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Trump Media & Technology Group names Kevin McGurn as interim CEO, succeeding Devin Nunes; McGurn previously worked as an executive at Hulu, Vevo, and T-Mobile (Todd Spangler/Variety)

Source: a handful of unauthorized users in a private Discord channel have been accessing Anthropic's Mythos model since the day the company announced it (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg)

Google now offers two research agents: Deep Research, replacing its December preview release, and Deep Research Max, both available via Gemini API paid tiers (The Keyword)

Reliable Robotics, which is developing autonomous aircraft systems for cargo flights, raised $160M led by Nimble Partners, pushing its valuation to ~$1B (Cailley LaPara/Bloomberg)

Adobe announces a $25B stock repurchase program through April 30, 2030; Adobe shares have fallen around 30% so far this year (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)

The US DOJ says a former ransomware negotiator pleaded guilty to helping cybercriminals extort companies in cyberattacks in five different incidents (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)

Roblox reaches settlements totaling $35.8M with the AGs of West Virginia, Alabama, and Nevada over child-safety protections (Cecilia D'Anastasio/Bloomberg)

An interview with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman on OpenAI's restructuring, cutting Sora, "personal AGI", Anthropic's "fear-based marketing" for Mythos, and more (Core Memory)

Core Scientific plans to raise $3.3B via a junk bond sale to finance its shift from crypto mining to building AI data centers and leasing them to CoreWeave (Francisco Rodrigues/CoinDesk)

Sources: following Manus probe, Chinese authorities ordered at least one other prominent AI startup, MiroMind, not to send talent and research out of China (Washington Post)

Mozilla says its Firefox 150 release includes fixes for 271 vulnerabilities identified using early access to Anthropic's Mythos Preview (Lily Hay Newman/Wired)

NeoCognition, which wants to build AI agents that self-learn like humans, emerges from stealth with a $40M seed co-led by Cambium Capital and Walden Catalyst (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

ChatGPT Images 2.0 is available globally to ChatGPT and Codex users, with a more powerful version for paying subscribers; its knowledge cutoff is December 2025 (Reece Rogers/Wired)

OpenAI says ChatGPT Images 2.0 comes in Instant and Thinking variants and can generate images of up to 2K resolution and in multiple aspect ratios (Zac Hall/9to5Mac)

OpenAI says that ChatGPT Images 2.0 has a stronger understanding of non-Latin text rendering in languages like Japanese, Korean, Hindi, and Bengali (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)

Draft IPO prospectus: SpaceX debt grew from $14B in 2024 to $23B in 2025, tied to a $4.5B lease deal with Valor Equity for AI equipment such as chips for xAI (The Information)

OpenAI releases ChatGPT Images 2.0 with new "thinking capabilities", allowing it to search the web to help it create multiple images from a single prompt (Emma Roth/The Verge)

How opposition to data centers, over concerns like power demands, pollution, and water needs, has become a voting issue for many people in the 2026 US midterms (NPR)

All-hands: Tim Cook said he's stepping down now to ensure the "best-ever transition," citing strong financials, an "incredible" pipeline, and Ternus' readiness (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

New York Attorney General Letitia James sues Coinbase and Gemini, claiming their prediction markets violate state laws against illegal gambling (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters)

Clarifai says it has deleted 3M OkCupid user photos and facial-recognition models trained on them after the US FTC settled with OkCupid over privacy violations (Jody Godoy/Reuters)

Sources: CISA doesn't have access to Mythos Preview, even as some other government agencies use it; Anthropic says it briefed CISA before Mythos' unveiling (Sam Sabin/Axios)

Meta is installing tracking software on US staffers' computers to capture mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes in work-related apps for use in AI training (Reuters)

Google's Chief AI Architect Koray Kavukcuoglu is working to unite its internal AI coding tools under the Antigravity platform, to counter Claude Code and Codex (Julia Love/Bloomberg)

Sources: Kalshi plans to offer crypto trading in the US, offering perpetual futures, putting it in competition with exchanges like Coinbase (Yueqi Yang/The Information)

Florida AG James Uthmeier issues criminal subpoenas to OpenAI to investigate if ChatGPT's role in planning a mass shooting constitutes criminal liability (Alex Ebert/Bloomberg Law)

The nonprofit Consumer Federation of America sues Meta, accusing it of misleading consumers about its efforts to combat scam ads on Facebook and Instagram (Maddy Varner/Wired)

Microsoft cuts Xbox Game Pass Ultimate price from $29.99 to $22.99/month and PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99, but both tiers won't get new Call of Duty games (Tom Warren/The Verge)

Filings: crypto PACs amassed a ~$180M war chest for the 2026 midterms, including Fairshake's $166M, giving them the ability to outspend some GOP super PACs (Bloomberg)

Anthropic started requiring government-issued photo IDs and selfies from some users to prevent access from US adversaries like China, Russia, and North Korea (Juro Osawa/The Information)

OpenAI enables cost-per-click ads inside ChatGPT, setting bids at between $3 and $5 per click, in addition to CPMs (Digiday)

Humble unveils a fully electric cabless autonomous truck called the Humble Hauler and comes out of stealth with a $24M seed led by Eclipse (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune)

Draft of SpaceX's confidential IPO prospectus: Elon Musk increased his stake in SpaceX last year by purchasing $1.4B of stock from current and former employees (The Information)

Australia-based Syenta, which aims to use electrochemical "stamping" to speed up chip manufacturing, raised $26M and says Pat Gelsinger will join its board (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)

Stripe and Paradigm-backed Tempo launches a "stablecoin advisory" for businesses and is working with DoorDash to let delivery workers get paid in stablecoins (Jack Kubinec/Fortune)

YouTube makes its deepfake detection tool available to anyone at high risk of having their likeness abused, expanding it from public officials and politicians (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)

Trump says his administration had "some very good talks" with Anthropic during a WH meeting last week and "it's possible" there will be a deal with DOD (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)

Tim Cook had an extraordinary run and impeccable timing in stepping down, with Apple in a better place than it has ever been as AI becomes its next big test (Ben Thompson/Stratechery)

Sources: Revolut is aiming for a valuation of $150B to $200B in an IPO; founder Nik Storonsky said this week that Revolut would IPO in 2028 at the earliest (Financial Times)

UK's Ofcom launches an investigation into Telegram over concerns of CSAM being shared on the platform and it being used by predators to groom children (Muvija M/Reuters)

The UK proposes an amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill to ban smartphones in all schools in England; a ban was previously just advisory (Sally Weale/The Guardian)

Tim Cook's 15-year legacy by the numbers: Apple's market cap grew from $350B in 2011 to $4T+ now, net income rose ~700% to $112B for FY 2025, and more (Vlad Savov/Bloomberg)

A profile of John Ternus, a mechanical engineer by background, who joined Apple in 2001 and whose biggest success was helping Mac's transition to Apple Silicon (Rolfe Winkler/Wall Street Journal)

Longtime colleagues say John Ternus will bring back Jobs-era decisiveness, shifting from Cook's era when decisions were made collectively by top executives (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

A look at EU efforts to cut reliance on US tech; study: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google hold ~70% of EU cloud and US vendors get 80% of enterprise software spend (Politico)

Tim Cook reshaped Apple in his own image and exits as CEO on his own terms, seemingly picking the right successor in John Ternus, much like Jobs did with Cook (John Gruber/Daring Fireball)

A look at transnational scam syndicates in Cambodia, running hundreds of online scam operations and call centers and infiltrating Cambodia's ruling class (Wall Street Journal)

Chinese PCB maker Victory Giant surges ~57% in its Hong Kong trading debut after raising ~$2.6B in its IPO, the largest in the city so far this year (Eunice Xu/South China Morning Post)

Sources: Jeff Bezos' Project Prometheus is close to a $10B fundraising deal, which includes an initial $6.2B raise in November, at a $38B post-money valuation (Financial Times)

In an email to employees, Johny Srouji details newly combined hardware engineering and hardware technologies division, organized across five key areas (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)