Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Investigation: Sama data annotators in Nairobi say they view private videos from Ray-Ban Meta glasses, like bathroom visits; ex-Meta staff say faces are blurred (SvD)

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Senator Ron Wyden, the Senate Finance Committee's top Democrat, vows to "pull out all the stops" to fight back after Trump barred Anthropic from government work (Steven T. Dennis/Bloomberg)

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Sam Altman says the DOD affirmed that OpenAI's tools wouldn't be used by agencies like the NSA, and services to them would need a further contract modification (Dylan Butts/CNBC)

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A look at the US DOJ's December 2025 lawsuit that alleged a smuggling ring illegally exported or tried to export $160M+ in advanced Nvidia AI chips to China (Eliot Chen/The Wire China)

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Sam Altman says that "the democratic process must stay in control, and we must democratize AI" and that no private company should decide the fate of the world (Sam Altman/@sama)

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Sam Altman says OpenAI amended its DOD contract to ensure "the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of US persons and nationals" (George Hammond/Financial Times)

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Sam Altman says rushing the DOD deal on Friday "looked opportunistic and sloppy" but OpenAI was "trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome" (Katherine Li/Business Insider)

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Ayar Labs, which aims to replace the copper wiring in semiconductors with fiber optics, raised a $500M Series E led by Neuberger Berman at a $3.8B valuation (Robbie Whelan/Wall Street Journal)

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Meta is testing a shopping research feature in its Meta AI web browser for select US users, positioning it against e-commerce tools in ChatGPT and Gemini (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg)

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AWS says its facilities in the Middle East are facing power and connectivity issues after drones "directly struck" its infrastructure in the UAE and Bahrain (Annie Palmer/CNBC)

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Bengaluru-based Pronto, which offers on-demand home-help services like cooking and cleaning, raised a $25M Series B led by Epiq Capital at a $100M valuation (Sankalp Phartiyal/Bloomberg)

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OpenAI and the DOD agree to add more surveillance protections to the recent AI deal; sources say Sam Altman approached the DOD's Emil Michael to rework the deal (Maria Curi/Axios)

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Anthropic brings Claude's memory feature to free users, after launching it for paid users in October 2025 (Igor Bonifacic/Engadget)

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Sources: X and xAI are set to repay ~$17.5B of debt in full; X took on ~$12.5B of debt during Musk's purchase, and xAI borrowed $5B via bonds and loans in June (Bloomberg)

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MongoDB reports Q4 revenue up 27% YoY to $695.1M, above $670M est., and forecasts Q1 adjusted earnings per share below estimates; MDB drops 22%+ pre-market (Angela Palumbo/Barron's Online)

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Sources: amid negotiations with the DOD, Anthropic submitted a bid to compete in a $100M DOD contest to develop voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming tech (Katrina Manson/Bloomberg)

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Filing: Japan's PayPay is seeking to raise up to $1.1B at an up to $13.4B valuation in its US IPO, selling nearly 55M shares priced between $17 and $20 each (Arasu Kannagi Basil/Reuters)

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Source: Cursor's annualized revenue topped $2B in February, doubling from three months earlier, and about 60% of the revenue is coming from corporate customers (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg)

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The US Treasury Department, State Department, and federal housing agency are ending use of Anthropic products; State Department says it will switch to OpenAI (Reuters)

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Sources: US considers limiting Chinese companies to 75K Nvidia H200 chips each, less than half of what some want to buy; AMD MI325 chips also count toward a cap (Bloomberg)

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