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Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
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In today's Techpresso:
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📈 OpenAI revenue hits $20 billion as first device nears launch 📦 Amazon CEO says tariffs are raising prices 📱 Meta accused of ignoring illegal gambling ads 📊 56% of CEOs report zero financial returns from AI investments 🤖 Cursor's agent swarm tackles one of software's hardest problems 📺 Sony gives control of its TV business to TCL 🎁 + 9 other news & articles you might like 🧰 + 6 trending tools 📚 + 6 trending papers & reports
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📈 OpenAI revenue hits $20 billion as first device nears launch
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- OpenAI has reached $20 billion in annual revenue and is preparing to launch its first consumer device, with an official unveiling planned for the second half of 2026.
- The company has recruited more than two dozen former Apple employees, including engineers who worked on iPad multitasking and Apple Watch, causing Apple to cancel a team offsite to protect staff.
- The device, developed under the codename "io" with Jony Ive's LoveFrom, will be largely audio-based rather than screen-focused, and will use Qualcomm chips and Luxshare manufacturing.
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📦 Amazon CEO says tariffs are raising prices
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- Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos that President Trump's tariffs are now showing up in prices as sellers decide whether to absorb or pass on costs.
- Amazon and third-party merchants had pre-purchased inventory to avoid tariff impacts and keep prices low, but Jassy said most of that supply ran out last fall, forcing price changes now.
- This marks a shift from last year when Jassy said Amazon hadn't seen prices go up much; he had predicted some sellers would need to raise prices because margins are too thin.
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📱 Meta accused of ignoring illegal gambling ads
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- Britain's Gambling Commission accused Meta of turning a blind eye to illegal online casino ads on Facebook and Instagram, suggesting the company is happy to keep taking money from criminals.
- The regulator's executive director Tim Miller said Meta's claim that it did not know about illegal gambling ads until notified was "simply false" because the ads are easy to find.
- Meta responded that it enforces strict advertising policies, removes ads that violate rules once identified, and is working with the Commission to improve its proactive detection tools.
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📊 56% of CEOs report zero financial returns from AI investments
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- A new PwC survey of over 4,400 CEOs finds that 56% say their AI investments have produced no financial returns, while only 10% to 12% report gains on revenue or costs.
- PwC's global chairman Mohamed Kande says the problem isn't AI itself but a lack of basics like clean data, solid business processes, and governance before companies rush to adopt the technology.
- CEO confidence in their own 12-month revenue growth has dropped to a five-year low of 30%, down from 56% in 2022, even as leaders pursue long-term transformation through AI.
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🤖 Cursor's agent swarm tackles one of software's hardest problems
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- Cursor used hundreds of AI agents working together to build a web browser from scratch in less than a week, taking on what many consider one of the most complex software projects possible.
- The first approach failed when agents with equal status coordinated through a shared file, holding locks too long and becoming risk-averse, so Cursor switched to clear role separation with planners, workers, and a Judge Agent.
- GPT-5.2 performed better than other models for long autonomous work because it followed instructions and avoided drift, while prompts mattered more than the harness or models themselves.
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📺 Sony gives control of its TV business to TCL
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- Sony plans to spin off its TV hardware business into a new joint venture with TCL, where TCL will hold a 51 percent stake and Sony will keep 49 percent of the company.
- The new venture will keep the Sony and Bravia branding and handle everything from product development and design to manufacturing, sales, and logistics for TVs and home audio equipment globally.
- Sony and TCL aim to finalize binding agreements by the end of March and start operating the joint company in April 2027, pending regulatory approvals and other partnership conditions being met.
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Other
news & articles you might like
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Netflix revises offer to pay all cash for Warner Bros to stave off Paramount
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Anthropic boss says U.S. is courting disaster by selling AI chips to China
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TikTok owner ByteDance takes on Alibaba by entering China’s AI cloud market
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Rumor: PCs with NVIDIA processors reportedly coming this year
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Highly insecure AI apps in the App Store are leaking tons of user data
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Meta’s Oversight Board takes up permanent bans in landmark case
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Humans&, a ‘human-centric’ AI startup founded by Anthropic, xAI, Google alums, raised $480M seed round
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🧰 Trending tools
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Evernote v11: a note-taking app with AI-powered search, meeting transcription with speaker detection, and an assistant for querying your notes intelligently.
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Figy.ai: converts topics, notes, articles, or documents into visual AI-powered flashcards that improve retention through interactive engagement and exploration.
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Sapiare New Tab: replaces your browser's new tab page with curated quotes from historical thinkers and classic paintings to inspire focused work.
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Trace: a personalized content feed that aggregates web content based on your interests, using feedback to surface relevant signal without attention-hijacking algorithms.
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Foldr for MacOS: A Finder extension to create folders with custom icons
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Artificial Ivy in the Browser: browser-based simulation that generates and animates ivy growth patterns with adjustable parameters via interactive sliders.
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You can check the previous tools here, or add your tool here
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📚 Trending papers & reports
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Bringing AI to Finance: Your free guide to understanding how intelligent automation is transforming finance teams, improving accuracy, and accelerating day-to-day operations. Get the free AI guide.
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Pattern Matching Outperforms Complex Machine Learning Models: simple pattern recognition achieves results comparable to sophisticated algorithms across multiple tasks, questioning whether added computational complexity is necessary.
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Large Language Models Unmask Anonymous Writers: the models match writing style patterns across different texts to identify authors with high accuracy, threatening whistleblowers and dissidents.
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AI Planning Agents Follow Malicious Instructions: attackers can hide commands in emails or documents that autonomous agents retrieve, causing the agents to execute harmful actions without user awareness.
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Large Language Models Show Trustworthiness Patterns: researchers found response characteristics that reveal when AI answers are reliable, helping users judge whether to trust specific outputs.
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Adaptive Privacy Budgeting in Data Analysis: the system automatically tightens privacy protections when detecting higher risk situations, preventing excessive data exposure without needing human oversight.
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Training Neural Networks Block by Block: splitting networks into sequential sections and training them one at a time uses 94% less memory than standard training while keeping accuracy similar.
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