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FIFA says that parts of 2026 World Cup matches will be broadcast live on TikTok and select creators will get access to press conferences and training sessions (Jessica Hopkins/The Athletic)

Chinese AI startup MiniMax raises ~$619M in its Hong Kong IPO, at the top of its marketed range; sources: its institutional offering was oversubscribed by 70x+ (Dave Sebastian/Bloomberg)

CrowdStrike acquires identity management startup SGNL, in a deal valued at nearly $740M, to bolster identity security defenses on its flagship Falcon platform (Samantha Subin/CNBC)

Microsoft debuts Copilot Checkout in the US, enabling in-chat purchases via PayPal, Shopify, Stripe, and more; Shopify merchants will be automatically enrolled (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Land)

NYC-based Pomelo Care, which offers 24/7 virtual care for women by using data to flag pregnancy risks and more, raised $92M led by Stripes at a $1.7B valuation (Amy Feldman/Forbes)

Illicit crypto addresses received a record $154B in 2025, up 162% YoY, driven by sanctions evasion; Russia's A7A5 token transacted $93.3B+ in less than one year (Chainalysis)

Protege, which offers an AI data platform to access high-quality, proprietary training data at scale, raised $30M from a16z, extending its $25M Series A (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)

The European Commission orders X to retain all internal docs and data relating to Grok until the end of 2026, after criticizing Grok's nonconsensual images (Louise Breusch Rasmussen/Reuters)

Google makes Help Me Write, AI email summaries, and Suggested Replies free to all Gmail users, after previously requiring a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription (Abner Li/9to5Google)

Google rolls out an AI Inbox view for Gmail that shows users to-dos and summaries of topics rather than a traditional email list, first for US "trusted testers" (Jay Peters/The Verge)

Israeli data security startup Cyera raised a $400M Series F led by Blackstone Growth at a $9B valuation, up from $6B after raising $540M in June 2025 (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune)

Sources: China is considering how to build fences around its AI know-how amid the AI race and is identifying standout companies to add to an export control list (Wall Street Journal)

Sources and US tax lawyers: the IRS' planned audit of private equity and VC firms is faltering under President Trump; nearly all the project's leaders have left (Jesse Drucker/New York Times)

Lego says its Smart Brick is "here to stay" but "does not mean that we're leaving our core proposition behind", after criticism it's abandoning non-digital play (Tom Phillips/IGN)

Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood predicts "we'll see the first 100% AI-generated hit movie" within three years and discusses Roku's new $3/month Howdy service (Jennifer Maas/Variety)

Sources: wealthy Californians are quietly mobilizing on WhatsApp chats and calls in a long-shot bid to oust Representative Ro Khanna, who supports a wealth tax (Theodore Schleifer/New York Times)

Sources: China's Salt Typhoon accessed the emails of staff on powerful US House committees, detected last December, and intercepted senior US officials' calls (Demetri Sevastopulo/Financial Times)

A profile of VC firm Index Ventures, which saw billions in gains from exits in 2025, including Figma, Scale AI, and Dream Games, as it looks ahead to succession (Bloomberg)

A profile of Replit co-founder Amjad Masad, who was shunned in investor circles for his criticism of Israel's war in Gaza before Replit's AI agent took off (Margaux MacColl/The San Francisco ...)

China says it will investigate Meta's $2B Manus acquisition to assess compliance with laws on export controls, tech import and export, and overseas investment (CNBC)

Sources: China plans to approve some imports of Nvidia's H200 chips as soon as Q1 2026 while still barring them from military use and critical infrastructure (John Liu/Bloomberg)

Big US hospital systems have become a proving ground for AI adoption; a survey finds that 27% of health systems are paying for commercial AI licenses (Wall Street Journal)

Chinese local governments are funding dozens of "robot training centers", where human trainers mimic movements like folding clothes to teach the robots (Rest of World)

The US FCC exempts some new models of foreign-made drones and critical components from an import ban, announced in December 2025, until the end of 2026 (David Shepardson/Reuters)

Samsung says Ballie, a robot announced six years ago but never released, is an "active innovation platform" within the company helping inform other products (Chris Welch/Bloomberg)

Sources: to hedge against Beijing approval risk, Nvidia is requiring Chinese customers to pay upfront for H200 chips, with no cancellations, refunds, or changes (Reuters)

Ubisoft closes its mobile-focused Halifax studio weeks after majority of the workers voted to unionize, as CWA Canada says it is "demanding information" (Chris Kerr/Game Developer)

Microsoft Chief Scientific Officer Eric Horvitz warns that the US' cuts to academic research funding could push talent abroad and hand rivals an edge in AI (Financial Times)

Grok's website and app are being used to produce extremely graphic, sometimes violent, sexual imagery of adults that is far more explicit than images on X (Wired)

Chinese AI company Zhipu opened up 3.3% in its Hong Kong trading debut after raising ~$558M in its IPO at a ~$6.55B valuation, amid a flurry of AI startup IPOs (Yantoultra Ngui/Reuters)

Sources: OpenAI last fall set aside RSUs worth 10% of the company, which was valued in October 2025 at $500B; OpenAI has already awarded ~$80B in vested equity (Sri Muppidi/The Information)

Cyera researchers detail Ni8mare, a critical RCE flaw that lets hackers access local instances of the n8n workflow automation platform, impacting ~100K servers (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)

Ford plans to launch an AI voice assistant on its apps this year before expanding to its vehicles in 2027, and aims to debut Level 3 autonomous driving in 2028 (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)

Arm creates a "Physical AI" unit to focus on robotics and automotive sectors, as part of a reorganization that includes "Cloud and AI" and "Edge" business units (Reuters)

Samsung expects Q4 operating profit up 208% YoY to ~$13.8B, vs. ~$12.3B est., and revenue up 23% YoY to ~$64.2B, as AI server demand lifts memory chip prices (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg)

Trump family's World Liberty Financial says its entity World Liberty Trust has applied for a US banking license, which would let it issue the USD1 stablecoin (Vicky Ge Huang/Wall Street Journal)

Sources: Larry Page bought two Miami estates in December and January for a combined $173.4M; Sergey Brin is also said to be in discussions to buy a Miami home (Wall Street Journal)

WhatsApp rolls out new group chat features: member tags that show user roles, text stickers generated from any word, and custom event reminders (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

Alphabet surpassed Apple in market cap for the first time since 2019 after its shares closed up 2.5% on Wednesday, valuing it at $3.89T vs. Apple's $3.85T (Barron's Online)

Lux Capital raised $1.5B for its ninth fund, the largest in its history, to back companies focusing on fields like breakthrough science and national security (Lizette Chapman/Bloomberg)

Apple announces JPMorgan Chase as the new issuer of the Apple Card, taking over from Goldman Sachs, with an expected transition in about 24 months (Wall Street Journal)

OpenAI unveils ChatGPT Health, which lets users import medical records and other data from health apps into ChatGPT, available to a small group via a waitlist (Ina Fried/Axios)

Docs: Character.AI and Google agree to settle lawsuits with families of teenagers who killed or harmed themselves after interacting with Character.AI's chatbot (Amrith Ramkumar/Wall Street Journal)

Sources: Anthropic plans to raise $10B led by Singapore's GIC and Coatue Management at a $350B valuation before the new investment, up from $183B in September (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal)

Cambodia extradites Chen Zhi, the chairman of online scam conglomerate Prince Group, to China; in October, the US DOJ seized Chen's bitcoin worth nearly $12B (Gabriele Steinhauser/Wall Street Journal)

Utah launches a pilot program with health tech startup Doctronic to let AI systems handle routine prescription renewals for patients with chronic conditions (Politico)

Source: Ant Group's Ant International grew revenue by 20% to 25% in 2025 to an estimated $3.7B, or ~10% of Ant's total 2025 revenue, as it competes with Visa (Jing Yang/The Information)

Polymarket agrees to supply Dow Jones outlets like the WSJ and Barron's with prediction market trading data for online and in print, its first media partnership (Katherine Doherty/Bloomberg)

Sources: China has told some local tech companies to temporarily halt purchase orders for Nvidia's H200 chips while officials deliberate whether to approve them (Qianer Liu/The Information)

Spotify launches Listening Activity on iOS and Android, letting users view friends' real-time listening via the sidebar alongside chats, as an opt-in feature (Terrence O'Brien/The Verge)