OpenAI is reportedly trying to raise $100B at an $830B valuation
The ChatGPT maker is aiming to raise the funding by the end of the first quarter in 2026, and the company may ask sovereign wealth funds to invest in the round.
Tech News
Phones were fashionable again in 2025
A year or two ago, when a phone showed up at my door for review, I could pretty much count on it being black, gray, or maybe (as a treat) white. But in 2025, that hasn’t been the case. Phones I reviewed this year featured everything from real wood grain back panels to deep blue […]
There’s finally a little bit of sunshine in Pluribus
Things might finally be looking up. In the penultimate episode of Pluribus’ first season, Carol (Rhea Seehorn) actually seems to be happy. That’s a pretty big deal for someone the show describes as the “most miserable person on Earth,” who also happens to be living through an odd sort of apocalyptic scenario that she is […]
Communities are rising up against data centers — and winning
If there’s one thing Republicans and Democrats came together on in 2025 – at least at the local level – it was to stop big, energy-hungry data center projects. For communities sick of rising electricity bills and pollution from power plants, data centers have become an obvious target. Fights against new data centers surged this […]
From Roombas to e-bikes, why are hardware startups going bankrupt?
The hardware world had a brutal week, with iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes all filing for bankruptcy. Each company faces its own mix of tariff pressures, supply chain issues, and shifting markets, but together they tell a larger story about the challenges of building physical products in an era of global trade tensions and cheap overseas competition. From […]
Semi-solid state MagSafe power banks arrive from the founder of Hyper
A new company called BMX, founded by accessory royalty, has emerged from Kickstarter to make its SolidSafe semi-solid state power banks available to the general public. Like the Kuxiu semi-solid state power banks I’ve recently reviewed, BMX’s promise to have twice the longevity and be safer than traditional power banks, which have been the subject […]
A Starlink satellite seems to have exploded
SpaceX says it has lost control of a Starlink satellite that’s now falling back to Earth after suffering an anomaly. The sudden loss of communications, drop in altitude, “venting of the propulsion tank,” and “release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects,” suggests the anomaly was some kind of explosion. SpaceX says […]
TikTok ban: all the news on the app’s shutdown and return in the US
After briefly going dark in the US to comply with the divest-or-ban law targeting ByteDance that went into effect on January 19th, TikTok quickly came back online. It eventually reappeared in the App Store and Google Play as negotiations between the US and China continued, and Donald Trump continued to sign extensions directing officials not […]
TikTok agrees to deal to cede control of US business to American investor group
The deal closes a long-running drama in which U.S. authorities have sought to compel ByteDance to divest.
Apple becomes a debt collector with its new developer agreement
Apple says it can now collect any money a developer owes the tech giant at any time.