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Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
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In today's Techpresso:
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📢 OpenAI gets ready to test ads in ChatGPT 💰 Larry Page leaves California to avoid $12.5 billion tax 🤖 Nvidia CEO proposes robots as 'AI immigrants' 🔍 China reviews Meta's $2 billion Manus acquisition 🛒 Amazon's AI shopping tool sparks backlash from retailers 💰 Elon Musk's xAI raises $20 billion with Nvidia backing 🎁 + 20 other news & articles you might like 🧰 + 6 trending tools 📚 + 5 trending papers & reports
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📢 OpenAI gets ready to test ads in ChatGPT
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- OpenAI is getting ready to test ads in ChatGPT, though the company has been quiet about its plans while Google moves ahead with ads inside its own AI assistant, Gemini.
- OpenAI has hired former executives from Slack, TikTok, and Google, and posted a job for a paid marketing platform engineer, but has not yet picked a leader to run its ads business.
- ChatGPT now has 910 million monthly active users, but OpenAI expects to lose $115 billion through 2029, making ads a way to offset massive server costs before turning profitable in 2030.
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💰 Larry Page leaves California to avoid $12.5 billion tax
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- Larry Page, Google's co-founder and the world's second-richest person, has left California and moved his residency to avoid a proposed state wealth tax that could cost him $12.5 billion.
- Page converted his family office and several funding vehicles to Delaware in late December 2025, ahead of the potential tax law's effective date, while setting up new addresses in Florida, Nevada, and Texas.
- The proposed California ballot measure would tax billionaires 5% of their wealth, but critics like Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla warn it will cause capital flight and drive away major taxpayers.
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🤖 Nvidia CEO proposes robots as 'AI immigrants'
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- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called AI-controlled robots "AI immigrants" at CES 2026, suggesting they could fill jobs in manufacturing and other areas that people have decided not to do anymore.
- Huang argued that a global labor shortage of tens of millions of workers means economies cannot be sustained, and robots working on factory floors will drive growth and create more jobs.
- The CEO predicted robots with human-level skills will arrive this year, noting that developers are working on touch sensors and fine motor skills since robots currently rely only on eyes.
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🔍 China reviews Meta's $2 billion Manus acquisition
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- China is reviewing Meta's planned $2 billion purchase of Manus, the AI assistant platform, to determine whether the deal breaks technology export control rules, which could give Beijing unexpected influence over the outcome.
- Officials are checking whether Manus needed an export license when it moved its core team from Beijing to Singapore, a relocation strategy now common enough among Chinese startups that it has been nicknamed "Singapore washing."
- Beijing worries the deal could push more Chinese startups to relocate abroad to avoid domestic oversight, and one professor warned that Manus founders could face criminal liability if they exported restricted technology without authorization.
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🛒 Amazon's AI shopping tool sparks backlash from retailers
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- Amazon has been using AI tools to scrape products from other retailers' websites and list them on its marketplace through features called Shop Direct and Buy for Me, all without asking those businesses first.
- Dozens of small business owners selling on platforms like Shopify and Wix discovered their products appearing on Amazon without consent, with some listings showing items they no longer sell or containing errors in descriptions.
- Amazon requires retailers to email the company to opt out rather than opt in, and the company has previously threatened legal action against other firms that scrape its own marketplace listings without permission.
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💰 Elon Musk's xAI raises $20 billion with Nvidia backing
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- Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has closed a $20 billion funding round with backing from Nvidia, the Qatar Investment Authority, Fidelity, and other major investors, though individual amounts were not disclosed.
- The financing is structured with roughly $7.5 billion in equity and up to $12.5 billion in debt through a special purpose vehicle that will buy Nvidia processors to rent out over five years.
- The company needs the money because it has been burning through $1 billion per month and is planning to expand its Memphis data center to nearly 2 gigawatts of computing capacity.
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Other
news & articles you might like
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How Google Got Its Groove Back and Edged Ahead of OpenAI
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Meta’s AI glasses will now help you read, write, and not look at your phone
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Chat Platform Discord Files Confidentially for IPO
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Breaking: Google will now only release Android source code twice a year
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Samsung warns your next phone and laptop will cost more
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iPhone will get 200MP cameras in 2028, says Morgan Stanley
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Nvidia partners with Universal Music Group to expand AI-powered music discovery
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Lenovo and Motorola are releasing their own on-device AI assistant
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Mobileye to acquire AI humanoid robotics startup Mentee Robotics in $900M deal
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Apple Designer Behind iPhone Air Is Joining the AI Startup Hark
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California lawmaker proposes a four-year ban on AI chatbots in kid’s toys
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McKinsey and General Catalyst execs say the era of ‘learn once, work forever’ is over
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Leaker suggests future iPhones could get multispectral cameras
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Nike completely exits NFT and Web3 with sale of RTFKT
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Unskippable ads and ads with fake cancel buttons are now illegal in Vietnam
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LMArena lands $1.7B valuation four months after launching its product
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OpenAI is rolling out GPT-5.2 “Codex-Max” for some users
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Warner Bros. tells shareholders that Larry Ellison’s wealth isn’t enough to best Netflix bid
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🧰 Trending tools
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Conversation API: a managed backend service that handles AI chat state and memory storage, letting developers build conversational apps without managing databases or infrastructure.
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LEGO SMART Play: sensor-equipped bricks that detect movement and interaction to create responsive builds, extending traditional LEGO sets with physical feedback without requiring screens.
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Market Terminal™: a consolidated stock research platform that aggregates real-time breakouts, institutional trades, and insider transactions without requiring expensive Wall Street terminal subscriptions.
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Graysky 2.0: A faster alternative client for Bluesky
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Planelo: a lightweight developer tool for organizing ideas with API access to connect notes directly to automations, agents, and scripts.
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Jax-JS: array library for JavaScript that leverages WebGPU for GPU-accelerated numerical computations and machine learning operations in web browsers.
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📚 Trending papers & reports
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Database systems gain 2x speed with io_uring: researchers found Linux's new I/O interface doubles database performance, but only when configured correctly for specific workloads.
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Hierarchical autoregressive modeling cuts memory use: researchers developed a technique that reduces memory consumption by 50% when generating text while maintaining quality and speed.
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DatBench tests vision-language AI more reliably with less cost: researchers created a benchmark that evaluates multimodal AI models 10 times faster while better detecting when models guess correctly by luck.
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Language models generate convincing propaganda at scale: researchers found AI systems can produce personalized disinformation campaigns targeting specific groups more efficiently than human writers.
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Poisoning AI training data creates hidden triggers: researchers showed attackers can embed secret patterns that make language models misbehave only when specific rare phrases appear.
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