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Anthropic has just concluded a $30 billion Series G fundraising round, the company announced on Thursday. The company’s new value is $380 billion — a huge jump from its previous Series F valuation of $183 billion. Some details of the round were reported earlier this week by Bloomberg. The new round was led by Singaporean wealth fund GIC and investment management firm Coatue, with a number of other prominent firms — including D. E. Shaw Ventures, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX — co-leading the round. Other significant investors listed include Accel, General Catalyst, Jane Street, and the…
Many people suspect that these bots are part of an AI company’s effort to collect training data from web pages. In 2025, AI bots accounted for a significant portion of overall web traffic, which crawl the internet for text and other information to feed to data-hungry large language models.But there are some key differences between these Chinese bots and other AI bots. First, there’s simply way more of them. King says on his website that the traffic from China and Singapore accounts for 22 percent of overall traffic, while all other AI bots account for less than 10 percent combined.Most…
Tim Spencer realized just how complicated manufacturing procurement can be while running Markai, an e-commerce startup in Asia, during the pandemic. “We had thousands of suppliers, and we were distributing products into dozens of countries around the world,” Spencer (pictured left) told TechCrunch. His staff was overwhelmed by the manual complexity of sourcing suppliers, negotiating pricing, tracking orders, and managing payments. “I found myself running this big team that was not really set up for success,” he said. He sold Markai in 2023, just as it was becoming clear that generative AI could streamline the most time-consuming procurement hurdles for…
Waymo needs some help, according to an email message the self-driving developer sent to residents of Washington, DC on Thursday.For more than a year, Waymo has been pushing city officials to pass new regulations allowing its robotaxis to operate in the District. So far, self-driving cars can test in the city, with humans behind the wheel, but not operate in driver-free mode. The Alphabet subsidiary—and its lobbyists—have asked local lawmakers, including Mayor Muriel Bower and members of the City Council, to create new rules allowing the tech to go truly driverless on its public roads. The company has previously said…
Reports that WPP plans to move its creative agencies under an umbrella called WPP Creative would mark a big step in the holding company’s multi-year effort to revive its business, following the creation of WPP Media and WPP Production.A source close to WPP leadership told ADWEEK the company has no plans to sunset Ogilvy, VML, or AKQA. Instead, the agencies would retain their identities while sharing back-end resources—similar to how Mindshare, Wavemaker, and EssenceMediacom operate under the new WPP Media. WPP is expected to outline more details about its strategy at an investor day on Feb.
Vincenzo Iozzo, a renowned hacker linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is no longer listed on the website of Black Hat, one of the largest cybersecurity conferences in the world, nor on the Japanese security conference Code Blue. As of Thursday, Iozzo does not appear on the official review board pages of Black Hat or Code Blue. He was still listed on both pages as of last week. Iozzo had been on the Black Hat review board since 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile. In a statement shared with TechCrunch through a spokesperson, Iozzo said he told Black Hat…
OpenAI’s president and cofounder Greg Brockman doesn’t consider himself political, which is surprising, because he was one of President Trump’s biggest individual donors of 2025.Greg and his wife, Anna Brockman, gave $25 million to MAGA Inc—a super PAC that supports President Trump—in September of last year. The pair also gave $25 million to a bipartisan AI super PAC, Leading the Future, which says it plans to oppose politicians that jeopardize Americans’ “ability to benefit from AI.” The Brockmans have pledged to give an additional $25 million to Leading the Future in 2026, according to a person with direct knowledge of…
Has AI coding reached a tipping point? That seems to be the case for Spotify at least, which shared this week during its fourth-quarter earnings that the best developers at the company “have not written a single line of code since December.” That statement, from Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström, came alongside other comments about how the company is using AI to accelerate development. Of note, Spotify pointed out it shipped more than 50 new features and changes to its streaming app throughout 2025. And, most recently, has rolled out more features, like AI-powered Prompted Playlists, Page Match for audiobooks, and…
I’ve used TurboTax to file my taxes for several years. It’s the most popular DIY tax service, and also often the cheapest and arguably most straightforward. TurboTax has the filer in mind by utilizing an easy-to-use interface, offering available expert help, with different options for document auto-upload; helpful tips and information regarding tax requirements; and transparent, low-cost options for every type of filer.The service makes it super easy for returning users by storing previous years’ information, allowing easy auto-upload, and remembering choices and previously used forms from years past. Doing my taxes as a returning user with TurboTax takes a…
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has raised concerns over allegations that Apple is censoring conservative content on the Apple News app. In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, FTC chair Andrew Ferguson cited reports from Media Research Center, a right-leaning think tank, which accused Apple of excluding right-leaning outlets from the top 20 articles in the Apple News feed. “These reports raise serious questions about whether Apple News is acting in accordance with its terms of service and its representations to consumers […] I abhor and condemn any attempt to censor content for ideological reasons,” Ferguson’s letter reads.…
In recent weeks, Elon Musk has followed president Donald Trump’s lead, slamming Iranian government officials and supporting the thousands of protesters railing against the regime. He even provided free access to his Starlink satellites in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout.But while publicly proclaiming his support of the protesters, Musk’s company X appears to be profiting from the very same government officials he railed against, potentially violating US sanctions in the process, according to a new report from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) shared exclusively with WIRED.TTP identified more than two dozen X accounts allegedly run by Iranian government…
Entries for the 2026 ADWEEK Tech Stack Awards are now open.From products that enable advertisers to reach and capture audiences to martech platforms that transform how businesses operate, this annual list recognizes the top tech companies in advertising. Last year’s winners include Hubspot, Microsoft Advertising, Snap Inc., and Vimeo. Entrants are welcome from around the world to submit across 25 categories by May 8, 2026. Note: A company cannot be honored in the same category two years in a row. See the full list of categories below:Product/Platform Categories Addressable Identity Product/Platform – Honoring solutions advancing cookieless data privacy and identity resolution. Through…
If you want to buy or sell a used EV right now, what’s the first step you’d take? A startup called Ever wants to be the answer to that question. The company, which bills itself as the first “AI-native, full-stack auto retail business” for electric vehicles, already has thousands of customers buying and selling their EVs on the platform. Now it’s looking to scale with help from a $31 million Series A funding round led by Eclipse, with Ibex Investors, Lifeline Ventures, and JIMCO — the investment arm of the Saudi Arabian Jameel family (an early investor in Rivian) —…
TVs can be tricky to buy. Whether you read our exquisite guide to the Best TVs or not, you probably won’t find every top model at your local Walmart, Best Buy, or Costco. And when you’re browsing retail websites, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by marketing speak like HDR, QLED, or “local dimming.” That’s why we’ve collected a few tips, tricks, and terms to help you shop smarter when buying a new TV. Think of this as a checklist to consider before you buy your next big screen.Be sure to check out our guide to the Best Bookshelf Speakers, Best…
In a sense, this whole thing was inevitable. Elon Musk and his coterie have been talking about AI in space for years — mainly in the context of Iain Banks’ science-fiction series about a far-future universe where sentient spaceships roam and control the galaxy. Now Musk sees an opportunity to realize a version of this vision. His company SpaceX has requested regulatory permission to build solar-powered orbital data centers, distributed across as many as a million satellites, that could shift as much as 100 GW of compute power off the planet. He has reportedly suggested some of his AI satellites will…
Other MagSafe Power Banks to ConsiderWe like a few other MagSafe power banks that didn’t make it into our top picks.Apple MagSafe Battery for iPhone Air. Photograph: Julian ChokkattuApple’s MagSafe Battery for iPhone Air for $99: The super svelte iPhone Air doesn’t have room for a big battery, so Apple offers this perfectly sized MagSafe add-on, capable of charging wirelessly at 12 watts. But, with just 3,149 mAh of power (it charged the iPhone Air to 68 percent), it’s awfully pricey. Still, it’s one of the few perfectly designed for the iPhone Air. You can technically use it with other…