Twitter and Pinterest creators have launched a "conscious" social network Tangle.

Biz Stone and Evan Sharp have teamed up in the startup West Co to fix what they once helped create. Their new project Tangle has already raised $29 million in investments. The app is positioned as an antidote to toxic algorithms and endless scrolling, according to the Financial Times.

The app is based on personal goals rather than content. Every morning, the app asks users, "What is your intention for today?" Users are encouraged to share their plans and support their friends in achieving their goals, rather than consuming other people's lifestyles. The project is currently in a closed mode and requires invites.

In Vietnam, the rules of online advertising have been rewritten without any big announcements.

This is done at the level of government regulation and mandatory requirements for platforms and advertisers.
For the market, this is not a formality, but a turning point.

As of February 15, 2026, aggressive advertising is officially out of bounds of the law —
in accordance with Decree No. 342/2025/NĐ-CP, adopted by the Government of Vietnam and detailing the changes to the Advertising Law (amended No. 75/2025/QH15).

Elon Musk's Grok neural network is being used en masse to create deepfakes with people "stripped down".

This has caused a wave of criticism and led to the blocking of the service in Indonesia. In the UK, the authorities are also preparing for a ban, and against the backdrop of these news, the app became the most downloaded in the local App Store.

According to Bloomberg, the scale of the problem is enormous: in a day, through Grok, almost 7 thousand naked images were generated per hour, while five other popular services together created only 79 such pictures over the same period. A feature that allows users to process images directly on the X social network has led to the mass creation of obscene photos of ordinary people, including minors. Elon Musk, in turn, publicly ridicules the regulators' claims.

Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a lawsuit against the AI service Midjourney over Batman, Superman, and Scooby-Doo.

The studio has accused the company that created the neural network of violating the copyrights of these and other characters, according to Reuters.

The lawsuit claims that Midjourney was aware of the illegality of such actions. Previously, the AI service blocked users from creating videos from images that violated copyright, but it lifted this restriction in August, according to Warner Bros.

The film studio is seeking damages, forfeiture of profits, and an end to further violations.

Earlier, Walt Disney and Universal filed a similar lawsuit against Midjourney. Characters whose images were illegally used include Darth Vader, Bart Simpson, Shrek, and Ariel (from The Little Mermaid).

Amazon has required employees to include specific "achievements" in their performance reviews.

Achievements are defined as "specific projects, goals, initiatives, and process improvements" that "reflect" an employee's personal contributions, according to Business Insider, citing sources and internal documents.

The company did not provide specific examples, but clarified that it is also possible to include situations where an employee "took a risk" or "introduced an innovation," even if the outcome did not meet expectations.

At Amazon, reviews are a crucial part of the company's process for reviewing salaries and bonuses. According to BI's interviewees, the company has shifted its focus to the "achievements" of each corporate unit for the first time. Previously, the questions were general, such as what an employee considers to be their superpower and how they contribute to the company's growth.

OpenAI and other AI companies are investing $333 million in promoting AI on TV during the Super Bowl.

According to the iSpot report, this figure will be 43% higher than a year ago. According to experts, the cost of a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl exceeds $8 million. However, according to The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI plans to air a 60-second commercial during the Super Bowl final game. This is the second year in a row that ChatGPT has purchased a commercial slot.

Amazon has decided to challenge Walmart in its own territory by planning to open a hypermarket on the outskirts of Chicago.

The hypermarket will have an area of almost 21,300 square meters, which is even larger than the average store size of its competitor, which typically occupies 16,900 square meters. The hypermarket will offer a wide range of products, including groceries, prepared meals, and various non-food items.

The hypermarket will also include a warehouse that will serve as a storage facility for the hypermarket itself, rather than being used as a distribution center for Amazon's main business. The construction plan has already been approved by the local authorities, and construction may begin this year.

An Amazon spokesperson commented on the company's plans:

We regularly test new approaches to make customers' daily lives better and easier, including physical formats. The site mentioned is the location for our new format, which we believe will delight customers.

The UAE became the leader in AI adoption in the first half of 2025.

This is according to the 2025 data from the Microsoft AI Economy Institute. The UAE increased its lead by more than three percentage points compared to Singapore, which continues to rank second with 60.9% adoption.

The second half of the year in the United States shows that while innovation and infrastructure leadership is critical, it alone does not lead to widespread AI adoption. The US leads in both AI infrastructure and frontier model development, but among the working-age population, it has fallen from 23rd to 24th place in AI adoption, at 28.3%. It lags far behind smaller, more digital and AI-centric economies.

DeepSeek has gained popularity in markets that are under-served by Western AI platforms.

Adoption has remained low in North America and Europe, but has increased dramatically in China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Belarus, and across Africa — countries where U.S. services face restrictions or where access to foreign technology is limited. In particular, DeepSeek's use in Africa is estimated to be 2-4 times higher than in other regions. At the same time, countries where established alternatives already meet local needs, such as Israel and South Korea, show minimal adoption of this activity.

Several factors explain this pattern. The free DeepSeek service has eliminated the cost barriers (requiring credit cards or paid upgrades) typical of Western models. Additionally, Chinese technology companies, including DeepSeek and infrastructure partners like Huawei, have actively promoted and implemented the platform in African markets.

Although South Korea's interest in AI was high, the capabilities of large language models in Korean were not keeping up.

This changed in April 2025, when OpenAI released its Model 40 to all users, significantly expanding capabilities in Korean, as well as with the release of GPT-5 in August 2025.

The results of the model on the Korean SAT benchmark (CSAT), a widely used measure of academic ability for university applicants, increased dramatically: GPT-3.5 (the best model at the free level at the time) scored 16, GPT-4o reached 75, and GPT-5 scored 100. This represented a shift from below-adult-level reading proficiency to results comparable to those of top-level students.

The development of AI has provoked a global shortage of electricians.

The arms race in the field of artificial intelligence has led to an unexpected personnel problem. IT giants are now short of blue-collar workers, not developers, electricians, installers and ventilation specialists, writes Wired.

The boom in data center construction has forced tech corporations to compete for workers with traditional developers. To meet deadlines, contractors are luring employees with higher salaries and generous overtime pay. Google has already launched a program to train 100,000 new electricians and plans to increase its workforce by 70% over the next five years.

Closing the gap quickly is challenging, as training takes time, and critical data center facilities often avoid interns due to the risk of errors.

Amazon continues to expand its Prime Air drone delivery program.

Test flights are already taking place in the US and the UK.

The new generation of MK30 drones is capable of flying in bad weather, is quieter than previous models, and does not touch the ground when landing, which reduces the risk of damage to the device.

So far, Prime Air works with small but popular categories weighing about 2 kg — medical products, food, cosmetics.

Labubu's stock price soared by 10%.

Pop Mart's stock price on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange showed a sharp increase. This was due to a large-scale buyback of its own shares (buyback): the company spent $32 million on this to support the market.

In recent months, investors have been concerned that the hype surrounding the toothy monsters has subsided, as the company's value has decreased by 40% since August 2025. The management decided to halt the decline and prove that the business is in good shape by buying back shares for the first time in two years.

Bezos's Blue Origin has announced the launch of a satellite communication network with more than 5,000 satellites, which will be used by government agencies, data centers, and businesses.

The project is called TeraWave and will serve corporate customers — data centers, government agencies, and large companies, Blue Origin said.
The network will include 5,280 satellites in low Earth orbit (data transfer speed up to 144 Gbps) and 128 in medium Earth orbit (up to 6 Tbps).

The satellite constellation is scheduled to be deployed in the fourth quarter of 2027. The company did not specify how long it will take to build the entire network.
Blue Origin announced the launch of TeraWave a few months after the rebranding of another Jeff Bezos company's satellite internet service, Amazon.

Its project is called Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper), which is planned to include over 3,000 satellites in low Earth orbit.

Amazon took 4th place in the ranking of the most expensive brands.

Apple once again became the most expensive brand in the world. The brand value increased by 6% and reached $607.6 billion, which allowed the company to maintain its first place in the Brand Finance Global 500 ranking.

Microsoft took the second place, with its brand value estimated at $565.2 billion, which is the second time in the history of the Brand Finance ranking that a brand value exceeded $550 billion. Google took the third place with an indicator of $433.1 billion, confirming the resilience of technology giants in the face of global competition.

The fourth was Amazon ($369.9 billion).

OpenAI enters the Global 500 for the first time, highlighting how quickly AI-powered brands transform technological leadership into brand equity.

Amazon is planning a second round of job cuts next week as part of its broader goal of trimming some 30,000 corporate workers, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The company in October cut some 14,000 white-collar jobs, about half of the 30,000 target first reported by Reuters. The total this time is expected to be roughly the same as last year and could begin as soon as Tuesday, the people said, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss Amazon’s plans.

Goldman Sachs CEO: AI Won't Cause a "Job Apocalypse".

David Solomon has criticized popular predictions that artificial intelligence will leave people without jobs. According to the top manager, there is no impending catastrophe.

The banker calls what's happening classic "creative destruction": technology has always killed old professions, but created new ones. Goldman Sachs itself has already launched the One GS 3.0 project to automate routine, but the goal is not to reduce the staff, but to expand business opportunities. However, Solomon admitted that the process is difficult: integrating AI in corporations is "expensive, long, and complicated."

CEO's forecast for 2026: the market is waiting for a "recalibration of expectations." The euphoria will subside, and the pace of technology adoption may slow down as companies realize the real challenges of transition.

OpenAI will dramatically slow down hiring due to AI's efficiency

Sam Altman said that the company plans to "dramatically slow down" the rate of staff expansion. The reason is the development of neural networks, which allows you to do much more with fewer forces.

The CEO of OpenAI stressed that we are not talking about a complete hiring freeze, the company still needs people. The new strategy is to avoid aggressive recruitment so that you don't have to have "uncomfortable conversations" about layoffs when the AI takes over some of the tasks.

Already, 66% of customers use AI to search for products.

75% find these tools useful when making their choices. However, 92% still read reviews and view photos of real customers before placing an order, according to a study by Bazaarvoice.

The impact of AI is reflected in consumer behavior. 72% of respondents use AI specifically for product recommendations. 45% of respondents reported purchasing products based on recommendations provided by AI tools.

However, trust in AI remains limited at the final stage: 67% of respondents stated that they are not ready to make purchases directly through AI interfaces, and many of them prefer to visit brand and retailer websites.