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Techmeme

Lotus, which uses AI to offer free, 24/7 primary care in 50 languages, raised a $35M Series A led by CRV and Kleiner Perkins, taking its total funding to $41M (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

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AI agent social network Moltbook grew from 30,000 users on January 30 to 1.5M+ on February 2; researchers say many viral posts were likely scripted by humans (Hayden Field/The Verge)

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Walmart hits a $1T market cap in intraday trading after a stock surge fueled in part by investor enthusiasm for its e-commerce growth and AI investments (Sarah Nassauer/Wall Street Journal)

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LexisNexis-owner Relx, Reuters-owner Thomson Reuters, and other stocks fell 10%+ after Anthropic launched Claude Cowork tools that automate legal work (Financial Times)

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Overland AI, which develops off-road robots and autonomous vehicles for military purposes, raised $100M led by 8VC, bringing its total funding to $142M (Jen Judson/Bloomberg)

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Grindr is testing Edge, a subscription tier with AI-powered personalized matches and insights, no ads, and more, with prices ranging from $80 to $220 per week (Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider)

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Crypto.com launches prediction market platform OG ahead of the Super Bowl, following 40-fold WoW growth in its event contracts business over the last six months (Lydia Beyoud/Bloomberg)

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Y Combinator says founders can opt to receive their customary allotment, typically about $500K, in the Circle-issued USDC, starting with the Spring 2026 cohort (Ben Weiss/Fortune)

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Gruve, which taps unused power and space from US data center providers for AI inference, raised a $50M Series A extension, bringing total funding to $87.5M (Geoff Weiss/Business Insider)

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A profile of Sam Altman, who says "we basically have built AGI, or very close to it" before dialing back his claim to "a spiritual statement, not a literal one" (Richard Nieva/Forbes)

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Epic reports third-party game revenue on the Epic Games Store up 57% YoY in 2025 to $400M, total spend up 6% to $1.16B, and total player hours down 14% to 6.65B (Jon Hicks/GamesIndustry.biz)

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Orion, which has developed an AI platform to replace data loss prevention tools, raised a $32M Series A led by Norwest, bringing its total funding to $38M (Meir Orbach/CTech)

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Sources: HP CEO Enrique Lores leaving to become PayPal CEO blindsided HP, whose board rushed to launch a CEO search process; Lores had worked for HP since 1989 (Rohan Goswami/Semafor)

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The UK ICO launches a new investigation into X and xAI over "serious concerns" about Grok's data use and "its potential to produce harmful sexualized" content (Financial Times)

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Disney names Josh D'Amaro, head of its theme parks and consumer products division, as CEO, replacing Bob Iger, effective March 18; D'Amaro joined Disney in 1998 (Variety)

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Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman unveil Luffu, a self-funded startup developing an AI-powered "family care system", currently in private testing (Ina Fried/Axios)

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PayPal names HP CEO Enrique Lores as CEO, replacing interim CEO Alex Chriss on March 1, and reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $8.68B, below est.; PYPL drops 15%+ (Paige Smith/Bloomberg)

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A profile of Brazilian neobank Nubank, which aims to enter the US market within 18 months, growing its 120M+ users; analysts expect $2.9B in 2025 net income (Michael Pooler/Financial Times)

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Uber rolls out its service in the Chinese gambling hub of Macau, its first new entry to an Asian market for years; Uber sold its China business to Didi in 2016 (Newley Purnell/Bloomberg)

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Sources: OpenAI is prioritizing ChatGPT over long-term research, prompting senior staff departures; Sora and DALL-E teams felt neglected and under resourced (Cristina Criddle/Financial Times)

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The Paris prosecutor's office says it raided X's French offices with Europol and summons Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino to appear at hearings in April (Liv McMahon/BBC)

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Q&A with Docusign CEO Allan Thygesen on Docusign's workforce growing to 7,000 staffers, its Intelligent Agreement Management system, AI hallucinations, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

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Nintendo says the Switch 1 sold 155.37M units from its March 2017 launch through December 2026, topping the DS' 154.02M units, becoming its best-selling console (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

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Nintendo reports Q3 revenue of ~$5.2B, below $5.45B est., a ~$1.03B net profit, vs. $950M est., and maintains its 19M Switch 2 sales forecast for fiscal 2026 (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC)

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Sources: China's top memory chipmakers, CXMT and YMTC, plan their biggest expansions yet as a global supply crunch lets them close the gap with market leaders (Nikkei Asia)

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Sources: Telefónica and Liberty Global, co-owners of Virgin Media O2, are set to lead a ~£2B acquisition of the UK's fourth-largest broadband network Netomnia (Kieran Smith/Financial Times)

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A look at WhatsApp's E2E encryption and whether it protects from metadata and chat backup leaks, after a lawsuit alleges Meta can read users' private data (Matthew Green/A Few Thoughts ...)

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If assumptions hold, SpaceX-xAI could own a full stack of capabilities, from launch to orbital bandwidth to frontier AI models, and offer AI on demand anywhere (Eric Berger/Ars Technica)

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Staff memo: xAI says both xAI and SpaceX will maintain their separate branding and the joint venture is continuing to prepare for a possible IPO in 2026 (Grace Kay/Business Insider)

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Leaked email: as part of the xAI-SpaceX deal, xAI shares will be converted into 0.1433 shares of SpaceX stock, and employees will have the option to cash out (Wall Street Journal)

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Crunchyroll is raising its US prices by $2 per month; the cheapest tier gets its first price increase since 2019 and now offers offline downloads on one device (Isaac Rouse/Polygon.com)

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Elon Musk's SpaceX-xAI merger further intermingles his companies, creates the world's most valuable private company, and provides a financial lifeline to xAI (New York Times)

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Trump unveils a $12B critical minerals stockpile, called Project Vault, to minimize reliance on China, with participation from 12+ companies, including Google (Bloomberg)

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Adobe plans to discontinue its 2D animation software Animate on March 1; enterprise customers can receive support until March 2029, and others until March 2027 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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Oracle says the Nvidia-OpenAI deal has "zero impact" on its financial relationship with OpenAI and it is "highly confident in OpenAI's ability to raise funds" (@oracle)

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SpaceX Acquires xAI for $250 Billion (The Information)

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Waymo raised $16B led by Sequoia, DST Global, and Dragoneer at a $126B valuation and plans a rapid expansion across the US and into the UK this year (Edward Ludlow/Bloomberg)

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Palantir reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $1.41B, vs. $1.33B est., and forecasts FY 2026 and Q1 revenue above estimates; PLTR jumps 6%+ after hours (Samantha Subin/CNBC)

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SpaceX acquires xAI; sources say the deal is all stock and values the combined company at $1.25T, with SpaceX valued at $1T and xAI at $250B (Bloomberg)

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Sources: OpenAI is unsatisfied with some of Nvidia's AI chips used for inference and has sought alternatives since last year, including from Cerebras and Groq (Reuters)

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Newly-released emails between tech industry notables and Jeffrey Epstein kick off a renewed flurry of acrimonious social posts and lurid news coverage (Brian Barrett/Wired)

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New Epstein Files Reveal Even More Powerful Connections: Musk, Trump, Gates, Lutnick, More (Alison Durkee/Forbes)

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Oracle is selling $25B of bonds to help finance its AI buildout, in what is set to be the biggest high-grade US offering since Meta's $30B bond sale last year (Bloomberg)

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Mozilla says Firefox users will be able to disable all AI features in its desktop browser, starting with Firefox 148, rolling out on February 24 (Sergiu Gatlan/BleepingComputer)

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Meta gives $65M to two super PACs to elect California state candidates, regardless of party, whom it views as supportive of the AI and tech industry (Christine Mui/Politico)

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OpenAI launches a Codex app for macOS, designed to serve as a command center for managing AI agents, and says Codex usage has nearly doubled since mid-December (David Gewirtz/ZDNET)

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Barcelona-based Biorce, which is developing an AI service to speed up clinical trials, raised a $52.5M Series A, bringing its total funding to $60M+ (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)

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OpenText is selling its analytics business Vertica to Rocket Software for $150M to reduce its outstanding debt, its second business unit sale within five months (Alex Riehl/BetaKit)

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Shield, which acquires IT businesses and uses AI to make them efficient, raised $100M from Thrive Holdings and says it crossed $100M in annual revenue in 2025 (Natasha Mascarenhas/Bloomberg)

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Fieldguide, which uses AI agents to automate accounting and auditing tasks, raised a $75M Series C led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives at a $700M valuation (Leo Schwartz/Fortune)

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