Tech Flash

San Francisco AI customer service company Decagon completes first employee tender offer at $4.5B valuation, providing liquidity for 300+ employees. This is the latest example of AI startups bypassing traditional IPO paths.

The US Commerce Department has drafted new regulations requiring US approval for AI chip sales by companies like Nvidia and AMD worldwide. The new rules would give Washington broad control over global AI chip sales.

Google faces its first-ever fatal lawsuit over Gemini AI chatbot. The plaintiff alleges that 36-year-old Florida resident Jonathan Gavalas' suicide in October 2025 was closely related to his interactions with Google's chatbot.

BMW Group announces it will begin testing humanoid robots at its German factory in April 2026, marking the first deployment of humanoid robots at the automaker's domestic production facility. Tests will evaluate the practical application capabilities of robots on the production line.

According to Bloomberg, Oracle is preparing to implement mass layoffs that could affect thousands of employees to raise funds for expanding its AI data center business. Layoffs are expected to begin this month.

Ai2 releases Olmo Hybrid, a new 7B parameter fully open model combining transformer attention with linear recurrent layers, decisively outperforming Olmo 3 7B across evaluations with 2× data efficiency improvement.

China's elderly population aged 60 and above is lining up to learn AI technology, with Tencent's AI open platform attracting unprecedented interest. Experts say this reflects China's unique model of skipping traditional technologies and directly adopting new ones.

The Trump administration has drafted strict rules for civilian AI contracts requiring companies to allow 'any lawful use' of their models, after the Pentagon designated Anthropic a 'supply-chain risk' barring its technology from US military projects.

Go legend Lee Sedol will face AI in an exhibition match on March 9 in Seoul, marking the 10th anniversary of his match against AlphaGo. Over the decade, he has transformed from an AI challenger to an AI collaborator, witnessing AI's remarkable journey from Go to Agentic AI.

Netflix announces acquisition of InterPositive, an AI-powered filmmaking tool company founded by Ben Affleck, marking the streaming giant's strategic push into AI-driven film production. Financial terms remain undisclosed.