Meaghan Tobin / New York Times:
Analysis: despite investing $150B+ in 10+ years, China is expected to produce 2% of global AI chips in 2026 and 70x less memory storage than foreign chipmakers  —  More than a decade into Beijing's push for self sufficiency, Chinese firms are producing fewer, lower-performing chips than their foreign competitors.

Jessica Brice / Bloomberg:
A deep dive into a global money-laundering ecosystem powered by crypto and messaging apps like WeChat and Telegram, used by drug cartels and criminal groups  —  A vast ecosystem supported by the gig economy has sprung up to clean all that cash.  —  The pitch was simple: Crypto for “cold hard cash.”

Rafe Rosner-Uddin / Financial Times:
Current and former senior employees say AWS is undergoing a strategic shake-up amid fears it is losing ground to competitors in securing corporate AI contracts  —  Shake-up follows fears tech giant missed early AI boom as Microsoft and Google challenge cloud business

Eduardo Baptista / Reuters:
ByteDance launches Doubao 2.0, an “agent era” upgrade of China's most widely used AI app capable of executing multi-step tasks, ahead of the Lunar New Year  —  China's ByteDance has rolled out its Doubao 2.0 model, an upgrade of the country's most widely used artificial-intelligence app, the company said on Saturday.

Ingrid Lunden / Resilience Media:
Dealroom and NATO Innovation Fund: European defense, security, and resilience startup funding rose 55% YoY to a record $8.7B in 2025, with AI accounting for 44%  —  Ahead of the big Munich Security Conference later this week, the analysts at Dealroom teamed up with the NATO Innovation Fund …