Ashley Gold / Axios:
OpenAI says nearly 1.3M weekly users are discussing “advanced topics in hard science” in January, with an average of 8.4M ChatGPT messages on those topics  —  AI is increasingly being used as a research collaborator for mathematicians and scientists, per a new report from OpenAI shared exclusively with Axios.

Cade Metz / New York Times:
Ricursive, founded by ex-Google researchers to automate advanced chip design, raised $335M from Sequoia, Radical, Lightspeed, and others at a $4B valuation  —  One new start-up is called Recursive with an “e.”  Another is called Ricursive with an “i.”  They are trying to do the same thing …

Irina Anghel / Bloomberg:
Morgan Stanley: UK companies reported that AI led to 8% net job losses over the past 12 months, above Japan's 7%, Germany's 4%, Australia's 2%; the US added 2%  —  The UK is losing more jobs than it's creating because of artificial intelligence — and at a faster rate than its international peers.

Josh Chin / Wall Street Journal:
Documents: China's military is focused on harnessing AI to deploy swarms of drones, robot dogs, and other autonomous systems, learning from hawks and coyotes  —  Beijing's military focuses on swarming drones that can pick off prey or robots that can chase down enemies

Jasmine Sun / @jasmine's substack:
Claude Code can feel daunting, and most people's problems are not software-shaped, but it is clearly autonomous and the home-cooked app renaissance is great  —  are your problems software-shaped?  —  ∙ Paid  —  If you tell a friend they can now instantly create any app, they'll probably say “Cool!