📱 OpenAI's phone would ditch apps entirely for AI agents

🚫 China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

💰 Two college kids raised $5M to put a social network in iMessage

🛰️ Meta is getting solar power beamed down from space at night

🏋️ Spotify launches guided workouts for all users

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OpenAI is reportedly developing a smartphone with MediaTek, Qualcomm, and Luxshare, where AI agents handle tasks instead of apps, with specs expected by early 2027 and mass production in 2028.

Apple and Google currently restrict what apps can do on their platforms, and by owning its own hardware stack, OpenAI would sidestep those limits and run AI agents with full system access.

ChatGPT is closing in on a billion weekly users, so a phone isn't just a hardware bet — it's a data play, giving OpenAI far richer insight into user habits than any app ever could.

China's state planner ordered Meta to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a Singapore-based AI agent startup with Chinese roots, citing laws on export controls and overseas investment.

Beijing launched a formal review in January after growing uneasy about Manus founders relocating to Singapore to sidestep scrutiny from both China and Washington, a tactic known as "Singapore-washing."

Manus hit $100 million ARR in just eight months, so Meta isn't walking away from a small bet — and with China now asserting jurisdiction over Singaporean startups with Chinese DNA, that escape hatch just got a lot narrower.

Series, founded by two Yale seniors, raised a $5.1M pre-seed backed by Reddit's Steve Huffman and Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, to build a social networking app that runs entirely through iMessage.

Users text a Series AI number, describe who they want to meet, and get a swipeable carousel of matched profiles back. Conversations happen inside the chat without either person sharing their real number.

The app claims 82% Day-30 retention, higher than early Facebook, and already spans 750 campuses. The founders built it between exams and have not dropped out.

Meta signed a deal with startup Overview Energy to receive up to 1 gigawatt of power from a fleet of 1,000 satellites that beam infrared light to existing solar farms after dark, starting around 2030.

Overview sidesteps the safety and regulatory headaches of high-power laser or microwave transmission by using a wide, low-intensity infrared beam that existing solar panels can already convert to electricity.

Meta burned through 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2024 alone, so beaming sunlight from geosynchronous orbit isn't sci-fi indulgence — it's what happens when your power bill outgrows the planet's daytime hours.

Spotify opened a new Fitness hub today for Free and Premium users, offering guided yoga, HIIT, dance, and running content from wellness creators like Chloe Ting and Yoga With Kassandra.

Premium subscribers also get access to 1,400 on-demand Peloton workouts through a new partnership, covering strength, cardio, yoga, and meditation, with no ads and no Peloton subscription required.

Spotify says nearly 70% of Premium users already work out monthly and use its fitness playlists, so the move is less a pivot and more a formalization of what people were doing anyway.

A) No, the false positive rate would be enormous - 43%

B) Yes, with better systems and clearer protocols - 57% 🏆