Google reportedly snags up team behind AI voice startup Hume AI
Google has hired the CEO and top top behind voice AI startup Hume AI, signaling that voice is increasingly becoming the preferred interface over screens.
Moltbook was peak AI theater
For a few days this week the hottest new hangout on the internet was a vibe-coded Reddit clone called Moltbook, which billed itself as a social network for bots. As the website’s tagline puts it: “Where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe.” We observed! Launched on January 28 by Matt Schlicht,…
From invisibility cloaks to AI chips: Neurophos raises $110M to build tiny optical processors for inferencing
Neurophos is taking a crack at solving the AI industry’s power efficiency problem with an optical chip that uses a composite material to do the math required in AI inferencing tasks.
Anthropic has to keep revising its technical interview test so you can’t cheat on it with Claude
Since 2024, Anthropic’s performance optimization team has given job seekers a take-home test to make sure they know their stuff — but as AI coding tools have gotten better, the test has had to change a lot to stay ahead of AI-assisted cheating.
Blue Origin schedules third New Glenn launch for late February, but not to the moon
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin had previously suggested that the third launch of the mega-rocket would take the space company’s robotic lunar lander to the moon.
Build a Faster Content Engine With This $20 ChatGPT Skills Bundle
Five short courses designed to help keep entrepreneurs from burning out.
Spotify brings AI-powered Prompted Playlists to the U.S. and Canada
Now available in the US and Canada, Spotify’s AI-powered Prompted Playlists let users describe what they want to hear using natural language commands.
The Download: Yann LeCun’s new venture, and lithium’s on the rise
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Yann LeCun’s new venture is a contrarian bet against large language models Yann LeCun is a Turing Award recipient and a top AI researcher, but he has long been a contrarian figure in…
Snapchat gives parents new insights into teens’ screen time and friends
With these new features, Snap is likely looking to appease regulators and parents over concerns about safety and screen time on its platform.
Quadric rides the shift from cloud AI to on-device inference — and it’s paying off
Quadric aims to help companies and governments build programmable on-device AI chips that can run fast-changing models locally.
Why 2026 is a hot year for lithium
In 2026, I’m going to be closely watching the price of lithium. If you’re not in the habit of obsessively tracking commodity markets, I certainly don’t blame you. (Though the news lately definitely makes the case that minerals can have major implications for global politics and the economy.) But lithium is worthy of a close…