Tech Flash

SXSW 2026 kicks off in March, featuring key topics on AI and the brain, creative tools. The conference will explore AI's impact on human reasoning, creation and learning abilities.

AI coding startup Cursor is in talks with investors for a funding round that would value the company at about $50 billion, nearly double its valuation from last fall.

Mind Robotics, an industrial robotics lab spun out of Rivian, raises $500M Series A funding co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. Funds will be used to develop industrial AI-powered robots.

Rumors suggest Microsoft plans to launch Windows 12 in 2026 with deep AI integration and a new modular CorePC architecture. The system will require NPU with at least 40 TOPS.

Samsung Electronics' 2025 R&D spending reaches $25 billion, a 5 trillion won increase year-over-year. Funds primarily used for building next-gen semiconductor manufacturing facilities including NRD-K complex.

Microsoft announces increased push for AI tool adoption in Africa to compete with China's DeepSeek. Tech giant targets world's youngest and fastest-growing population market.

OpenAI unveils GPT-5.4 Thinking, a frontier model that fuses reasoning, coding and agentic workflows. The new version strengthens tool support for spreadsheets, presentations and documents, and lets ChatGPT display thinking plans to refine results.

NVIDIA announces $2 billion investment in AI cloud computing company Nebius. The two companies will collaborate to develop and deploy next-generation hyperscale cloud for the AI market. Nebius stock surged 16% on the news.

China's largest contract chipmaker SMIC reports full capacity utilization for mature-node memory and BCD process chips. AI demand is tightening supply across the semiconductor industry.

Uber and Amazon-owned Zoox sign multi-year partnership to deploy purpose-built robotaxis on Uber's rideshare network. This marks Zoox's first partnership with a third-party ride-hailing platform.