Welcome back to your daily memorandum talking tech, business, AI, markets, and more. 🗞️

In today’s edition, we are tackling the following:

💰 Anthropic secures one million TPUs in multi-billion Google Cloud deal.
🧠 Microsoft unveils Mico, an animated Copilot avatar with a Clippy easter egg.
🍏 Apple speeds up U.S.-made AI server production in Houston.
🏦 Target cuts 1,800 jobs as sales slump and decisions slow.
🌍 EU leaders clash over 2040 emissions targets and rising energy costs.

TECHNOLOGY

• Trump Pardons Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao (WSJ) 
  ^{_{More: Bloomberg, Reuters, CNN}}

  • Zhao served four months in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering violations.

  • Binance supported the Trump family's crypto venture World Liberty Financial, generating over four billion dollars.

  • Critics, including Senator Warren, called the pardon corrupt, given financial ties between parties.

• Microsoft Introduces Mico, Copilot's New AI Avatar (The Verge) 
  _{^{More: TechCrunch, Fast Company, Tom's Guide}}

  • Mico is an expressive animated character that reacts with facial expressions and colors.

  • Real Talk mode enables Copilot to challenge user assumptions and push back respectfully.

  • A hidden easter egg transforms Mico into Clippy when tapped multiple times.

• Anthropic Expands Google Cloud TPU Deal Worth Tens of Billions (CNBC) 
  _{^{More: Reuters, The Register, SiliconANGLE}}

  • Anthropic gains access to one million TPUs with over one gigawatt capacity arriving.

  • The company maintains a multi-cloud strategy across Google TPUs, Amazon Trainium, and Nvidia GPUs simultaneously.

  • Deal supports Anthropic's seven billion dollar revenue run rate and three hundred thousand customers.

BUSINESS

• OpenAI Acquires Startup Founded by Former Apple Employees (Bloomberg) 
  _{^{More: MacRumors, Reuters}}

  • Software Applications created Sky, an AI assistant for Mac that interprets screen content.

  • Founders previously developed the iPhone Shortcuts app before leaving Apple in twenty twenty-three.

  • OpenAI plans to integrate Sky technology into ChatGPT for desktop task automation capabilities.

• Apple Building American-Made AI Servers Ahead of Schedule in Houston (Fox Business) 
  _{^{More: Reuters, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider}}

  • The Houston facility originally scheduled for twenty twenty-six is now shipping servers to data centers.

  • Servers power Apple Intelligence and Private Cloud Compute with energy-efficient design features.

  • The move supports Apple's $600B U.S. investment commitment over four years.

• AWS Outage Caused by Software Bug and Faulty Automation (GeekWire) 
  _{^{More: CNBC, NBC News, NPR}}

  • Two independent automation programs racing to update records erased key DynamoDB network entries.

  • The Monday outage lasted thirteen hours, disrupting thousands of enterprises, including banks and streaming services.

  • Amazon disabled faulty automation globally and will fix the bug before reactivating the system.

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MARKETS

WORLD

• Trump Says Israel Won't Annex West Bank After Knesset Vote (Times of Israel)

• _{^{More: NPR, Fox News, Al Jazeera}}

  • Israeli parliament advanced annexation bills during Vice President Vance's visit, drawing sharp criticism from administration officials.

  • Trump officials called the symbolic vote insulting and threatened that Israel would lose all U.S. support if annexation occurred.

  • Netanyahu's office distanced itself from the vote, calling it a deliberate political provocation by opposition members during Vance's visit.

• Europe Faces Economic Reality Check on Climate Agenda (Bloomberg)
  _{^{More: E3G, CEEZER, World Economic Forum}}

  • EU leaders are divided over pushing 90% emissions reduction by 2040 amid concerns about economic impacts.

  • Countries warn their economies cannot absorb the rising costs of meeting climate transition targets without sparking voter backlash.

  • Leaders are focusing on shielding businesses and consumers from higher bills rather than agreeing to specific emissions targets.

• EU Considers Using Frozen Russian Assets for Ukraine Loan (Washington Post) 
  _{^{More: Al Jazeera, CNBC, RT}}

  • EU leaders debate providing Ukraine with a 140B euro reparations loan backed by frozen Russian assets.

  • The plan would use approximately two hundred billion dollars in frozen Russian central bank assets as loan collateral.

  • Belgium raises legal concerns about risks to Euroclear securities depository, which holds the majority of frozen funds.

FUTURISM

• Target Cuts 1,800 Corporate Jobs Amid Sales Slump (CNBC) 
  _{^{More: CNN, Fox Business, Star Tribune}}

  • Target is eliminating one thousand layoffs and 800 unfilled positions, representing eight percent of the corporate workforce.

  • Incoming CEO Fiddelke cited complexity and overlapping work slowing decisions after eleven consecutive quarters of declining sales.

  • Affected employees receive pay through January third plus severance packages, while the company faces competitive pressures from Walmart.

• Elon Musk Defends $1 Trillion Pay Package Over Robot Army (The Verge) 
  _{^{More: Fortune, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg}}

  • Musk said he needs mid-twenties voting control to prevent being ousted while building Tesla's robot army.

  • Tesla reported record revenue of twenty-eight billion, but net profit fell thirty-seven percent to one billion.

  • Proxy advisors ISS and Glass Lewis recommend rejecting the package, which Musk called corporate terrorism on the earnings call.

• Mortgage rates fall to the lowest level of 2025 (CNN) 
  _{^{More: Bloomberg, ABC News, Fox Business}} 

  • The average thirty-year fixed mortgage rate dropped to six point nineteen percent, the lowest since October twenty twenty-four.

  • The rate fell nearly one percentage point from seven percent in early January, spurring refinancing activity and purchases.

  • September home sales rose fastest pace in seven months, while homes sold one point four percent below the asking price.

CONTENT

• The Discovery That Sparked the AI Revolution (Y Combinator)

  • YC’s Ankit Gupta explains how the 2017 paper Attention Is All You Need reshaped AI, leading to the transformer models behind.

  • The video traces the evolution from RNNs and LSTMs to attention mechanisms and scalable architectures.

  • It shows how one breakthrough enabled machines to understand and generate human language at an unprecedented scale.

• Marc Andreessen & Amjad Masad on “Good Enough” AI, AGI, and the End of Coding (a16z)

  • Marc Andreessen and Replit CEO Amjad Masad explore the future of programming as AI agents begin writing, debugging, and reasoning.

  • They discuss reinforcement learning, verification loops, and whether ‘good enough’ AI might hinder true AGI progress.

  • The conversation highlights Replit’s mission to make coding in natural language accessible to everyone.

• Figure: Displacing Trust With Truth (Open Source CEO)

  • This edition covers how Figure runs loan origination, trading, and securitization fully on-chain, slashing middlemen and settlement time.

  • Provenance blockchain powers transparent collateral control and hourly funding auctions through Democratized Prime.

  • With AAA-rated securitizations and IPO milestones, Figure is evolving into an ‘everything exchange’ for on-chain finance.

EXTRAS

• Microsoft makes Edge's Copilot Mode a bit smarter (Engadget) 
  _{^{More: TechCrunch, Windows Central, Microsoft}}

  • Microsoft adds Copilot Actions for multi-step tasks like unsubscribing from newsletters and making restaurant reservations.

  • The new Journeys feature organizes browsing history into topic-based projects that users can resume from any session.

  • Copilot can now access browsing history with explicit user permission for personalized recommendations and context.

• OpenAI buys Sky, an AI interface for Mac (TechCrunch) 
  _{^{More: Bloomberg, Engadget, OpenAI}}

  • OpenAI acquired Software Applications, makers of Sky, an unreleased natural language interface for Mac computers.

  • Sky founders previously created Workflow, which Apple acquired in twenty seventeen to become the Shortcuts automation app.

  • Sky understands screen content and takes actions in apps, integrating capabilities directly into ChatGPT for users.

• EA and Stability AI partner to empower artists, designers, and developers (EA) 
  _{^{More: Variety, Engadget, Stability AI}}

  • Electronic Arts partners with Stability AI to co-develop transformative generative models and workflows for game development.

  • Partnership focuses on accelerating physically based rendering materials generation with exact color and light accuracy preservation.

  • Tools will enable artists to pre-visualize entire three-dimensional environments from intentional prompts for rapid prototyping.

AND MORE

• Donald Trump says all trade talks with Canada are terminated.

• The International Monetary Fund urges Asian countries to cut trade barriers to counter U.S. tariffs.

• Alaska Airlines is restoring operations after a tech outage grounded all flights.

• India’s stock benchmarks open higher on earnings optimism and trade hopes.

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• Trista Sun, a top wealth executive at HSBC, is leaving the bank.

• Trump to meet Xi Jinping in South Korea next week, White House confirms.

• Asia shares gain amid U.S.-China trade hopes; oil prices ease.

• The White House warns that flight disruptions may increase as the U.S. government shutdown continues.