Anthropic acquired Seattle startup Vercept on Wednesday, raising familiar questions about the impact of early exits on the broader Seattle startup ecosystem, and the question of whether AI startups can compete long-term against the giants of the field.
We dig into the deal, the public feud between two of the company’s early investors on LinkedIn, and why one co-founder’s prior departure to Meta may have been worth more, ultimately, than the acquisition of the entire company.
Then, the New York Times reported this week that Jeffrey Epstein built deeper connections inside Microsoft than any other major tech company. We break down the key revelations, and talk about what we found when we searched the Epstein files for “GeekWire.”
And stick around for GeekWire Trivia: With Xbox entering a new era under Asha Sharma, we look back at the celebrity who appeared on stage for the original Xbox unveiling 25 years ago.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
People familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that the deal marks a major step toward a potential initial public offering later this year, even amid warnings of speculative excess across the AI sector. The scale dwarfs previous records, including Anthropic’s $30 billion funding earlier this year and OpenAI’s… Read Entire Article Source link
To understand why this matters, it helps to know how current web security actually works. When you visit a website, your browser checks a digital certificate to confirm you’re actually talking to the real site and not some imposter. Those certificates are secured using complex math problems that regular computers… Read Entire Article Source link
[Nagy Krisztián] had an Intel 286 CPU, only… There was no motherboard to install it in. Perhaps not wanting the processor to be lonely, [Nagy] built a simulated system to bring the chip back to life.Okay, 68 pins does look like a lot when you arrange them like that.
The concept is simple enough. [Nagy] merely intended to wire the 286 up to a Raspberry Pi Pico that could emulate other parts of a computer that it would normally expect to talk to. This isn’t so hard with an ancient CPU like the 286, which has just 68 pins compared to the 1000+ pins on modern CPUs. All it took was a PLCC-68 socket, an adapter PCB, a breadboard, and some MCP23s17 logic expanders to give the diminutive microcontroller enough I/O. With a bit of work, [Nagy] was able to get the Pi Pico running the 286, allowing it to execute a simple program that retrieves numbers from “memory” and writes them back in turn.
Notably, this setup won’t run the 286 at its full clock speed of 12 MHz, and it’s a long way off from doing anything complex like talking to peripherals or booting an OS. Still, it’s neat to see the old metal live again, even if it’s just rattling through a few simple machine instructions that don’t mean a whole lot. [Nagy] equates this project to The Matrix; you might also think of it as a brain in a jar. The 286 is not in a real computer; it’s just hooked up to a microcontroller stimulating its various pins in a way that is indistinguishable from its own perspective.
Motorola is slowly teasing more details about its upcoming Razr Fold, including its battery capacity, thickness and durability. I got an early look at the phone at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, before it debuts in North America this summer.
In January, the company shared a handful of Razr Fold specs, including that it’ll have a 6.6-inch external display and an 8.1-inch internal screen — making it slightly bigger than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold.
We now also know the Razr Fold will be 4.6mm thick when open and 9.9mm thick when closed, weighing 243 grams. That places it firmly between Samsung’s and Google’s foldable offerings.
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In my hand, the Razr Fold felt similar to the Z Fold 7 in terms of its sleekness. The cover display is a comfortably and viable option for tasks like texting and scrolling. When you open the Razr, you can multitask with up to three apps. The incremental size-up compared with Samsung’s and Google’s foldables is hardly noticeable, but it should place it safely within their orbit.
The Razr Fold will also pack a triple 50-megapixel camera system, along with a 32-megapixel selfie camera on the cover and a 20-megapixel selfie inside.
The Razr Fold has a triple 50-megapixel camera system.
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Celso Bulgatti/CNET
Despite its sleeker frame, the Razr Fold will have an impressively large 6,000-mAh battery. It’ll also support 80-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging. That should help it stand out, especially from the 4,400-mAh battery on the Galaxy Z Fold 7. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor to boost performance and efficiency and to power AI features.
Motorola also shared more details about the Razr Fold’s durability. It’ll have an IP48 and IP49 rating, meaning it can withstand a meter of water for 30 minutes and handle high water pressure. But, unlike the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, it’s not dust-resistant. The Razr Fold will be the first smartphone to feature Corning’s Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 on the cover.
Like most premium Android phones, the Razr Fold will come with seven years of software and security updates. There are two color options: Pantone blackened blue, which has a more textured back, and Pantone lily white, which is smoother and matte. Both backs are made of vegan leather and offer a more luxurious feel than the glass on most premium phones (not to mention the relative lack of fingerprints).
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The two biggest questions still loom: price and availability. Motorola says it’ll share information on that as the summer release window approaches.
Inside Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)
Amazon is doubling down on OpenAI, announcing a strategic partnership Friday that includes a $50 billion investment in the ChatGPT maker.
The companies said Amazon will start with $15 billion, with $35 billion more expected “in the coming months when certain conditions are met.” The investment is part of a broader $110 billion funding round for OpenAI that includes SoftBank and NVIDIA, and brings the company’s pre-money valuation to a whopping $730 billion.
OpenAI and AWS are also deepening their technical ties, expanding an existing $38 billion multi-year agreement by $100 billion over eight years. OpenAI will run more of its AI workloads on AWS, including a commitment to consume 2 gigawatts’ worth of capacity on Trainium — Amazon’s in-house chips built to train and run AI models — to support new OpenAI tools and other computing.
“Combining OpenAI’s models with Amazon’s infrastructure and global reach helps us put powerful AI into the hands of businesses and users at real scale,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement.
The news marks a push to make AWS a go-to place to build and run OpenAI-powered software, as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google battle for AI customers and the computing work that comes with them. It also gives AWS a high-profile customer for Trainium at enormous scale.
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“We think they’ll be one of the big winners in AI, we can help them grow, and we believe we’ll earn a strong return for Amazon over the long term,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote on LinkedIn.
Analysts with William Blair called the deal a clear positive for AWS, estimating the added $100 billion in OpenAI usage over eight years could work out to roughly $17 billion a year in revenue if spending is spread evenly — about 11% of AWS’s expected 2026 revenue, based on consensus forecasts. They also said OpenAI’s plan to use huge amounts of Trainium is a meaningful endorsement as AWS tries to prove it can win the biggest AI workloads.
Microsoft, a longtime partner and key cloud provider to OpenAI, issued a statement Friday emphasizing that the OpenAI-Microsoft relationship remains intact. “Nothing about today’s announcements in any way changes the terms of the Microsoft and OpenAI relationship that have been previously shared in our joint blog in October 2025,” the company wrote.
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The Redmond tech giant added that its commercial and revenue-sharing relationship with OpenAI “remains unchanged,” and noted that it has “always included sharing revenue from partnerships between OpenAI and other cloud providers.”
Microsoft also reiterated that Azure remains the exclusive cloud provider of “stateless OpenAI APIs,” and said that any stateless API calls to OpenAI models that result from collaborations with third parties — “including Amazon” — would be hosted on Azure.
In basic terms, the “stateless” calls that Microsoft retains exclusivity over are simple, one-and-done AI requests: ask a question, get an answer. The “stateful” environment that Amazon is building on AWS is where companies run AI systems that remember context, work on complex tasks over time, and coordinate with each other. This is territory where Microsoft also operates through its own Copilot products and Azure OpenAI Service, but where Amazon is now staking a major claim, as well.
Other key details from Amazon and OpenAI’s expanded partnership:
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AWS and OpenAI said they will co-create a “Stateful Runtime Environment” powered by OpenAI models, offered through Amazon Bedrock, so customers can build AI applications and agents “at production scale.”
AWS will be the “exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider” for OpenAI Frontier, an enterprise platform for building and managing teams of AI agents with shared context, governance, and security. Microsoft says Frontier will continue to be hosted on Azure.
Amazon and OpenAI will collaborate to develop “customized models” to power Amazon’s own customer-facing applications.
As GeekWire previously reported, Amazon was actually OpenAI’s first cloud partner — providing computing resources at the lab’s founding in 2015, before Microsoft swooped in and built the partnership that defined the generative AI era.
Now, a decade later, the company that OpenAI once left because Amazon was being petty about terms and conditions is writing a $50 billion check to get back in.
Do you like having a second screen with your computer setup? What if your laptop could carry a second screen for you? That’s the idea behind Lenovo’s latest proof of concept, the ThinkBook Modular AI PC, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
At MWC 2026, Lenovo trotted out three concepts. While it’s unclear whether any of them will become real, purchasable products, there’s some unique utility here, and a peek at how computing experiences could change in the future.
A Laptop With a Built-In Portable Screen
The ThinkBook Modular AI PC has a second screen hanging magnetically off the back of the laptop, and it can show content to people sitting in front of you.
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Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
This is with the second screen removed from the back and placed in front of the main display. The keyboard is removable and works via Bluetooth.
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
As someone with a multi-screen setup at home and a fondness for portable monitors, the ThinkBook Modular AI PC appeals to me the most. At first glance, it looks like a normal laptop. Take a look behind, and you’ll notice there’s a second screen magnetically hanging off the back of the laptop, like a koala carrying a baby on its back.
The screen is connected to the laptop using pogo-pin connectors, so you can use it in this state to display content to people in front of you, say, if you were making a presentation during a meeting. Alternatively, you can pop this second screen off, remove a hidden kickstand resting under the laptop, and magnetically attach it to the 14-inch screen so that you have a traditional portable monitor experience. (You’ll need to connect this to the laptop via a USB-C cable in this orientation.)
If you don’t have the desk space for that orientation, you can always remove the keyboard from the base and pop the second screen there—it’ll auto-connect to the laptop via the pogo pins, and you’ll be able to use the Bluetooth keyboard to type on a dual-screen setup that resembles the Asus ZenBook Duo. The whole system is a fantastically portable method of improving productivity on the go, and the laptop isn’t too thick or cumbersome.
Ultrahuman has released the highly anticipated Ring Pro for preorder with a price of AU$739 in Australia
It improves on battery life and heart-rate tracking, but its charging case steals the show
Singapore and New Zealand availability and price TBC
Just a day after Ultrahuman’s CEO broke his silence on the new Oura-beating smart ring, it went up for preorder in most major markets for $479 / £419 / AU$739. That makes the new Ultrahuman Ring Pro a lot pricier than the $349 / £329 / AU$599 Ring Air, but the several improvements its brings — including the promised 15-day battery life — does seem to justify the premium.
Alongside the better battery comes improved sensors for better heart-rate tracking, especially during sleep, and an upgraded dual-core CPU that enables on-chip processing so the Ring Pro doesn’t need to rely on a paired phone. Ultrahuman also says that the CPU offers more accurate metrics thanks to machine learning.
(Image credit: Ultrahuman)
It’s the new charging case that steals that show in my opinion. Not only does it extend the smart ring’s battery life to a staggering 45 days, it features an LED light that gives you a clear visual indication of how much battery it still holds.
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It even has enough onboard storage to save a year’s worth of health data from the Ring Pro. It will also provide haptic feedback when delivering alerts. If that wasn’t enough, a built-in speaker will sound a small alarm when you activate the Find My Case feature in the app.
It’s still a little up in the air
One of the main reasons I like Ultrahuman is that you get all your key metrics without a subscription. There are a few that are locked behind a paywall, but most users can get by without paying for any of them. Moreover, it plays well with iOS and Android.
All the improvements I’ve listed above are tempting me to upgrade from my Ultrahuman Ring Air — despite the Ring Pro’s high asking price — and I’m glad I’m not based in the US.
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The Ultrahuman Ring Air is my daily driver (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)
As an Australian, I can already pre-order the Ring Pro, but it’s as yet uncertain whether it will be available to buy in the US. It’s availability in other APAC regions is also yet to be confirmed.
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The Ring Pro is the product named in Ultrahuman’s patent-infringement case against Oura, which it lost in the US, meaning the company’s products are banned from being imported into America and the Ring Air was pulled from shelves last year.
Perhaps Ultrahuman has done its due diligence this time and the Ring Pro will soon find its way to US customers, especially since the Ring Air is one of the best smart rings on the market and I’m hoping the Ring Pro will prove just as good.
Apple Stores are preparing for a significant number of physical product launches during its early March event, with the new MacBook getting its own table.
A new MacBook is on the way
From Monday, Apple will be making multiple product announcements before holding a three-city “experience” event. While the actual products that will launch are not officially known, it seems Apple is expecting one to make a big impression on consumers. Retail workers were told to prepare for a sudden influx of customers in early March due to its program of product launches this week, writes Mark Gurman in the Bloomberg “Power On” newsletter. The prelaunch planning for the week is at a similar level to an iPhone launch, meaning Apple has big expectations for its lineup. Rumor Score: 🤯 Likely Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
Lenovo has given the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition a refresh for 2026 and launched the new device at this year’s Mobile World Congress. The convertible laptop comes with a new Canvas Mode when the Yoga Pen Gen 2 case it’s bundled with is attached to the A-cover. When you lay the device down on a flat surface with the case attached, you’ll get a slight elevation on the display, which may make it easier to sketch or draw.
The Copilot+ laptop is powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors with integrated graphics, has up to 32GB in memory and runs Windows 11. Its 14-inch screen has a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800 pixels, has a variable refresh rate of 120 Hz and supports multi-touch. In addition to the new Canvas Mode, the device also supports Tablet, Tent, Stand and traditional Laptop Modes like its predecessors do. The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition Gen 11 will be available in May, with prices starting at $1,949.
Lenovo has also launched the new Yoga Pro 7a at MWC 2026. This Copilot+ laptop is powered by AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Series processors and comes with up to 128GB of RAM, so it can be used for heavy AI tasks. It has a 15.3-inch 2.5K PureSight Pro OLED display and is equipped with a big Force Pad trackpad that doubles as a drawing tablet. You can get the device starting in August this year for at least $2,099.
For a more affordable option, there’s the new IdeaPad Slim 5i Ultra laptop, which also has Copilot+ features. It’s powered by Intel Core Ultra processors and comes with either a WUXGA OLED or a WQXGA IPS LCD 14-inch display that has a VRR of 120 Hz. The device was designed for portability, with its thinnest part measuring just 11.9 mm in depth, and weighs 2.5 lbs. It will be available starting in October for at least $799.
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Another affordable option is the new Idea Tab Pro Gen 2, which is specifically targeted towards students. It’s powered by theSnapdragon 8s Gen 4 Mobile Platform and has a 13-inch 3.5K display. The Tab Pro Gen 2 is Lenovo’s first tablet to ship with its Qira AI assistant and the company’s AI tools. It will be sold with a Lenovo Tab Pen Plus included for $419 starting in July.
You can always count on Lenovo to show up at a tech conference with a cool laptop concept or two. At CES 2026, we glimpsed the Legion Pro Rollable laptop with a display that expands sideways and the ThinkPad Rollable XD laptop with a display that extends upward. And now, not even two months later, Lenovo has another laptop display concept at Mobile World Congress 2026: the ThinkBook Modular AI PC Concept.
Instead of a rollable or foldable display, this ThinkBook concept has a detachable secondary display that creates a couple of different ways to spread out your work.
In addition to this latest laptop concept, Lenovo announced a number of products at MWC that will ship this year. I’ll get to the other laptop updates from the show, but first, let’s get our heads around Lenovo’s funky, modular ThinkBook concept.
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ThinkBook Modular AI PC Concept
This ThinkBook concept looks like a typical laptop, except that it has an extra display on the top cover that faces outward. Each display is a 14-inch panel, but the secondary display can be detached and deployed in a few different ways.
With the secondary display attached to the laptop’s top cover on the back of the primary display, you’ve got the best way to carry the ThinkBook in transit. This back-to-back display arrangement can be used to present to someone sitting across from you — whatever you’re seeing on the screen facing you, they can see on the screen facing them.
More useful are the other two display modes:
1. Remove the keyboard (yes, the keyboard comes off, too), swap the second display in its place, and you’ve got a dual-screen laptop with double the workspace. The detachable keyboard has Bluetooth, so you can use it in this dual-screen mode.
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2. Remove the rear secondary display, then set it up next to the laptop as a second screen off to the side, as you would with a portable monitor. The removable kickstand, hidden in plain sight on the bottom of the laptop, magnetically attaches to the display to prop it up in either landscape or portrait mode. You’ll need to use the included cable to connect the display to the laptop, which creates some clutter, but it’s still a useful setup for those busy times of day when you need to keep an eye on more things than will fit on a single 14-inch screen.
With the detachable Bluetooth keyboard, you can use the ThinkBook Modular AI PC with both of its displays arranged vertically side by side.
Josh Goldman/CNET
The keyboard and secondary display connect via pogo pins that Lenovo has favored for its Magic Bay ecosystem of swappable accessories. Each is easy to swap in and out, and they create a satisfying connection when snapped into place.
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Additional modularity comes by way of the ThinkBook’s ports. The ports include USB-A, USB-C and HDMI; these can be exchanged for one another. A bay is located on each side of the laptop for these modular ports, and the extras are housed in a small AirPod-like case.
The ThinkBook Modular AI PC has modular ports you can swap in and out.
Josh Goldman/CNET
This is one dual-screen laptop concept that I would really like to see because you aren’t paying a penalty in weight to gain the versatility of this modular design. Many dual-screen laptops are so heavy that I’d rather just have a desktop with two monitors instead.
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But with the ThinkBook Modular AI PC Concept, it’s as portable as most 14-inch laptops, weighing just 3 pounds. The detachable display is so thin and light that I thought it was just a mockup when I first picked it up and not an actual operational display.
My only notes would be to encourage Lenovo to strengthen the kickstand on the back of the modular display. It’s too puny to provide a solid base for the display. And I’d like a little rubber nub on the end of it so it doesn’t slide around so easily.
The kickstand is a bit too flimsy.
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Josh Goldman/CNET
ThinkPad updates also include a focus on serviceability
Lenovo announced a slew of ThinkPad laptop updates at MWC, and modularity shows up in a couple of them. In both the ThinkPad T series laptop and ThinkTab X11 tablet, Lenovo has introduced a battery that can be removed without tools for greater serviceability. Just press two tabs, and the battery comes right out. The ThinkPad T series laptops also feature bottom panels that are easier to remove, simplified internal layouts and user-replaceable USB-C ports.
The ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 features up to a 14-inch 2.8K OLED display powered by the latest Intel and AMD processors. The ThinkPad T14 weighs close to 3 pounds — 2.8 pounds, according to Lenovo. The slimmer ThinkPad T14s weighs less than 2.5 pounds, which is exceptionally light for a 14-inch laptop.
Stop the presses! Is that a ThinkPad in a color other than black?
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Josh Goldman/CNET
In a major shakeup for a ThinkPad, the ThinkPad T14 will be available in a color other than black. You can get it in Cosmic Blue, which is a blue so dark it might as well be black. But, hey, when the light catches it just right, you can see that it is, in fact, navy blue in color.
But if you think that the keyboard will also get the Cosmic Blue treatment, you’ll be disappointed to know that the keys remain a basic, ThinkPad black.
Both ThinkPad T series laptops will start shipping in Q2, with the ThinkPad T14 starting at $1,799 and the ThinkPad T14s starting at $1,899.
Meanwhile, the ThinkTab X11 is a rugged Android tablet featuring an 11-inch 2.5K display and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X series CPU. It’s expected to be available in Q2, starting at $499.
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You’ll need to wait until the second half of the year for the ThinkPad X13 Detachable.
Josh Goldman/CNET
Lenovo also introduced a larger, less rugged tablet in the ThinkPad X13 Detachable. It has a 13-inch display that you can detach from the keyboard for a true tablet experience. Its battery and USB-C ports are also user-replaceable, again showing Lenovo’s focus on repairability and product longevity. The ThinkPad X13 Detachable won’t start shipping until Q3, starting at $1,999.
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