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Source: Meta on Wednesday laid off around 700 employees in the Reality Labs unit, as well as some in recruiting, sales, and Facebook (Eli Tan/New York Times)

Nintendo says new first-party games exclusive to Switch 2 will have different prices for physical and digital versions in the US, beginning in May (Andy Robinson/Video Games Chronicle)

ARC Prize Foundation unveils ARC-AGI-3, an AI benchmark with simple video-game-like scenarios designed to measure on-the-fly reasoning rather than memory recall (Mark Sullivan/Fast Company)

Reddit says it will label automated accounts that provide a service to users and will require accounts suspected of being bots to verify they are human (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

The jury in Los Angeles' social media trial awards the plaintiff $3M in compensatory damages and $3M in punitive damages; Meta will pay 70% and YouTube 30% (New York Times)

Social media addiction trial: a Los Angeles jury finds Meta and YouTube were negligent and failed to warn users about the dangers of using their platforms (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)

Google launches Lyria 3 Pro music generation model, with better creative control and allowing users to create three-minute tracks, up from Lyria 3's 30 seconds (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plan to introduce legislation to pause new data center construction until AI safeguards are in place (Maria Curi/Axios)

Sources: cloud provider Vultr is seeking to raise $1B+ to expand its AI computing capacity, after raising $333M at a $3.5B valuation in 2024 (The Information)

Epic Microsystems, which designs power delivery architecture for better thermal and efficiency management of AI data centers, raised a $21M Series A (Chris Metinko/Axios)

Source: as part of its Google deal, Apple has full access to the Gemini model in its own data centers and can use distillation to produce smaller models (The Information)

Charlotte-based Lucid Bots, which manufactures autonomous drones for cleaning windows, raised a $20M Series B co-led by Cubit and Idea Fund (Rebecca Szkutak/TechCrunch)

Google Research details TurboQuant, a quantization algorithm to enable massive compression of LLMs and vector search engines without sacrificing accuracy (Google Research)

SCOTUS rules unanimously that Cox could not be held liable for the piracy of thousands of songs online, after music labels sued the internet provider in 2018 (Ann E. Marimow/New York Times)

Glimpse, which uses AI agents to let 200+ brands automate financial deduction processes, raised a $35M Series A led by a16z, bringing its total raised to $52M (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)

Notch, which is developing an OS designed for high-compliance sectors, raised a $30M Series A led by Headline, after pivoting from being a specialty insurer (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)

Elon Musk says X will "pause" new creator monetization rules that would base payouts on engagement from a user's local audience, after criticism from creators (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Meta confirms plans to lay off staff; sources say the cuts impact a few hundred people; a source says across Reality Labs, social media, recruiting, and sales (Jyoti Mann/The Information)

Normal Computing, which uses AI to help chip companies design chips more efficiently, raised $50M led by Samsung Catalyst and says it has 5+ top chip clients (Sharon Goldman/Fortune)

Legal AI company Harvey raised $200M led by GIC and Sequoia at an $11B valuation, up from $8B in December 2025, and reports 100K+ users at 1,300+ organizations (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)

Sources: AI science startup Periodic Labs, founded by ex-OpenAI VP Liam Fedus and DeepMind's Ekin Cubuk, aims to raise hundreds of millions at a ~$7B valuation (Bloomberg)

President Trump names Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Jensen Huang, and others to the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, co-chaired by David Sacks (Wall Street Journal)

Apple rolls out mandatory UK age verification with iOS 26.4, requiring users to provide a credit card or ID, a first in Europe, after UK government pressure (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

Temu owner PDD reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to ~$18B and net profit down 11% YoY to ~$3.56B, below ~$4B est., as it seeks to retain merchants on its platform (Tracy Qu/Wall Street Journal)

AI note taking startup Granola raised $125M led by Index Ventures at a $1.5B valuation, and plans Claude integrations and agentic AI features in the next year (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)

Memo: Mark Zuckerberg debuts Meta Small Business, a company-wide priority to support entrepreneurship and drive AI use, led by Dina Powell McCormick and others (Axios)

Q&A with Arm CEO Rene Haas on changing Arm's culture, working with Arm owner SoftBank, developing Arm's AGI CPU data center chip fabricated by TSMC, and more (Lauren Goode/Wired)

Kansas-based NoTraffic, which uses AI-driven operating systems and sensor data to optimize intersection traffic flow, raised a $90M Series C led by PSG Equity (Chris Metinko/Axios)

Chinese AI company Kuaishou reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to ~$5.7B, meeting est., adjusted net income up 16% YoY, and Kling text-to-video revenue of ~$49M (Rachel Yeo/Bloomberg)

X says it is updating its revenue-sharing incentives to give more weight to engagement from a user's home region, hoping to "disincentivize" gaming US attention (Mariella Moon/Engadget)

How internet censorship tech maker Sandvine, a vendor to repressive regimes like Egypt, nearly collapsed before US restrictions forced new ownership and a pivot (Ryan Gallagher/Bloomberg)

US digital rights group Holistic Resilience launched Mahsa Alert to provide Iranians with offline mapping and strike notifications, hitting 100K DAUs in days (Wired)

OpenAI hires Kiran Mani, the CEO of Indian streaming platform JioStar, for a newly created role leading its Asia-Pacific operations, reporting to CSO Jason Kwon (Newley Purnell/Bloomberg)

EQT and McKinsey study: between 2014 and 2025, European tech companies with a current combined value of ~$1.4T listed abroad or were acquired by foreign buyers (Bloomberg)

Memo: Sam Altman says OpenAI's next model finished pretraining, and moves Safety to Research and Security to Scaling; Fidji Simo becomes CEO of "AGI Deployment" (Alex Heath/Sources)

How AI is helping geologists identify thousands of slopes around the world at high risk of slipping by analyzing data from satellites and ground-based sensors (Chris Baraniuk/BBC)

Large US corporations are not ditching core business software for AI yet, instead seeking better vendor deals and "vibe-coding" smaller apps and customizations (Belle Lin/Wall Street Journal)

Sources: worsening supply constraints in CPUs made by Intel and AMD add a fresh blow to PC and server makers already hit by a severe memory chip shortage (Nikkei Asia)

Sources: China bars Manus co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao from leaving the country as it reviews whether Meta's $2B acquisition of Manus violates FDI rules (Financial Times)

The Trump administration settles the 2022 Murthy v. Missouri case, preventing the Surgeon General, CDC, and CISA from pressuring social media to suppress speech (Mike Scarcella/Reuters)

Filing: Meta offers top executives stock options for the first time since its 2012 IPO to retain talent, if it hits stock-price milestones in the coming years (Kurt Wagner/Bloomberg)

Amity, a Thailand-based startup that provides generative AI tools to businesses like retail and telecom, raised $100M in a Series D as it plans for a 2027 IPO (Olivia Poh/Bloomberg)

Neal Stephenson says he no longer believes head-mounted displays are the future, citing public discomfort with the devices and a general distrust of the users (Neal Stephenson/Graphomane)

Sources: some Sora team members were surprised by OpenAI's sudden decision to end Sora support, just a day after OpenAI posted a blog on Sora safety standards (Reuters)

Source: Meta's rollout of Meta Ray-Ban Display in the EU has been hampered by regulations on AI features and removable batteries, as well as supply constraints (Bloomberg)

Source: SpaceX is aiming to file its IPO prospectus with regulators later this week or next week, and could try to raise more than $75B (The Information)

Spotify is beta testing Artist Profile Protection, allowing artists to review releases before they go live to prevent AI tracks from being attributed to them (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

SK Hynix has submitted a confidential filing to the SEC for a possible listing of American depositary receipts in 2026; it reportedly considers raising ~$10B (Reuters)

Meta announces new shopping and ad features, including affiliate marketing tools for Instagram and Facebook creators and a "buy now" button for Facebook ads (Sydney Bradley/Business Insider)

A US judge dismisses a lawsuit against Meta by Attaullah Baig, former head of cybersecurity at WhatsApp, who alleged Meta ignored critical security flaws (Carly Nairn/Courthouse News Service)