Tech industry

Tech industry

For customers, this potentially represents a massive supplier shake-up, with sources claiming that hundreds of CSPs across Europe are affected. The news may not come as a shock to Reg readers because the direction of travel was indicated when Broadcom shuttered VMware's reseller/solution provider schemes in early 2024 and moved to the invite-only Broadcom Advantage Partner Program. Broadcom has also started to license new bundles, including products previously sold as standalone, and altered support for perpetual license holders.

So life is good. But not perfect, as he told the X sphere this week. "Appalled when I see workers on their phones. My dad used to always say 'there's always something to do.' No customers? Sweep the floor. Floor swept? Clean the machines. Machines clean? Organize stock. Organized? Clean again. Insane that anyone lets you on your phone lol. (I worked in various forms of customer-facing retail for about 7 years, but this extends beyond that)."

Instagram is developing a feature that will allow users to remove themselves from someone's "Close Friends" list, Meta told TechCrunch on Friday. The company says the feature is still in the early stages and is not being tested publicly yet. The social network's Close Friends feature lets users share Stories, Reels, and posts with a select group of people, rather than their entire follower base.

SpaceX and xAI, both companies led by Elon Musk, could merge ahead of a planned SpaceX IPO this year, according to a report from Reuters. This would bring products like the Grok chatbot, X platform, Starlink satellites, and SpaceX rockets together under one corporation. Company representatives have not discussed this possibility in public. However, recent filings show that two new corporate entities were established in Nevada on January 21, which are called K2 Merger Sub Inc. and K2 Merger Sub 2 LLC.

Paramount executives are brainstorming several ways to make their namesake streamer more competitive, including a short-form video feed, a sports multiview feature, and free content, according to an internal presentation viewed by Business Insider. The presentation was sent by Dan Reich, the Paramount+ head of global product and design, to Dane Glasgow, Paramount's chief product officer, via email in mid-January.

The company focuses on autonomous drones and AI pilots for use in combat and in contexts where communications may be down or jammed. Its technology enables the surveillance, mapping, and monitoring of spaces (such as inside buildings) without the need for human intervention. Unlike its competitor, Skydio, Shield AI has been focused on military objectives from the beginning, yet its defence tech has also been sold for maritime, policing, and border control operations.

Poettering is best known for systemd. After a lengthy stint at Red Hat, he joined Microsoft in 2022. Kühl was a Microsoft employee until last year, and Brauner, who also joined Microsoft in 2022, left this month. The trio are leading lights in the Linux and open source world. Brauner posted on Mastodon: "My role in upstream maintenance for the Linux kernel will continue as it always has." Poettering will similarly remain deeply involved in the systemd ecosystem.

One way to track the speed of the AI boom is to follow the hardware supply chain. Nvidia is the classic example: As AI companies build out data centers, they're buying up billions of dollars of GPUs each month, turning Nvidia into the most valuable company on earth. But Nvidia has suppliers too, and looking at them can give us an even longer-term view of the market.

For decades, tech companies have relied immensely on India's vast workforce, from entry-level call center jobs to software engineers and high-ranking managerial positions. But with the advent of advanced AI, which has been accompanied by employers greatly cutting back on hiring with the hopes of eventually automating tasks entirely, India's tech workers are having to cope with a vastly different reality in 2026.

The world today is witnessing the dawn of an AI-driven intelligent revolution, Eddie Wu told a developer conference in September. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only amplify human intelligence but also unlock human potential, paving the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI). ASI, Wu said, could produce a generation of super scientists' and full-stack super engineers', who would tackle unsolved scientific and engineering problems at unimaginable speeds.

Patreon's blog post announcing the change made it clear that it had no other choice. "We strongly disagree with this decision," the company wrote. "Creators need consistency and clarity in order to build healthy, long-term businesses. Instead, creators using legacy billing will now have to endure the whiplash of another policy reversal - the third such change from Apple in the past 18 months."

The Magnificent Seven have been running out of fuel well before we rang in the new year. And while the Mag Seven may have clocked in the most underwhelming first three weeks of the year in quite a while (the Mag Seven usually start new years with strength rather than weakness), I certainly wouldn't hit the panic button just yet.

Elon Musk has suggested timing a possible initial public offering of SpaceX to coincide with a planetary phenomenon and his birthday in June, the Financial Times reported. The owner of the rocket maker is considering timing the offering to coincide with when Jupiter and Venus appear very close together, the FT reported, citing five people familiar with the matter. That suggests a date in the middle of June, the same month the billionaire turns 55.

To that end, Waabi has raised $1 billion, including $750 million in an oversubscribed Series C round led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, along with additional capital from Uber specifically tied to robotaxi development. As part of the agreement, Waabi plans to deploy a minimum of 25,000 robotaxis powered by its technology on Uber's platform. In an interview, Urtasun emphasized that the number of robotaxis is a floor rather than a ceiling.