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Voice Becomes AI’s Next Interface

Voice Becomes AI’s Next Interface

Spotify moves into physical books, Alphabet posts AI-fueled earnings surge, and massive Conduent breach exposes sensitive government contractor data nationwide.

Memorandum
February 06, 2026

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

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

📚 Spotify lets listeners scan physical pages to jump audiobooks instantly.
💰 Alphabet’s cloud revenue jumps 48% as AI demand accelerates.
🔐 Conduent ransomware breach now impacts millions of Americans nationwide.
🎮 Sony raises profit outlook after strong performance in gaming and music.
🧠 OpenAI launches enterprise platform to manage fleets of AI agents.

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TECHNOLOGY

ElevenLabs CEO: “Voice is the next interface for AI“ (TechCrunch)
_^More:_{^{Sequoia Capital}}_^,_^Pigment
- ElevenLabs' CEO believes voice will become the primary AI interface, with phones permanently returning to pockets.
- The company raised $500M at a $11B valuation, partnering with Meta on Instagram and Horizon products.
- A hybrid cloud and on-device processing approach targets wearables, where voice becomes a constant companion interface.
Spotify ventures into physical book sales, adds new audiobook features (TechCrunch)
_^More:_{^{Hollywood Reporter}}_^,_^Engadget_^,_{^{Investing.com}}
- Spotify partners with Bookshop.org to sell physical books through the app, expanding beyond streaming services.
- The New Page Match feature lets users scan physical pages to jump directly to the audiobook location.
- Audiobook listeners increased 36% year over year, with listening hours up 37% across platforms.
OpenAI launches Frontier platform for AI agent management (The Verge)
^_More:^_CNBC^_,^_Fortune^_,^_Axios
- OpenAI launches Frontier platform, enabling enterprises to build, deploy, and manage AI agent fleets.
- The platform connects siloed business systems, providing agents with shared context with enterprise-grade security controls.
- Early customers include Intuit, State Farm, Thermo Fisher, and Uber for complex workflow automation.

BUSINESS

Google earnings: AI drives growth (NYT)
^_More:^_CNBC^_,^_Neowin
- Alphabet reports Q4 revenue up 18% to $113.83B, significantly exceeding the $111.43B estimate.
- Cloud revenue surged 48% to $17.66B, beating the $16.18B expected, driven by AI adoption.
- Net income increased 30% to $34.46B as AI integration boosts performance across products.
Sony profit jumps 22% in December quarter, beating expectations and lifting full-year outlook (CNBC)
_^More:_^Bloomberg_^,_^Variety
- Sony's operating profit jumped 22% to 515B yen, beating analyst expectations by 9%.
- The company raised its full-year operating profit forecast by 8% to 1.54T yen.
- A strong lineup of gaming content and growth in music streaming offset rising memory chip costs.
NVIDIA to Delay New Gaming Chip Due to Memory Chip Shortage (The Information)
- NVIDIA postpones the launch of its next-generation gaming chip due to insufficient supply of memory chips.
- Shortage reflects broader semiconductor supply chain issues affecting multiple technology manufacturers globally.
- A delay could affect competition in the gaming market and the timing of the company's consumer graphics product roadmap.
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MARKETS

S&P	6,888.17	−0.43%
NASDAQ	22,919.58	−1.44%
Dow	49,436.66	+0.40%
10-Year	4.27%	↓ ~0.01 pp
Bitcoin	$66,911	−9.6%
Gold	$4,884.80	−1.76%

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WORLD

Data breach at govtech giant Conduent balloons, affecting millions more Americans (TechCrunch)
_^More:_{^SecurityWeek}_^,_{^{BleepingComputer}}_^,_{^{Fox News}}
- Conduent data breach now affects 15.4M Texans alone, with total victims potentially reaching millions nationwide.
- The government contractor's January ransomware attack exposed names, Social Security numbers, medical data, and health insurance information.
- Safepay ransomware gang claims responsibility for stealing 8 terabytes of data from systems compromised since October.
How Jeffrey Epstein helped his publicist become a big-time venture capitalist (Forbes)
_^More:_{^{The Information}}_^,_{^{SF Standard}}_^,_{^{National Today}}
- Released documents reveal Masha Bucher worked as Epstein's publicist starting in 2017, helping launch a venture capital career.
- Epstein connected Bucher to startup founders and tech elite, providing ideas and knowledge for the Day One Ventures launch.
- FBI documents show investigators tracking Bucher's ties to Epstein alongside quantum computing firms with Russian connections.
Japanese city cancels cherry blossom festival over badly behaved tourists (BBC)
_^More:_{^{The Japan Times}}_^,_^PetaPixel_^,_{^{Yahoo News UK}}
- Fujiyoshida cancels annual Mount Fuji cherry blossom festival citing trespassing, littering, and public defecation by tourists.
- The event attracted 200,000 visitors annually, with 10,000 daily during peak season, overwhelming the small community's infrastructure.
- The decision reflects broader challenges of overtourism, as Japan welcomed a record 42.7M tourists in 2025 amid a weak yen.

FUTURISM

Trump's critical mineral reserve is an admission that the future is electric (TechCrunch)
_^More:_^CNBC_^,_^Bloomberg_^,_{^{CBS News}}
- The Trump administration establishes the $12B Project Vault critical mineral reserve, acknowledging the growth of electric vehicles and renewable energy.
- Strategic stockpile includes gallium, cobalt, and lithium, targeting materials essential for batteries and clean energy infrastructure.
- The initiative represents a tacit admission that the future depends on electric technologies, despite the administration's preference for fossil fuels.
AI won't kill the software business, just its growth story (WSJ)
^_More:^{_{Yahoo Finance}}
- Analysis suggests that AI will transform rather than eliminate the software industry, significantly limiting its future expansion potential.
- Automation may reduce demand for specific software categories while simultaneously creating new market opportunities.
- The industry is undergoing a period of disruption as companies adapt their business models to an AI-driven competitive landscape.
AI companies want to rent human bodies (Futurism)
_^More:_{^{UC Strategies}}_^,_{^{National Today}}_^,_{^{Cryptopolitan}}
- The RentAHuman.ai platform was launched, enabling AI agents to hire humans for physical-world tasks such as pickups and deliveries.
- Software engineer Alexander Liteplo's site claims to have 73,000 registered users offering their bodies for AI-directed gig work.
- The platform raises ethical questions about the commodification of labor as AI agents pay humans in cryptocurrency stablecoins.

CONTENT

Is building in public over? (Great Chat)
- Hosts examine the decline in public buildings and question the value of transparency amid shifting founder incentives and faster backlash cycles.
- Discussion covers Chinese peptides, fintech Brexit exits, and Moltbot experiments that illustrate rapid meme cycles across tech platforms.
- Panel debates cultural lines in the wake of the Epstein files, suggesting a nascent shift in accountability expectations in 2025.
Where AI video is headed next, with Synthesia's Victor Riparbelli (Access)
- Alex Heath and Ellis Hamburger parse industry news before interviewing the Synthesia CEO about the global trajectory of AI video.
- The conversation covers AI agents chatting, Musk’s SpaceX xAI merger, and the OpenAI Anthropic competition in coding tool development.
- Riparbelli explains raising $200M, the commercialization of deepfakes, and the trade-offs in trust as corporate video quality rises worldwide.
Elon Musk on Space GPUs, AI, Optimus, and his manufacturing method (Cheeky Pint)
- Elon Musk discusses space-based GPUs, solar economics, and why AI compute may ultimately move off Earth entirely.
- John Collison and Dwarkesh Patel probe Starship materials, manufacturing pragmatism, and scaling constraints across industries globally today.
- Musk frames humanoid robots as an infinite lever for money, touching China, DOGE, and the long-term impacts of automation ahead.

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