used in agencies already, company leaders say the collaboration will help tailor the technology to specific missions.