After three decades at the helm, Insomniac Games founder and president Ted Price has announced he’s retiring. Price will officially step away at the end of March, and he’s being replaced by three new studio heads who will take over Insomniac moving forward.

According to Price, the succession process has been in the works for a while. “I actually made this decision last year,” he explains. “For me, after over 30 years of leading Insomniac, I felt it was simply time to step aside and let others pave the way for our team.”

Insomniac was founded in 1994, and since then has gone on to create multiple hit games and franchises, including Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, Sunset Overdrive, and, more recently, Spider-Man. In 2019 the studio was acquired by PlayStation, and it’s currently working on a Wolverine game.

Taking over for Price will be Chad Dezern, Ryan Schneider, and Jen Huang. Dezern previously served as Insomniac’s creative lead, and has been with the studio nearly since its inception, while Schneider was the Head of Franchise Strategy and Studio Relations and joined the studio during the PS2 years. Huang, meanwhile, has been Insomniac’s CFO for the past eight years.

“I believe strongly that for us to continue our success, we need leaders at the top who are intimately familiar with how we do things, leaders who have helped build our culture and our processes, and who have earned people’s trust,” Price said of the new co-studio heads.

Elon Musk doesn’t miss an opportunity to take a dig at OpenAI — even when the news item in question is supposed to be favorable to President Trump. Just a few hours after yesterday’s White House presser on The Stargate Project wrapped up, Musk posted on X that “they don’t actually have the money.”

Softbank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX have committed to “deploy” $100 billion now and $500 billion toward the AI data center company over the next four years.

But Musk, who now has wide-ranging clearances and reportedly even his own office inside the Trump White House, seems doubtful. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” he added. The Japanese CEO and billionaire investor is the former owner of WeWork and Sprint and the current owner of Arm, and there have been reports for the last year that, along with Altman, he’s been chasing funding to invest in an AI chip venture.

Musk and OpenAI are embroiled in a legal battle that often veers into public view, with Musk accusing the ChatGPT maker of steering AI in dangerous directions — and OpenAI saying his criticisms are disingenuous and in bad faith. Sam Altman replied to Musk’s allegation on Wednesday morning but chose to focus on the man himself rather than anything having to do with Stargate. “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,” Altman posted. An attempt to reconcile? Biting dry sarcasm? Who knows anymore.

The Stargate Project has a buildout “currently underway” in Texas, and the companies involved say they’re evaluating other sites across the US. Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and OpenAI have been named as the project’s initial tech partners. “The scale of this investment, obviously, is huge. And what I think that says about the likely progress of the technology, at least what all of us believe, is correspondingly huge,” Altman said in a Fox News interview last night.

If you’re spending more time indoors to escape the icy winds or need something impressive to enjoy the Super Bowl, a new TV might be in order. Although it’s a couple of years old now, the LG C3 is still one of the best 4K OLED TVs you can buy, and it’s a bit cheaper today at Amazon and Walmart. They’re selling the 65-inch model for $1,196.99 ($302 off), which is matching its all-time low price.

The LG C3 offers a great picture quality with vivid color, no light blooming or bleeding, and deep, inky black levels for a practically infinite contrast ratio. If you somehow haven’t seen how good an OLED panel can look yet, then a trip to Best Buy is in order. It appeases most home theater and gaming needs with a 120Hz variable refresh rate and auto low-latency mode across all four of its HDMI ports, Dolby Vision and HDR 10 Plus, Dolby Atmos audio, and an incredible upscaling engine that can make older content look fantastically sharp.

You’re not missing out on much by skipping the LG C4, either, and the incoming C5 may not have enough to justify waiting and paying significantly more. LG advertises a substantial brightness boost in the newer models, but in reality, the C4’s panel doesn’t blow the C3 out of the water. The C4 is also capable of a higher 144Hz refresh rate, though that’s a largely discernible jump that’s only relevant for PC gamers. Both run webOS, which offers a deep selection of apps for gaming, music, and video with voice-activated content discovery.

More ways to save

• Costco members can pick up the Insta360 X4 adventure bundle for $429.99 ($7 off) at Costco. The waterproof 8K action camera comes with two batteries, a 114cm selfie stick that Insta360’s software can automatically remove from your footage, and a 256GB V30 microSD card. You can shoot up to 30 frames per second at its max resolution, or step down to 5.7K for up to 60 frames per second and 4K at 100 frames per second — all decent improvements over the X3. Another new feature is a detachable lens guard to protect the glass element, one that doesn’t noticeably impact your image quality when shooting in 360 mode.
• The CMF Buds from Nothing’s affordability-focused sister brand are already a ridiculous bargain, but Amazon is discounting select colors to an even better $27 ($12 off). The IP54 wireless earbuds support active noise cancellation that can reduce up to 42dB of noise and have four noise-filtering mics to help with call quality. They’ll last up to eight hours per charge with a total 35.5 hours available with the case, and they have Bluetooth 5.3 with Google Fast Pair support. You can customize them in Nothing’s companion app, too, allowing you to change gesture behaviors and tweak audio modes.
• If you need a really good Android phone that’ll get major software updates for more than half a decade, you should start with the Google Pixel 8A. You can get the 128GB model for $399 ($100 off) from Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store right now. It’s using Google’s Tensor G3 processor, which supports computational photography and other AI features being baked into Android. The phone also has a 120Hz display, Qi wireless charging, and a decent camera that’s not quite as nice as those on its flagship counterparts but still capable of impressive results. Read our review.

Samsung dropped some wearable news ahead of its Unpacked event later today: parents can now use the cellular Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 as a smartwatch for their kids.

With a new Galaxy Watch for Kids mode, children can use the smartwatch to call and text trusted contacts, while parents can also track their kids’ locations via GPS. The option starts rolling out today and will work on Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T networks.

The good news is parents won’t need a separate smartphone for this to work. Instead, it’s similar to Apple Family Setup, where parents use their phone to pair and set up the smartwatch before programming guardrails through the Google Family Link app. Parents can control which apps can be downloaded to the device, locate misplaced watches, and specify their children’s contacts for texting and calling. In an emergency, kids can also access emergency SOS features by pressing the side button five times. As with other children’s smartwatches, there’s a School Time mode that limits features during school hours.

In a keyword blog, Google also notes that kids can download 20 “teacher approved” apps and watchfaces from the kids section of the Google Play store. They include Barbie, Marvel, and Rubik’s Cube-themed watchfaces and educational games from PBS Kids and Crayola. Other third-party apps are available for download but require parental approval.

Samsung isn’t reinventing the wheel here — it’s playing catch-up. Apple first introduced Family Setup for its smartwatches in 2020, and last year, Google launched the Fitbit Ace LTE, a revamped kids GPS tracker with Pixel Watch hardware and a focus on educational gaming.

Meanwhile, this has been a feature that parents have been asking for in subreddits and Samsung customer forums. Previously, it was possible to set up Galaxy Watches as standalone devices with cellular service for kids, but it required parents to be a bit more tech-savvy in figuring out location tracking, phone setup, and parental controls. This new mode streamlines everything into a more accessible format, though it is only limited to the Watch 7.

We’ve asked Samsung if it plans to introduce the feature to LTE version of the budget Galaxy Watch FE but did not immediately receive a response.

YouTube Premium users are getting a slew of new experiments to try out before anyone else alongside an option to reduce their membership cost when bundling subscriptions. Subscribers can now also sign up to test multiple experimental features all at once, instead of being limited to just one at a time.

There are several new experiments that users can try out, including 256kbps bitrate audio quality on videos, and options for iOS users to view YouTube shorts in picture-in-picture mode and automatically download “recommended Shorts” for offline viewing. The AI-powered skipping feature that allows users to jump right to the most-watched part of a video is also available on web browsers after initially being introduced for mobile devices last year.

These will eventually be joined by expanded playback options for mobile devices that can increase video speed by up to four times. YouTube hasn’t mentioned when this experimental feature will be available, however, only that it’s coming “soon.”

YouTube is also rolling out a deal that makes YouTube Premium a smidge cheaper when you purchase it as a bundle with Google’s cloud storage. The offer is eligible on Google One Premium plans (which start at $9.99 per month for 2TB) or higher, but you’ll only save $2 per month on YouTube Premium — bringing the price back to 2023 levels.

First revealed last December through a Chinese retailer, Sharge’s new 65W GaN charger is now available globally. As the name implies, the Retractable 65 features an integrated USB-C cable that fully retracts when not in use so you won’t be scrambling to find one when a device is about to die. It’s available in white or black for $39.90 and while it comes with US style folding prongs it can be ordered with EU and UK outlet adapters.

Image: Sharge

The Retractable 65 can deliver up to a maximum of 65W of power with a single device connected, so you can use it to charge larger devices like laptops. In addition to the retractable USC-cable that’s just over 27 inches in length, the charger includes an additional USB-C port. Two devices can be charged simultaneously, but while Sharge hasn’t detailed how power is split between the two ports, the charger’s maximum output drops to 60W while both are in use.

Image: Sharge

The Retractable 65 joins a growing number of chargers and portable power solutions featuring retractable cables, thanks in part to most devices now supporting USB-C so companies like Sharge don’t have to accommodate several different charging ports.

The big question with this trend is how durable are the internal mechanisms used to retract integrated cables? As someone who likes to fidget with gadgets all day (and who broke the spring-loaded memory card eject mechanism on a Sony camera while fidgeting with it) I will undoubtedly be doing the same with chargers like this.

Will it survive someone mindlessly yanking out the cable and watching it go flying back into the charger all day like a tape measure? On its website Sharge claims the mechanism can survive “10,000+ stretch cycles” without breaking, but we’ve reached out to the company for more details about the charger’s durability — including if a broken retraction mechanism is covered under warranty — and will update this story when it responds.

After getting started on mobile back in November, Plex is ready to test its “reimagined” app experience on much bigger screens. Today the company announced that the preview has expanded to included tvOS. “Please keep in mind this is nowhere close to perfect, but we want to get feedback from the community as early as we can,” Plex wrote in the blog post.

Live TV and on-demand rentals are prominently shown in the navigation bar, but if it’s anything like the mobile version, you can disable those if you only care about enjoying your personal library. Note that you’ve got to opt into this preview; the regular Plex app isn’t going anywhere just yet. Instructions for doing so can be found here.

Image: Plex

Plex is also getting more social: movie and TV show reviews can now be viewed by everyone across the platform — if you change your privacy settings to allow this, that is. You can comment on reviews by others, so Plex seems to be leaning into all the success around Letterboxd with this one.

“By making your profile publicly accessible on watch.plex.tv you can easily share a link to your profile with others so that they can see what you’ve been watching, what’s on your Watchlist, and more,” the company says.

Last, Plex is making HEVC hardware encoding available to all Plex Plus customers. “HEVC encoding offers a better visual quality at the same bit rate, allowing for a higher-quality video over the same (or lower) bandwidth usage for streaming from your Plex Media Server,” the company says. Another benefit is that HDR metadata is fully preserved. HEVC encoding is supported on macOS, Linux, and Windows “when using hardware encoding with Apple, Intel, or Nvidia devices,” Plex wrote back in September.

The second season of Silo — a postapocalyptic thriller on Apple TV Plus — has wrapped up, and the finale was the show at its very best. It was full of dramatic twists, painful sacrifices, brutal fights, beautiful shots of a decayed future, and in its final moments, a tease that shows how much larger and more expansive the story actually is. It left me excited about what’s coming next — but also wary that the show is running out of time to tell the full story.

This article contains spoilers for the first two seasons of Silo.

Silo takes place far in the future, when the outside world is seemingly uninhabitable and what remains of humanity lives in vast, tightly controlled silos deep underground. The first season followed Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) as she was able to uncover (some of) the truth about the reality of the world and her home’s place within it. It ended with a great cliffhanger as she stepped outside and discovered that her silo, which she believed to be the only remaining place full of human life, was just one of many.

Season 2 picked up right after that and explored two concurrent threads. On one side, there was Juliette, whose trek outside uncovered a silo filled...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Sega launched a new cross-platform game-linking service called Sega Accounts, reports Eurogamer. The company says the online profile system will bring “a host of benefits” for players, like bonuses for specific games and other promised features down the line.

You can create the account over at sega-account.com, and from there link it to your Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam accounts, with Epic Games coming soon. Doing so will net you a code for some bonus DLC: a new costume to use in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which is out on February 20th. (You can also get that DLC by signing up for Sega’s newsletter, though.)

Sega says the account will enable other “services and features” soon. One possibility could be a subscription service like Game Pass or PlayStation Plus, as IGN speculated today. Sega’s Shuji Utsumi told BBC last month subscriptions like those are “interesting” and that the company is “evaluating some opportunities,” but didn’t get more specific than that.

President Donald Trump has promised everything from saving TikTok from a ban to rolling back Biden-era electric vehicle policies.

President Donald Trump kicked off the first day of his presidency by signing a flurry of executive actions, including halting enforcement of the TikTok ban and rolling back the Biden administration’s artificial intelligence order.

Having already run the country once before, Trump entered the presidency with the goal of hitting the ground running, having already selected nominees and chairs for key agencies that oversee tech. This time, Trump has the backing of many tech billionaires who attended his inauguration and showed up at his home in Mar-a-Lago.

Read on below as we keep track of all the ways Trump is leaving his mark on tech in his first 100 days in office.

Former Netflix executive Leanne Loombe is joining Annapurna Interactive as executive vice president and head of games, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Loombe helped build out Netflix’s game development and publishing arm, and now she’ll likely face new challenges as a leader of the gutted games publisher.

Annapurna Interactive, which is behind popular indie titles like Stray, Outer Wilds, and Gorogoa, experienced an upheaval last year when the entirety of its staff resigned after its owner, Megan Ellison, disagreed with the employees’ wishes to spin the publisher off into a new company, Bloomberg reported at the time. The former Annapurna Interactive staff members later took control of the games published under Private Division, an indie label previously owned by Take-Two Interactive, according to Bloomberg.

Loombe worked at Riot Games before joining Netflix in 2021, where she brought titles like Hades and the Grand Theft Auto trilogy into the streamer’s growing gaming portfolio and helped head up its cloud gaming initiative. As part of its earnings report released on Tuesday, Netflix said it would “continue to test and expand” its cloud gaming offering on TV, as well as focus on adding “immersive, narrative games based on our IP, socially engaging party games, games for kids and mainstream established titles” to its lineup.

“I’ve always admired how incredibly thoughtful Annapurna Interactive is about supporting developers who have a strong creative vision and empowering them to create high quality games that players love,” Loombe said in a post on LinkedIn. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to continue creating and strengthening a place developers can call home.”

Search in Premiere Pro has been updated with AI-powered visual recognition, allowing users to find videos by describing the contents of the footage. It’s just one of several quality-of-life features Adobe is adding to Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Frame.io that aim to save video editors time on their projects.

Users can enter search terms like “a person skating with a lens flare” to find corresponding clips within their media library. Adobe says the media intelligence AI can automatically recognize “objects, locations, camera angles, and more,” alongside spoken words — providing there’s a transcript attached to the video. The feature doesn’t detect audio or identify specific people, but it can scrub through any metadata attached to video files, which allows it to fetch clips based on shoot dates, locations, and camera types. The media analysis runs on-device, so doesn’t require an internet connection, and Adobe reiterates that users’ video content isn’t used to train any AI models.

This is launching alongside a translation feature for video captions that supports 17 languages. Multiple caption tracks can be opened simultaneously in Premiere Pro to make it easier to view and edit several translations at once. The media intelligence-empowered Search panel and caption translations are available starting today in the beta version of Premiere Pro, which is available to anyone with an active Creative Cloud or Premiere Pro subscription.

After Effects now supports HDR monitoring and has been overhauled with a new caching system that makes it faster to preview or playback large project files. The app is no longer limited to storing all the rendered frames in your system memory — instead, both RAM and the disk cache of your computer storage are used to improve performance. Adobe says this will allow older desktops and laptops to play back entire compositions “without having to pause for caching or rendering.” Both HDR support and the updated caching system are available in the After Effects Beta.

Finally, Canon’s C80 and C400 cameras can now be used with Frame.io’s Camera to Cloud integration, which allows you to automatically upload files to the Frame.io app directly from the camera. Support for this was rolled out in a Canon firmware update in December, which users will need to install before using the feature.

Lights that turn on when you walk into a room and turn off when you leave are one of the most desirable smart home features. But you need to buy additional hardware like motion sensors to make this “magic” happen. A new ambient sensing technology called Sensify could make this easier by turning your light bulbs into motion sensors. And it might be landing on a Philips Hue bridge near you very soon.

Sensify is a wireless network sensing (WNS) technology developed by Ivani that can turn mains-powered Zigbee devices into motion sensors for controlling your lights with just a firmware update — no additional hardware needed. The best part is that it can work on devices already in most homes. “There are tens of millions of devices with the base firmware already out there; we’re just working on the final touches to light up the full experience,” Ivani cofounder Justin McKinney tells The Verge.

An obvious use case for this is a Zigbee-based smart lighting system such as Philips Hue. There’s been speculation that Hue is working on a Zigbee sensing technology since its sister company Wiz debuted a similar tech called SpaceSense in 2022, which uses WNS over Wi-Fi. The well-informed hueblog.com reports that Zigbee wireless network sensing is the technology Hue will most likely use. The Verge reached out to Signify, which owns Hue, but hasn’t yet received a response.

McKinney wouldn’t say which companies are using Ivani’s Sensify, which has been in development since 2016, but he did share that the company is working “with some large household names poised to deploy the technology very soon.” He also said it’s the only company offering this capability over Zigbee networks.

Ivani is a member of the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), which runs the Zigbee protocol, but Sensify is a proprietary solution that leverages the Zigbee network. Despite reports indicating this sensing tech is coming to all Zigbee devices, the CSA confirmed to The Verge that this is not a new feature within Zigbee itself.

WNS works by detecting disturbances in radio frequencies and can also be applied to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread technologies. McKinney says Sensify requires three or more devices positioned around a detection area to detect motion and occupancy in the space. The tech also allows for precise detection zones based on where the devices are situated. “The devices send messages to each other, look at underlying network diagnostic information, and process it to provide occupancy sensing decisions,” says McKinney.

Image: Ivani

Performance-wise, McKinney says Sensify is “equivalent or superior” to passive infrared sensing (PIR) tech, which is traditionally used for motion sensing. It also doesn’t need line of sight, as PIR does. However, it’s not as precise as technologies like mmWave sensing, which can determine if someone is in a room through as slight a movement as breathing. “The lights will still likely turn off if you’re still, even if you’re in the space,” he says.

The good news is that Sensify can run on Zigbee networks with a range of chipsets working together, meaning it can be deployed as a software update to existing systems. McKinney also confirmed Sensify runs locally on your Zigbee network, there’s no Sensify cloud, and any sensing data is only accessible to the manufacturer deploying the technology.

This video, published by the CSA, illustrates how Ivani’s wireless network sensing works over a Zigbee network.

Motion sensing in the smart home has several use cases, from lighting control and security to energy management and elder care. Two big advantages of WNS here are cost and scale. There’s no need to buy additional hardware to get the capability, and many homes already have devices that can use it.

Ivani is currently the only company with a Zigbee solution, but there are WNS solutions out there that use Wi-Fi. Origin Wireless and its partner company, Nami, were the first to develop Wi-Fi sensing, and they are leading Matter’s efforts around bringing ambient RF sensing technologies to the smart home standard.

Origin’s technology powered Linksys Aware, a feature the router company launched in 2019 that turned its routers into motion sensors, and last year, Threshold launched a smart plug using Origin’s Wi-Fi sensing to allow caregivers to monitor a loved one’s activity remotely.

In 2021, I tested Hex Home, a proof-of-concept security system from Origin that used Wi-Fi sensing instead of motion sensors. But false positives made it virtually unusable. I also tried Wiz’s Wi-Fi-based SpaceSense when it first launched. It was more reliable but still fairly inconsistent. However, according to McKinney, advances in machine learning and AI have brought significant improvements to WNS technology.

He says Ivani’s Sensify tech is ready for deployment over Zigbee, and they’re just waiting for their partners to fine-tune how best to “introduce the feature within their product lines.” He expects they will update existing products in the next few months. “We have the pleasure of experiencing our partner’s products and their beta tests in our homes, and it really is the promise of what home automation was supposed to be.”

There have been a lot of promises around home automation over the years, with very few being fulfilled. But the idea of, say, every Philips Hue light bulb in your home turning into a motion sensor overnight, making it simple to automate control of your lights without sticking white plastic sensors everywhere, is a fairly exciting one.

Google is announcing a variety of classroom and accessibility-focused ChromeOS features today, and one of the standouts is being able to control your computer with your head and facial expressions. The feature — aimed at those with motor impairments — was first announced in early December, but it’s now rolling out to more users with compatible Chromebooks (Google recommends 8GB of RAM or more).

This isn’t Google’s first foray into the face-as-a-cursor space. It previously made an open-source AI accessibility tool for Windows games called Project Gameface, which was also announced for Android. Here’s a sample video from Google of the tech in action, demoed by software engineer Amanda Lin Dietz who helped develop it.

Additionally, Google is also teasing a boatload of new Chromebooks for 2025, with over 20 new devices in its standard Chromebook and Chromebook Plus lines coming this year. That estimate may be a bit of a stretch, since Google seems to be counting the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus that launched back in October, but it does also count the just-announced 14-inch Lenovo Chromebook Plus 2-in-1 and more to come.

Along with laptops aimed at educators and students, Google’s got a new batch of classroom-focused ChromeOS features called Class Tools. These allow teachers to have real-time control of their students’ screens. Once a pairing code is shared, educators will be able to send students direct content on their Chromebook screens, flip on live captions or translations for them, remotely view their screens, and share a student’s work with the whole class.

Image: Google

In addition to these collaborative tools, Google Classroom is also getting an integration with Figma’s FigJam, allowing teachers to assign online whiteboards to students for brainstorming and group work. Maybe the combination of FigJam with the teacher’s ability to snoop on students’ screens will reveal who’s really doing all the work for the group.

Bambu Lab, the company behind my favorite 3D printers, has given itself one hell of a week. Now, I’ve got answers to some of my burning questions, answers which you might also hopefully appreciate. But first, some backstory.

Since last Thursday, some creators have pledged not to buy Bambu printers anymore, even removed some of their 3D models from its online repository, after the company revealed it would add a new proprietary authentication mechanism that could keep you from using third-party tools to remote control your printer.

While you’d still be able to stick a file on an SD card and physically put it into your printer or use Bambu’s proprietary cloud, the old way of printing remotely from a third-party slicer would be no more — unless you downloaded a new proprietary Windows and Mac “Bambu Connect” desktop app to be the middleman between your slicer and Bambu’s hardware.

While Bambu was clear early on that this would be an optional update, one you could simply choose not to install, the company also positioned it as a necessary one to secure printers against remote hacks....

Read the full story at The Verge.

On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump issued a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, who ran the dark web marketplace Silk Road under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Ulbricht has been serving a life sentence without parole since 2015, when he was convicted of multiple charges, including the distribution of narcotics.

The Silk Road marketplace, which was only accessible through the Tor network, became one of the most prevalent early commercial uses of Bitcoin. Buyers and sellers traded in illicit drugs, forged passports, and more.

In the intervening years, Ulbricht became a cause celebrè for a certain segment of the right-wing, particularly in the crypto crowd that embraced Trump last year. To his supporters, Ulbricht’s life sentence is unusually punitive. Similar offenses have garnered much more lenient sentences — for instance, Blake Benthall, who operated Silk Road 2.0, was sentenced to time served and three years of probation. Ulbricht’s lieutenant, Thomas Clark, also known as “Variety Jones,” was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year.

Although the criminal offenses were nonviolent in nature, the judge who sentenced Ulbricht took into account multiple deaths attributable to drugs bought through the Silk Road.

Throughout his trial, Ulbricht denied that he had committed the crimes at issue. Because law enforcement had arrested him with his laptop open, they had access to all his files, which included the code of the website, private messages between him and employees of the Silk Road, and a diary whose entries corresponded to OKCupid messages tied to Ross Ulbricht’s real identity.

President Donald Trump says he’d be open to his buddies Elon Musk or Larry Ellison buying TikTok.

“Larry, let’s negotiate in front of the media,” Trump said at a press conference with the Oracle co-founder, SoftBank CEO Masa Son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to announce a $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure investment. “What I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it, and give half to the United States of America. Half, and we’ll give you the permit. And they’ll have a great partner, the United States.”

“Sounds like a good deal to me, Mr. President,” Ellison said.

It’s still not entirely clear how all of this would work, or how the US could legally operate a speech platform without violating the First Amendment. But it’s one of the earliest examples of how Silicon Valley’s coziness with Trump could manifest over the next four years.

Trump signed an executive order on Monday instructing his administration not to enforce the law on service providers covered by the forced divestiture bill — which include Oracle, Apple, and Google — for 75 days. But legal experts say the action provides hardly any legal cover for those companies to violate federal law and risk $850 billion in penalties. Even so, Oracle has appeared to rely on Trump’s assurances to help TikTok run in the US after the January 19th sale deadline, though the company has not yet commented on it directly.

TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance still has other offers on the table, including from billionaire Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty and now, apparently, from YouTube creator MrBeast — whose investor group is receiving legal counsel from a team that includes the brother of Trump’s attorney general pick.

As he was leaving the briefing, a reporter asked Trump if he has TikTok on his phone. “No, but I think I might put it there,” Trump responded. “I think I’ll get it right now.”

Microsoft and OpenAI announced Tuesday that they have adjusted their partnership so that OpenAI can access competitors' compute.

The new agreement “includes changes to the exclusivity on new capacity, moving to a model where Microsoft has a right of first refusal (ROFR),” Microsoft says. “To further support OpenAI, Microsoft has approved OpenAI’s ability to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models.”

The foundation of their relationship (which runs through 2030) stays pretty much the same — Microsoft keeps its exclusive rights to OpenAI’s tech for products like Copilot, and OpenAI’s API remains exclusive to Azure. They’ll maintain their two-way revenue-sharing setup (it's been reported that Microsoft gets 20 percent of OpenAI’s revenue). Prior to today’s change, OpenAI was locked into using Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure exclusively for its computing needs.

The news follows the announcement of a joint venture between Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and OpenAI to build a system of data centers in the U.S. called Starbase.

The models OpenAI hopes to build and the user base it's looking to serve require billions of dollars in compute. It has been previously reported that some OpenAI shareholders felt Microsoft wasn’t moving fast enough to supply OpenAI with computing power, hence why the startup partnered with Oracle back in June (with the blessing of Microsoft) for the necessary compute.

There’s been a lot of buzz about Microsoft and OpenAI facing relationship woes after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was briefly ousted from the company, causing a lot of very public drama. The New York Times reported that the relationship has grown increasingly strained due to financial pressures at OpenAI, concerns about stability, and growing friction between employees at both companies.

Last March, Microsoft hired Inflection CEO Mustafa Suleyman to lead its consumer AI efforts, along with most of Inflection’s staff, in a $650 million deal. According to The New York Times report, this move particularly angered some OpenAI leadership, including Altman.

OpenAI’s deal with Microsoft also has an unusual escape clause: if OpenAI creates artificial general intelligence (AGI), it could close off Microsoft’s access to some of its most powerful models developed after that point. AGI, reportedly, is defined as a system capable of generating more than $100 billion in profits. This was originally meant to keep such powerful AI from being commercialized, but now OpenAI is reportedly considering dropping this provision, likely to secure more Microsoft funding.

A plan to build a system of data centers for artificial intelligence has been revealed in a White House press conference, with Masayoshi Son, Sam Altman, and Larry Ellison joining Donald Trump to announce The Stargate Project. Their companies, Softbank, OpenAI, and Oracle (respectively), along with MGX are listed as “initial equity funders” for $500 billion in investments over the next four years, “building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States.”

According to a statement from OpenAI, “Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI” are the initial tech partners, with a buildout “currently underway” starting in Texas as other sites across the country are evaluated. It also says that “Oracle, NVIDIA, and OpenAI will closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system.”

Separately, Microsoft announced an update to its partnership with OpenAI, saying that the key elements of their deal remain in place through 2030, covering “our access to OpenAI’s IP, our revenue sharing arrangements and our exclusivity on OpenAI’s APIs all continuing forward.”

What is changing is that Microsoft says OpenAI has made a “new, large Azure commitment that will continue to support all OpenAI products as well as training.” However, their exclusive arrangement for new capacity is changing so that now Microsoft has a right of first refusal over OpenAI building new capacity.

In a press conference announcing the project, which has been rumored since early last year, Son and Altman spoke directly to Trump, insisting that the project only happened because of his election victory.

Meta may be releasing new Oakley-branded smart glasses later this year, according to a new Bloomberg report.

The Oakley-branded glasses, internally referred to as “Supernova 2”, would be based on the brand’s Sphaera glasses. Instead of housing the cameras on the side, the Supernova 2 would shift the camera to the center of the frame. The idea is to appeal to cyclists and other outdoor athletes. The report didn’t detail any other potential features, though the Oakley glasses would ostensibly have similar features to the current Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

Oakley, like Ray-Bans, are a subsidiary of eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. The move to expand Meta’s tech to other brands under EssilorLuxottica’s umbrella is a savvy one. While the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are good for discreet, everyday wear, they’re a bit heavy for endurance sports and lack certain features like polarized lenses for better visibility. Oakleys are also considered stylish and popular among professional athletes. Conceptually, they’re similar to the now discontinued Bose Frames Tempo, which allowed athletes to have open-ear audio with polarized lenses in a relatively light form factor. That said, if the goal is to appeal to athletes, Meta and Oakley will likely have to address factors like weight, sweat resistance, and battery life.

The report also notes that Meta plans on launching a higher-end version of its current Ray-Ban glasses that include a display capable of delivering notifications, running simple apps, and previewing photos.