Monday, 2 February 2026
Welcome to today's roundup of the most interesting developments in AI and technology.
Top Stories
AI layoffs or ‘AI-washing’?
How many of the companies with recent layoffs are just using AI as an excuse?
Read moreWhy Tether’s CEO is everywhere right now
For years, Tether's CEO avoided the United States, watching from offshore as regulators circled and prosecutors investigated. Those days are over.
Read moreIndonesia ‘conditionally’ lifts ban on Grok
Indonesia has followed Malaysia and the Philippines in lifting a ban on xAI’s chatbot Grok.
Read moreIndia offers zero taxes through 2047 to lure global AI workloads
New Delhi's latest move comes as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft expand data center investments in India.
Read moreBye-bye corporate conglomerates. Hello personal conglomerates.
Elon Musk's reported merging of SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla harkens back to the heyday of General Electric — or maybe the robber barons of the Gilded Age.
Read moreNvidia CEO pushes back against report that his company’s $100B OpenAI investment has stalled
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that a recent report of friction between his company and OpenAI was “nonsense.”
Read moreA peek inside Physical Intelligence, the startup building Silicon Valley’s buzziest robot brains
If co-founder Lachy Groom has any doubts, he doesn’t show it. He’s working with people who've been working on this problem for decades and who believe the timing is finally right, which is all he need
Read moreOpenClaw’s AI assistants are now building their own social network
The viral personal AI assistant formerly known as Clawdbot has a new shell — again. After briefly rebranding as Moltbot, it has now picked OpenClaw as its new name.
Read moreAnthropic brings agentic plug-ins to Cowork
The company says you can use plug-ins to "tell Claude how you like work done, which tools and data to pull from, how to handle critical workflows, and what slash commands to expose so your team gets m
Read moreLast 24 hours to grab your plus-one pass at 50% off to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Today is the last day to lock in a plus-one pass at 50% off to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, happening on October 13-15 in San Francisco.
Read moreGuys, I don’t think Tim Cook knows how to monetize AI
One intrepid Morgan Stanley analyst dared to ask how Apple will make money on its AI investments. The answer will not shock you.
Read moreElon Musk’s SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI in talks to merge, according to reports
This merger would bring the Grok chatbot, Starlink satellites, and SpaceX rockets together under one corporation.
Read moreAmazon is reportedly in talks to invest $50B in OpenAI
If a deal materializes, it would mean Amazon is backing competing startups in the race for AI supremacy.
Read moreSatya Nadella insists people are using Microsoft’s Copilot AI a lot
With Microsoft spending many billions on data centers, and rumors that no one is using its AI, CEO Satya Nadella shared some usage numbers.
Read moreApple buys Israeli startup Q.ai as the AI race heats up
Q.ai is an Israeli startup specializing in imaging and machine learning, particularly technologies that enable devices to interpret whispered speech and enhance audio in noisy environments.
Read moreI built marshmallow castles in Google’s new AI-world generator
Starting Thursday, Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. can play around with Project Genie, which is powered by a combination of Google’s latest world model Genie 3, its image generation model Nano
Read moreOpenAI’s Sora app is struggling after its stellar launch
New data suggests the app is seeing declines in both app downloads and consumer spending, as the early hype about the AI video social network wears off.
Read moreMusic publishers sue Anthropic for $3B over ‘flagrant piracy’ of 20,000 works
Originally, these music publishers had filed a lawsuit against Anthropic over its use of about 500 copyrighted works.
Read moreIndia is teaching Google how AI in education can scale
With the highest global usage of Gemini for learning, India is emerging as a key market shaping Google's approach to AI in education.
Read moreFlapping Airplanes and the promise of research-driven AI
A new AI lab called Flapping Airplanes launched yesterday, and a Sequoia partner has an interesting take on why they stand out.
Read more