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AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the disbanding of its mission alignment team to the firing of a policy exec who opposed its “adult mode” feature.  Watch as TechCrunch’s Equity podcast hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into the week’s biggest deals and departures, from billion-dollar bets on fusion and robotics to the tech exodus reshaping AI companies.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Source link

It was a pretty big week for Samsung Galaxy S26 leaks, as the majority of our most-read articles were related to the S26 series. Samsung finally confirmed the launch date for the S26 series. We’ll see the S26, S26+ and S26 Ultra make their debuts on February 25, just as expected. Samsung’s big launch event will take place in San Francisco and will be livestreamed on Samsung.com as well as YouTube. Samsung also went ahead and opened reservations for the S26 series. Users who sign up for the event are eligible for $30/€30 vouchers, a trade-in bonus, and a chance…

Figure Technology, a blockchain-based lending company, confirmed it experienced a data breach. On Friday, Figure spokesperson Alethea Jadick told TechCrunch in a statement that the breach originated when an employee was tricked with a social engineering attack that allowed the hackers to steal “a limited number of files.” The statement said the company is communicating “with partners and those impacted,” and offering free credit monitoring “to all individuals who receive a notice.” Figure’s spokesperson did not respond to a series of specific questions about the breach.  The hacking group ShinyHunters took responsibility for the hack on its official dark web…

Sony has introduced a new color for its flagship wireless WH-1000XM6 headphones. Not to be confused with the recently launched WF-1000XM6, which are the in-ear model. The WH-1000XM6 will now be available in Sand Pink. This is a very light, pastel shade of pink that really challenges the notion of what pink really is. You get the same soft-touch matte texture all over with a fine speckled finish when viewed up close. Completing the look are rose gold highlights around the hinges. The Sand Pink is the fourth color option for these headphones, which were previously available in Black, Blue,…

These days, rather than showing you the traditional list of links when you run a search query, Google is intent on throwing up AI Overviews instead: synthesized summaries of information scraped off the web, with some word-prediction magic added, and packaged together in a way to sound as accurate and reliable as possible.We’ve written before about some of the problems with these AI Overviews, which regularly contain mistakes or nonsense, and of course rip off the work of the human writers who actually know the answers to the questions you’re putting into Google. There’s another problem though—these AI answers can…

Airbnb says its custom-built AI agent is now handling roughly a third of its customer support issues in North America, and it’s preparing to roll out the feature globally. If successful, the company believes that in a year’s time, more than 30% of its total customer support tickets will be handled by AI voice and chat in all the languages where it also employs a human customer service agent. “We think this is going to be massive because not only does this reduce the cost base of Airbnb customer service, but the quality of service is going to be a…

The Galaxy S26 series launch is officially happening on February 25. There will be three models as usual – we already had a close look at all the Galaxy S26 Ultra leaks, now it’s time to do the same for the other two models. Here is what we think we know about Samsung’s upcoming flagships. No Pro, No Edge Samsung never officially confirmed it, but it was reportedly developing a Galaxy S26 Pro to replace the vanilla model and a Galaxy S26 Edge to replace the Plus model. Poor sales of the S25 Edge made sure that the latter isn’t…

Something strange happened at University of California campuses this fall. For the first time since the dot-com crash, computer science enrollment dropped. System-wide, it fell 6% this year after declining 3% in 2024, according to reporting this past week by the San Francisco Chronicle. Even as overall college enrollment climbed 2% nationally — according to January data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center — students are bailing on traditional CS degrees. The one exception is UC San Diego — the only UC campus that added a dedicated AI major this fall. This all might look like a temporary blip…

This week, two smartphone families are on sale – the Poco F8 duo and three Pixel 10 phones. The Pocos offer faster chipsets and bigger batteries, while the Pixels are first in line for new Android features. A couple of weeks ago, a 16/512GB Poco F8 Ultra was selling for €750. Now it costs the same, but Amazon also restocked the 12/256GB variant, which goes for €680. The Ultra has a large 6.9” 12-bit 120Hz OLED display, is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and boasts a 6,500mAh battery (18:52h Active Use Score) with 100W wired and 50W…

Airbnb has taken its time to launch AI features within the app, but CEO Brian Chesky on Friday said the company is now planning to bake in features powered by large language models that would help users search for listings, plan their trips, and aid hosts in managing their properties. Speaking at the company’s fourth-quarter conference call, Chesky said the company wants to increase its use of large language models for customer discovery, support and engineering. “We are building an AI-native experience where the app does not just search for you. It knows you. It will help guests plan their…