Morning Scan

Anthropic is chasing a near-trillion-dollar valuation, SoftBank is booking $25B in paper gains on OpenAI, and a new startup is already pitching recursive superintelligence to Nvidia. The FDA chief quit, Waymo's robots drove into standing water, and Sam Altman had a rough day in court.

$900B — Anthropic's reported target valuation in early fundraising talks, on a $30B raise — which would make it the most valuable private AI company on earth. (Bloomberg)

Machines & Minds

Anthropic In Talks to Raise $30 Billion at $900 Billion Valuation

Early-stage talks, so treat the number as a signal of direction rather than a done deal — but the direction is straight up. (Bloomberg)

Richard Socher's Recursive Superintelligence Raised $650M+ at a $4B Valuation

GV, Nvidia, and AMD are backing a startup explicitly premised on AI that improves itself — either the most important bet in tech or the most alarming one. (New York Times)

Google Is About to Release a New Gemini Model

Sources say the I/O announcement will land roughly in GPT-5's class — Google needs this one to land clean. (Sources)

Sam Altman Discussed Launching an AI Compute Company Majority-Owned by OpenAI

Essentially Stargate II, but with OpenAI holding the controlling stake — Altman keeps pulling the infrastructure lever. (Sources)

Anthropic in Advanced Talks to Acquire Stainless for at Least $300M

Buying the SDK plumbing that OpenAI and Google already use is a sharp developer-ecosystem move. (The Information)

$25B** — The paper gain on SoftBank's OpenAI stake that drove Q4 net income 3x above estimates, pushing its total OpenAI investment toward $64.6B by October. *(Financial Times)

Connected World

SoftBank Reports Q4 Net Income Up 3x to ~$11.6B, Driven by OpenAI Stake

Masayoshi Son's entire bull thesis is now basically one line item — and it's working, at least on paper. (Financial Times)

Trump Family Made ~$1.55B from World Liberty Financial Token Sales

The ~$660M net fortune boost is the kind of number that tends to attract congressional attention eventually. (Bloomberg)

Paymentology Raised $175M for Real-Time Card Processing Infrastructure

B2B payment rails remain a reliable place to raise a large round while everyone else chases AI. (Tech.eu)

Chip Stocks Pull Back Hard — Qualcomm Down 11.46%, Intel Down 6.82%

The AI-driven rally gave; now it's taking some back — whether this is a breather or a turn is the question. (CNBC)

Connected World

Waymo Recalls ~3,800 Robotaxis Over Flooded Road Software Issue

"The cars drove into standing water" is not a headline any autonomous vehicle company wants, ever. (CNBC)

Meta Employees Protest New Mouse-Tracking Software Days Before Layoffs

Flyers calling it an "Employee Data Extraction Factory" appearing in offices right before a mass layoff is an extraordinary vibe. (The Next Web)

Musk v. Altman: "Are You Completely Trustworthy?" — "I Believe So."

Cross-examination is a brutal genre and Altman's answer is going to live rent-free in legal briefs for a while. (Business Insider)

Jensen Huang Was Left Off Trump's China Trip to Avoid Chip-Sale Awkwardness

The most powerful person in semiconductors was too politically inconvenient to bring on a trade diplomacy trip — that tells you something about the bind Nvidia is in. (Semafor)