From 6-22 February, the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy will feature not just the world’s top winter athletes but also some of the most advanced sports technologies today. At the first Cortina Olympics in 1956, the Swiss company Omega—based in Biel/Bienne—introduced electronic ski starting gates and launched the first automated timing tech of its kind.

At this year’s Olympics, Swiss Timing, sister company to Omega under the parent Swatch Group, unveils a new generation of motion analysis and computer vision technology. The new technologies on offer include photofinish cameras that capture up to 40,000 images per second.

“We work very closely with athletes,” says Swiss Timing CEO Alain Zobrist, who has overseen Olympic timekeeping since the winter games of 2006 in Torino “They are the primary customers of our technology and services, and they need to understand how our systems work in order to trust them.”

Using high-resolution cameras and AI algorithms tuned to skaters’ routines, Milan-Cortina Olympic officials expect new figure skating tech to be a key highlight of the games. Omega

Figure Skating Tech Completes the Rotation

Figure skating, the Winter Olympics’ biggest TV draw, is receiving a substantial upgrade at Milano Cortina 2026.

Fourteen 8K resolution cameras positioned around the rink will capture every skater’s movement. “We use proprietary software to interpret the images and visualize athlete movement in a 3D model,” says Zobrist. “AI processes the data so we can track trajectory, position, and movement across all three axes—X, Y, and Z”.

The system measures jump heights, air times, and landing speeds in real time, producing heat maps and graphic overlays that break down each program—all instantaneously. “The time it takes for us to measure the data, until we show a matrix on TV with a graphic, this whole chain needs to take less than 1/10 of a second,” Zobrist says.

A range of different AI models helps the broadcasters and commentators process each skater’s every move on the ice.

“There is an AI that helps our computer vision system do pose estimation,” he says. “So we have a camera that is filming what is happening, and an AI that helps the camera understand what it’s looking at. And then there is a second type of AI, which is more similar to a large language model that makes sense of the data that we collect”.

Among the features Swiss Timing’s new systems provide is blade angle detection, which gives judges precise technical data to augment their technical and aesthetic decisions. Zobrist says future versions will also determine whether a given rotation is complete, so that “If the rotation is 355 degrees, there is going to be a deduction,” he says.

This builds on technology Omega unveiled at the 2024 Paris Olympics for diving, where cameras measured distances between a diver’s head and the board to help judges assess points and penalties to be awarded.

At the 2026 Winter Olympics, ski jumping will feature both camera-based and sensor-based technologies to make the aerial experience more immediate and real-time. Omega

Ski Jumping Tech Finds Make-or-Break Moments

Unlike figure skating’s camera-based approach, ski jumping also relies on physical sensors.

“In ski jumping, we use a small, lightweight sensor attached to each ski, one sensor per ski, not on the athlete’s body,” Zobrist says. The sensors are lightweight and broadcast data on a skier’s speed, acceleration, and positioning in the air. The technology also correlates performance data with wind conditions, revealing environmental factors’ influence on each jump.

High-speed cameras also track each ski jumper. Then, a stroboscopic camera provides body position time-lapses throughout the jump.

“The first 20 to 30 meters after takeoff are crucial as athletes move into a V position and lean forward,” Zobrist says. “And both the timing and precision of this movement strongly influence performance.”

The system reveals biomechanical characteristics in real time, he adds, showing how athletes position their bodies during every moment of the takeoff process. The most common mistake in flight position, over-rotation or under-rotation, can now be detailed and diagnosed with precision on every jump.

Bobsleigh: Pushing the Line on the Photo Finish

This year’s Olympics will also feature a “virtual photo finish,” providing comparison images of when different sleds cross the finish line over previous runs.

Omega’s cameras will provide virtual photo finishes at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Omega

“We virtually build a photo finish that shows different sleds from different runs on a single visual reference,” says Zobrist.

After each run, composite images show the margins separating performances. However, more tried-and-true technology still generates official results. A Swiss Timing score, he says, still comes courtesy of photoelectric cells, devices that emit light beams across the finish line and stop the clock when broken. The company offers its virtual photo finish, by contrast, as a visualization tool for spectators and commentators.

In bobsleigh, as in every timed Winter Olympic event, the line between triumph and heartbreak is sometimes measured in milliseconds or even shorter time intervals still. Such precision will, Zobrist says, stem from Omega’s Quantum Timer.

“We can measure time to the millionth of a second, so 6 digits after the comma, with a deviation of about 23 nanoseconds over 24 hours,” Zobrist explained. “These devices are constantly calibrated and used across all timed sports.”

Anthropic on Thursday released Claude Opus 4.6, a major upgrade to its flagship artificial intelligence model that the company says plans more carefully, sustains longer autonomous workflows, and outperforms competitors including OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 on key enterprise benchmarks — a release that arrives at a tumultuous moment for the AI industry and global software markets.

The launch comes just three days after OpenAI released its own Codex desktop application in a direct challenge to Anthropic’s Claude Code momentum, and amid a $285 billion rout in software and services stocks that investors attribute partly to fears that Anthropic’s AI tools could disrupt established enterprise software businesses.

For the first time, Anthropic’s Opus-class models will feature a 1 million token context window, allowing the AI to process and reason across vastly more information than previous versions. The company also introduced “agent teams” in Claude Code — a research preview feature that enables multiple AI agents to work simultaneously on different aspects of a coding project, coordinating autonomously.

“We’re focused on building the most capable, reliable, and safe AI systems,” an Anthropic spokesperson told VentureBeat about the announcements. “Opus 4.6 is even better at planning, helping solve the most complex coding tasks. And the new agent teams feature means users can split work across multiple agents — one on the frontend, one on the API, one on the migration — each owning its piece and coordinating directly with the others.”

Why OpenAI and Anthropic are locked in an all-out war for enterprise developers

The release intensifies an already fierce competition between Anthropic and OpenAI, the two most valuable privately held AI companies in the world. OpenAI on Monday released a new desktop application for its Codex artificial intelligence coding system, a tool the company says transforms software development from a collaborative exercise with a single AI assistant into something more akin to managing a team of autonomous workers.

AI coding assistants have exploded in popularity over the last year, and OpenAI said more than 1 million developers have used Codex in the past month. The new Codex app is part of OpenAI’s ongoing effort to lure users and market share away from rivals like Anthropic and Cursor.

The timing of Anthropic’s release — just 72 hours after OpenAI’s Codex launch — underscores the breakneck pace of competition in AI development tools. OpenAI faces intensifying competition from Anthropic, which posted the largest share increase of any frontier lab since May 2025, according to a recent Andreessen Horowitz survey. Forty-four percent of enterprises now use Anthropic in production, driven by rapid capability gains in software development since late 2024. The desktop launch is a strategic counter to Claude Code’s momentum.

According to Anthropic’s announcement, Opus 4.6 achieves the highest score on Terminal-Bench 2.0, an agentic coding evaluation, and leads all other frontier models on Humanity’s Last Exam, a complex multi-discipline reasoning test. On GDPval-AA — a benchmark measuring performance on economically valuable knowledge work tasks in finance, legal and other domains — Opus 4.6 outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 by approximately 144 ELO points, which translates to obtaining a higher score approximately 70% of the time.

Inside Claude Code’s $1 billion revenue milestone and growing enterprise footprint

The stakes are substantial. Asked about Claude Code’s financial performance, the Anthropic spokesperson noted that in November, the company announced that Claude Code reached $1 billion in run rate revenue only six months after becoming generally available in May 2025.

The spokesperson highlighted major enterprise deployments: “Claude Code is used by Uber across teams like software engineering, data science, finance, and trust and safety; wall-to-wall deployment across Salesforce’s global engineering org; tens of thousands of devs at Accenture; and companies across industries like Spotify, Rakuten, Snowflake, Novo Nordisk, and Ramp.”

That enterprise traction has translated into skyrocketing valuations. Earlier this month, Anthropic signed a term sheet for a $10 billion funding round at a $350 billion valuation. Bloomberg reported that Anthropic is simultaneously working on a tender offer that would allow employees to sell shares at that valuation, offering liquidity to staffers who have watched the company’s worth multiply since its 2021 founding.

How Opus 4.6 solves the ‘context rot’ problem that has plagued AI models

One of Opus 4.6’s most significant technical improvements addresses what the AI industry calls “context rot“—the degradation of model performance as conversations grow longer. Anthropic says Opus 4.6 scores 76% on MRCR v2, a needle-in-a-haystack benchmark testing a model’s ability to retrieve information hidden in vast amounts of text, compared to just 18.5% for Sonnet 4.5.

“This is a qualitative shift in how much context a model can actually use while maintaining peak performance,” the company said in its announcement.

The model also supports outputs of up to 128,000 tokens — enough to complete substantial coding tasks or documents without breaking them into multiple requests.

For developers, Anthropic is introducing several new API features alongside the model: adaptive thinking, which allows Claude to decide when deeper reasoning would be helpful rather than requiring a binary on-off choice; four effort levels (low, medium, high, max) to control intelligence, speed and cost tradeoffs; and context compaction, a beta feature that automatically summarizes older context to enable longer-running tasks.

Anthropic’s delicate balancing act: Building powerful AI agents without losing control

Anthropic, which has built its brand around AI safety research, emphasized that Opus 4.6 maintains alignment with its predecessors despite its enhanced capabilities. On the company’s automated behavior audit measuring misaligned behaviors such as deception, sycophancy, and cooperation with misuse, Opus 4.6 “showed a low rate” of problematic responses while also achieving “the lowest rate of over-refusals — where the model fails to answer benign queries — of any recent Claude model.”

When asked how Anthropic thinks about safety guardrails as Claude becomes more agentic, particularly with multiple agents coordinating autonomously, the spokesperson pointed to the company’s published framework: “Agents have tremendous potential for positive impacts in work but it’s important that agents continue to be safe, reliable, and trustworthy. We outlined our framework for developing safe and trustworthy agents last year which shares core principles developers should consider when building agents.”

The company said it has developed six new cybersecurity probes to detect potentially harmful uses of the model’s enhanced capabilities, and is using Opus 4.6 to help find and patch vulnerabilities in open-source software as part of defensive cybersecurity efforts.

Sam Altman vs. Dario Amodei: The Super Bowl ad battle that exposed AI’s deepest divisions

The rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI has spilled into consumer marketing in dramatic fashion. Both companies will feature prominently during Sunday’s Super Bowl. Anthropic is airing commercials that mock OpenAI’s decision to begin testing advertisements in ChatGPT, with the tagline: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded by calling the ads “funny” but “clearly dishonest,” posting on X that his company would “obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them” and that “Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI” while serving “an expensive product to rich people.”

The exchange highlights a fundamental strategic divergence: OpenAI has moved to monetize its massive free user base through advertising, while Anthropic has focused almost exclusively on enterprise sales and premium subscriptions.

The $285 billion stock selloff that revealed Wall Street’s AI anxiety

The launch occurs against a backdrop of historic market volatility in software stocks. A new AI automation tool from Anthropic PBC sparked a $285 billion rout in stocks across the software, financial services and asset management sectors on Tuesday as investors raced to dump shares with even the slightest exposure. A Goldman Sachs basket of US software stocks sank 6%, its biggest one-day decline since April’s tariff-fueled selloff.

The selloff was triggered by a new legal tool from Anthropic, which showed the AI industry’s growing push into industries that can unlock lucrative enterprise revenue needed to fund massive investments in the technology. One trigger for Tuesday’s selloff was Anthropic’s launch of plug-ins for its Claude Cowork agent on Friday, enabling automated tasks across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis.

Thomson Reuters plunged 15.83% Tuesday, its biggest single-day drop on record; and Legalzoom.com sank 19.68%. European legal software providers including RELX, owner of LexisNexis, and Wolters Kluwer experienced their worst single-day performances in decades.

Not everyone agrees the selloff is warranted. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Tuesday that fears AI would replace software and related tools were “illogical” and “time will prove itself.” Mark Murphy, head of U.S. enterprise software research at JPMorgan, said in a Reuters report it “feels like an illogical leap” to say a new plug-in from an LLM would “replace every layer of mission-critical enterprise software.”

What Claude’s new PowerPoint integration means for Microsoft’s AI strategy

Among the more notable product announcements: Anthropic is releasing Claude in PowerPoint in research preview, allowing users to create presentations using the same AI capabilities that power Claude’s document and spreadsheet work. The integration puts Claude directly inside a core Microsoft product — an unusual arrangement given Microsoft’s 27% stake in OpenAI.

The Anthropic spokesperson framed the move pragmatically in an interview with VentureBeat: “Microsoft has an official add-in marketplace for Office products with multiple add-ins available to help people with slide creation and iteration. Any developer can build a plugin for Excel or PowerPoint. We’re participating in that ecosystem to bring Claude into PowerPoint. This is about participating in the ecosystem and giving users the ability to work with the tools that they want, in the programs they want.”

The data behind enterprise AI adoption: Who’s winning and who’s losing ground

Data from a16z’s recent enterprise AI survey suggests both Anthropic and OpenAI face an increasingly competitive landscape. While OpenAI remains the most widely used AI provider in the enterprise, with approximately 77% of surveyed companies using it in production in January 2026, Anthropic’s adoption is rising rapidly — from near-zero in March 2024 to approximately 40% using it in production by January 2026.

The survey data also shows that 75% of Anthropic’s enterprise customers are using it in production, with 89% either testing or in production — figures that slightly exceed OpenAI’s 46% in production and 73% testing or in production rates among its customer base.

Enterprise spending on AI continues to accelerate. Average enterprise LLM spend reached $7 million in 2025, up 180% from $2.5 million in 2024, with projections suggesting $11.6 million in 2026 — a 65% increase year-over-year.

Pricing, availability, and what developers need to know about Claude Opus 4.6

Opus 4.6 is available immediately on claude.ai, the Claude API, and major cloud platforms. Developers can access it via claude-opus-4-6 through the API. Pricing remains unchanged at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, with premium pricing of $10/$37.50 for prompts exceeding 200,000 tokens using the 1 million token context window.

For users who find Opus 4.6 “overthinking” simpler tasks — a characteristic Anthropic acknowledges can add cost and latency — the company recommends adjusting the effort parameter from its default high setting to medium.

The recommendation captures something essential about where the AI industry now stands. These models have grown so capable that their creators must now teach customers how to make them think less. Whether that represents a breakthrough or a warning sign depends entirely on which side of the disruption you’re standing on — and whether you remembered to sell your software stocks before Tuesday.

I’ve been critical of the Nintendo Switch 2 in previous stories, given the price of its games and, to a lesser extent, the handheld’s price itself, but after giving it a shot, it’s a strong recommendation. You can now grab the Nintendo Switch 2 bundle on Best Buy for $629.95 (was $684.95).

The bundle includes Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, two exclusive Switch 2 titles that showcase the fun ready to be had with the console this President’s Day. I’ve bought and played both games (not for $80), and I can say that they serve as perfect introductions to the Switch ecosystem, especially if you’ve not played many Nintendo games.

While I still own my Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS handheld, ready to be used for a bigger library of games, the Nintendo Switch 2 is the ideal device if you don’t always want to tweak power settings or graphics settings in games. With Nvidia‘s DLSS enabled on the custom T239 processor, games are surprisingly smooth to play, with consistent frame rates, and that’s a big difference compared to the Nintendo Switch.

It’s not a big discount, but the Nintendo Switch 2 is another game console that’s at risk of a potential price increase. Multiple reports suggest the threat is from a combination of tariffs and the ongoing RAM crisis.

Since Valve is also hesitant to announce prices for the Steam Machine’s launch due to the high cost of memory, Nintendo will likely announce a price increase for its Switch 2 soon.

That makes now the best time to make a move if you’ve been considering a Switch 2 – and I can attest to it being worth every cent, especially since its life cycle has only just begun. Expect to see several exclusives launch later down the line, and The Duskbloods is already one that’s caught my eye.

• Amazon: 45% off TVs, AirPods, air fryers & vacuums
• Apple: iPads, AirPods & MacBooks from $99
• Best Buy: $1,000 off TVs, laptops & headphones
• Dell: laptop deals from $249.99
• Home Depot: 40% off appliances, furniture, grills & tools
• Lenovo: 45% off laptops & tablets
• Lowe’s: up to 40% off appliances, furniture & tools
• Samsung: up to $2,000 off appliances, TVs & phones
• Target: 40% off clothing, tech & furniture
• Walmart: furniture, cheap TVs & vacs from $69
• Wayfair: 54% off furniture, rugs & decor

Anthropic’s most powerful Claude model is leveling up, with the company saying in a blog post Thursday that Claude Opus 4.6 will be even better at coding and creating projects on the first go.

Claude Opus 4.5 is already a powerful coding model, with its release in November setting up Claude Code’s viral vibe-coding moment over the holidays. Claude’s proven coding prowess and new Cowork feature have Wall Street anxious, with many tech stocks falling in recent weeks, over concerns that people won’t need software products in the future.

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Anthropic said the new model is more focused on solving the biggest challenges, like the inner workings of complex apps, while also handling the easy steps more quickly. As a reasoning model, Opus 4.6 works by breaking down the steps it needs to take to do what you ask it to and putting together a plan before starting on it. It’ll also go back and check its work on those steps, sometimes making multiple attempts without you asking for it.

Sometimes the model can spend too much effort on a task, which Anthropic said can be resolved by reducing its effort level from the default “high” setting.

Read more: Anthropic Super Bowl Commercials Pinky Promise No Ads in Claude

The Claude Opus models are available for paying Claude users on the Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans. The cheapest of those, Pro, costs $20 a month (or $17 a month if you pay annually). The Pro plan comes with usage limits for Opus, which users can hit after a few hours of vibe coding and then have to wait several hours for it to reset.

Aside from Opus, Anthropic has smaller, less powerful models in Sonnet 4.5 and Haiku 4.5.

The computer systems of La Sapienza in Rome, one of the largest universities in Europe with around 120,000 students, have been down for three days following an apparent ransomware attack. 

In a post and stories on Instagram published Tuesday, the university said that it took down its systems out of precaution following the cyberattack, that it was investigating the incident and working on restoring all digital services, and that some communication channels such as email and workstations are “partially limited.” 

The school also said that it was working to restore systems based on backups, which were not affected by the hack. 

As of this writing the Sapienza website remains down. 

Italian daily news outlet Il Corriere della Sera reported this week that the disruption is due to a ransomware attack, something that the school nor other authorities have confirmed so far. The hackers allegedly sent the university a link to a request for a ransom, which has a countdown of 72 hours, which would start only once the link is clicked. 

La Sapieza did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment sent via email. It’s unclear if the university is able to accept email at the time we reached out.

Spokespeople for Italy’s national cybersecurity agency, Agenzia per la Cybersicurezza Nazionale (or ACN), which is investigating the incident, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, asking for more information and if the attack was caused by ransomware.

In another article on Wednesday, Il Corriere reported that the hacking group behind the attack is called “Femwar02,” which was previously unknown prior to this incident. The gang used the BabLock malware, which was discovered in 2023 and is also known as Rorschach, according to the report.

La Sapienza said that exams are proceeding as normal, but students who want to sign up for exams must do so directly with professors. The school also set up “infopoints” on several locations on campus to provide information to students. 

Like other types of organizations, universities and schools are frequent targets of hackers. Last year, the notorious hacking group ShinyHunters hacked Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania and stole data — without using malware to encrypt its systems — in an effort to extort the schools. The hackers revealed this week that the schools did not pay the ransom.

Astell&Kern is doubling down on the high-end with the launch of its most premium portable music player yet. It also comes with a suitably luxurious way to store it.

The company has unveiled the A&ultima SP4000 Copper, a limited-edition flagship digital audio player. It is launching the SP4000 alongside the Collector’s Atelier, a leather valet designed for serious head-fi collectors.

The headline act here is the SP4000 Copper. It’s based on Astell&Kern’s existing SP4000 platform but rebuilt using 99.98% pure copper. This is a material prized for its audio properties and notoriously difficult to work with.

According to Astell&Kern, the player requires a multi-layer stabilisation process and extremely precise machining to ensure long-term durability. All this is in the name of cleaner signal transfer and better shielding.

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Under the hood, it keeps the same class-leading internals as the standard SP4000, including a quad-DAC setup and octa-circuit architecture. However, Astell&Kern says the copper chassis directly shapes the sound with the result described as deeper, more authoritative bass, a richer midrange, and treble that decays more naturally. The device is tuned for listeners who want recordings to sound as close to the original performance as possible.

As you’d expect, exclusivity comes at a price. The A&ultima SP4000 Copper is a limited edition and is available now with a suggested retail price of £3999 / $4499 / €4699.

Alongside it, Astell&Kern has introduced the Collector’s Atelier, a premium leather valet designed to house a player, earphones and accessories. It’s made using Perlinger leather, sourced from a German tannery that’s been operating since 1864.

The leather undergoes a specialised shrinking process that preserves its natural grain while improving durability. This means it should age gracefully with use rather than looking worn out. The Collector’s Atelier is available now for £229 / $260.

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Rounding out the launch are two previously announced products that are now officially on sale. The AK HC5, a compact USB DAC priced at £399, targets portable listening setups. Meanwhile, STELLA, a reference-grade earphone developed with Volk Audio and Grammy-winning mastering engineer Michael Graves, sits at the very top of Astell&Kern’s in-ear lineup.

Taken together, it’s a clear statement of intent from Astell&Kern. This isn’t about mass appeal — it’s about pushing materials, sound quality and craftsmanship as far as possible for listeners who want the absolute best, even on the move.

Is it finally time to upgrade that aging Apple Watch that you’re charging twice a day? I have some great news for you! The Apple Watch Series 11 is marked down at major retailers like Amazon and Best Buy to as low as $300 for the base version, or $400 for the upgraded GPS + Cellular version, depending on your finish and included band choice.

While we’ve enjoyed previous generations of Apple Watch, the Series 11 made one of the most major improvements yet to the popular line of smartwatches. With the upgraded battery and extra optimization features, the standard Apple Watch can now last an entire day and then some on a single charge. That’s great news for anyone who wants to get the most out of their watch during the day, and then use it to track their sleep at night.

That improved battery life also lets you take advantage of all the updated health tracking features found on the Apple Watch Series 11. The biggest new feature is monitoring for high blood pressure, which will keep track of your vitals over a two week period before alerting you if it thinks you should see a doctor. While it isn’t an official medical device, it’s cleared by the FDA, and at least gives you some helpful information from information it was already gathering anyway.

Otherwise, it has all the features you’d expect from an Apple Watch, including sleep tracking, fitness features for different sports and activities, and a close connection to your iPhone for messages and notifications. If you opt for the version that includes a cellular connection, it features both satellite and 5G messaging, with helpful tips for getting the best connection right on the watch.

I spotted the marked down GPS-only Apple Watch Series 11 at Amazon and Best Buy, with quite a few color and band options in stock at both retailers. Both Amazon and Best Buy also had the versions that support a cellular connection as well, albeit with fewer options at the discounted price. If you’re curious about all the changes to the latest version, make sure to swing by our full review for a complete hands-on experience.