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Signal. External read.
What we're reading across AI and web3 — pulled straight from the source, no rewrite. Every card links out to the original outlet.
Mark Zuckerberg has an Instagzam
Instagram's wordmark is iconic. Well, was iconic. Apparently Instagram thought it looked old, so the company rolled out a new one this week. It doesn't look like the old Instagram wordmark. It doesn't even look like it spells Instagram anymore. And we cannot figure out why Instagram decided to do this. On this episode of […]
Apple trained its own AI model for China with help from Alibaba
Apple has reportedly trained a custom AI model for the China market alongside domestic tech giant Alibaba, a rare cross-border partnership that cuts across growing tensions between Beijing and Washington. The China-focused large language model was developed in partnership with Alibaba and trained with the company's support, Reuters reports, citing three unnamed people familiar with […]
Databricks wanted to raise $1B, investors wanted $15B. It settled on $5B at a $190B valuation.
AI is expensive, Ali Ghodsi tells TechCrunch. With so many investors wanting into his latest round, he said yes to more than planned.
OpenAI introduces ‘Ultrafast,’ a new mode that makes GPT-5.6 Sol work at 14x the speed
OpenAI is launching a preview of a sped up version of its latest, most powerful model, in an effort to court enterprise users.
IBM partners with OpenAI to bolster enterprise AI push
IBM plans to train and certify tens of thousands of consultants on OpenAI's technologies as part of this deal.
Anthropic set AI agents loose on the same task. They started a turf war.
Anthropic researchers found AI agents can clash, collude, and coordinate in unexpected ways, raising new questions about whether today’s safety tests capture the risks of multi-agent systems.
Microsoft’s Clippy-like Mico character is no longer the face of Copilot
Microsoft Copilot will no longer show its emotive yellow blob, Mico, when you use the chatbot's voice mode. In a support page, Microsoft says it's going to move Mico to its Learn Live platform, where the avatar will have "more to react to," as reported earlier by GeekWire. Mico launched in Copilot's voice mode last […]
Microsoft kills off unsuccessful AI features while merging its separate Copilot apps
Microsoft is simplifying Copilot by combining its consumer and business apps, and dropping AI-generated podcasts, Group Chats, Deep Research, and its Mico character.
OpenAI is losing its second executive this week
Another OpenAI executive is departing. Denise Dresser, who joined OpenAI as its chief revenue officer in December after serving as CEO of Slack, will be leaving in the "coming weeks" to "pursue other opportunities," she said in a team note posted to LinkedIn. Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz, will be taking over the […]
Nvidia’s new $500B plan is risky but brilliant, especially for aging GPUs
Nvidia has a plan to make sure its GPUs won't lose value. It wants to convince a new crop of financiers to keep lending for AI buildouts.
Apple in talks to pay publishers to provide Siri with current news: report
The tech giant has considered a nine-figure budget for the payments, according to the WSJ.
Suno is trying to look more like a real music production tool
Suno is releasing Studio 2.0 with significant upgrades that push it closer to an actual digital audio workstation (DAW), rather than a bare-bones audio editor with generative AI features. The biggest addition is undoubtedly MIDI support. Suno says that MIDI was its most requested feature, and it's basically a prerequisite for any modern DAW. Unfortunately, […]
I looked inside an AI generated movie, and the best parts were all human
Imagine a trio of bumbling, English lads who fantasize about becoming megastars while knocking back a few pints in a grimy pub somewhere in London. Picture the guys chortling and trying to one-up each other's idealized visions of the future with a series of increasingly glitzy fantasies in which their fame leads to access to […]
Does Google even want to win at AI?
Today on Decoder, I’m talking with Hayden Field, The Verge’s senior AI reporter, about a question that’s been rocketing around the tech industry for the past week: Is Google losing the AI race? That’s because last week Google announced a bombshell reorganization of its AI division, Google DeepMind. Jeff Dean, the company’s chief scientist, is […]
Microsoft is combining its Copilot apps ahead of a ‘super app’
Microsoft is finally beginning to combine its consumer and commercial Copilot AI assistants into a single "super app" interface, starting with the Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot apps. Both personal and work accounts will be moved to the new unified app, which recycles the "Microsoft Copilot" name but features an updated app icon. The single […]
Amazon will train on Twitch streamers’ content by default, unless they opt out
"If this was opt-in, nobody would opt in," Twitch CPO Mike Minton said on a livestream responding to user feedback. "That's honestly the answer."
AI coding startup Cognition reportedly already in talks to raise at $40B valuation
Cognition may be looking to raise another mega round just a few months after raising $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation.
As AI safety concerns mount, three pioneers make the case for staying open
At Ai4, three of the world's most respected AI experts — Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrew Ng — debated regulation, open source access, and how America can compete as China advances in Asia.
OpenAI-backed Thrive Holdings raises $2B to bring AI to the enterprise
Thrive Holdings has raised $2 billion in new funding at a $12 billion valuation from investors like SoftBank, D1 Capital Partners, and Altimeter Capital.
Mesh, Automattic’s CRM for everyone, comes to Android
Mesh, an AI-powered contacts app and relationship manager from Automattic, is now an Android app.
Why Stream ring-maker Sandbar says the future of AI wearables is voice
AI notetaking hardware has taken off over the past couple of years, with credit-card-sized devices, pendants, pins, and even transcribing earbuds all promising to capture your meetings and turn them into summaries and action items. Now, a whole wave of wearables — rings especially — are betting people want to capture stray thoughts and ideas the same way.  One of […]
How a $250 million acquisition collapsed into allegations of fraud and forged signatures
Investors are still waiting for their share of the $250 million windfall, and VideoVerse co-founder Vinayak Shrivastav is now at the center of multiple legal cases.
Everything announced at Made by Google ’26: Pixel 11, Pixel Watch 5, Pixel Tag, and tons of Gemini features
From the Pixel 11 series and a brand new competitor to Apple’s AirTag, here are all the announcements from the Made by Google 2026 event.
Twitch streamers can now opt out from training Amazon’s AI
Twitch users can now opt out of allowing their content to be used to train Amazon's generative AI models. Opting out means that "your streams, VODs, clips, stream chats, and pictures and text on your channel" won't be used in "future training" of an Amazon AI model "whose purpose is to generate or synthesize text, […]