A cohort of music publishers led by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group are suing Anthropic, saying the company illegally downloaded more than 20,000 copyrighted songs, including sheet music, song lyrics, and musical compositions. The publishers said in a statement on Wednesday that the damages could amount to more than $3 billion, which would be one of the largest non-class action copyright cases filed in U.S. history. This lawsuit was filed by the same legal team from the Bartz v. Anthropic case, in which a group of fiction and nonfiction authors similarly accused the AI company of using their…

As AI races into classrooms worldwide, Google is finding that the toughest lessons on how the tech can actually scale are emerging not from Silicon Valley, but from India’s schools. India has become a proving ground for Google’s education AI amid intensifying competition from rivals, including OpenAI and Microsoft. With more than a billion internet users, the country now accounts for the highest global usage of Gemini for learning, according to Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president and general manager for education, within an education system shaped by state-level curricula, strong government involvement, and uneven access to devices and connectivity. Phillips…

Google announced on Thursday that Google Maps users can now access Gemini hands-free while walking and cycling. The update comes a few months after Google Maps rolled out its Gemini-powered hands-free, conversational driving experience. The announcement marks Google’s ongoing efforts to plug Gemini into more parts of people’s everyday lives, while shifting Google Maps from static directions to real-time, conversational navigation. When you’re walking around and navigating with Maps, you can now ask Gemini questions like “Tell me more about the neighborhood I’m in,” “What are some must-see attractions?” or “Are there cafes with a bathroom along my route?” Google…

A Waymo robotaxi struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica on January 23, according to the company. Waymo told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that the child — whose age and identity are not currently public — sustained minor injuries. The NHTSA has opened an investigation into the accident, and Waymo said in a blog post that it “will cooperate fully with them throughout the process.” Waymo said its robotaxi struck the child at 6 miles per hour, after braking “hard” from around 17 miles per hour. The young pedestrian “suddenly entered the roadway from…

ServiceNow announced a deal with major AI player Anthropic just a week after it announced a partnership with OpenAI. Enterprise workflow software company ServiceNow has entered into a multi-year deal with AI research lab Anthropic on Wednesday. This partnership involves further embedding of Anthropic’s AI models into ServiceNow’s platform for its customers and bringing Anthropic’s AI to its employees. ServiceNow declined to clarify the duration of the partnership or the monetary size of the deal. This deal entails making Anthropic’s Claude model family the preferred AI models across ServiceNow’s AI-driven workflow products. Claude is now also the default model powering…

Tesla’s profit fell 46% in 2025 compared to the prior year, as CEO Elon Musk assumed a role in the Trump administration and federal electric vehicle subsidies were killed off by Congress, causing sales to plummet. The electric vehicle company reported Wednesday that it recorded just $3.8 billion in profit across 2025, its lowest tally in years. Total revenue from car sales fell 11% year-over-year, too. Tesla already revealed that it shipped 1.63 million cars globally across 2025. That marks the second year in a row that its sales have declined, after Musk spent years promising average annual growth of…

Outtake, which makes an agentic cybersecurity platform to help enterprises detect, investigate, and take down identity fraud, has raised a $40 million Series B round of funding. While that might not sound like a lot given the huge sums some AI companies are raising, the names involved in this financing reads like a tech industry who’s who. The round was led by Iconiq’s Murali Joshi, who helped lead the firm’s investments in companies like Anthropic, Datadog, Drata, 1Password, among others. Angels who invested include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora; Pershing Square Holdings CEO Bill Ackman;…

Last year, Deezer introduced an AI detection tool that automatically tags fully AI-generated music for listeners and removes it from algorithmic and editorial recommendations. The company announced on Thursday that it’s now making the tool available to other streaming platforms in an effort to help address the rise of AI and fraudulent streams, as well as promote transparency within the music industry and make sure human artists still get the recognition they deserve. Alongside the move, Deezer reported that 85% of streams from fully AI-generated tracks are deemed fraudulent. Notably, the service now receives 60,000 AI tracks per day, totaling…

paceX is reportedly lining up four major Wall Street banks for a 2026 IPO that could provide the reset the market needs.  The company just completed a tender offer at an $800 billion valuation, and secondary market demand is through the roof. If SpaceX goes public anywhere near its rumored $1.5 trillion valuation, it could trigger an IPO cascade for other late-stage unicorns like OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks.  Watch as Equity host Rebecca Bellan chats with Greg Martin, Managing Director at Rainmaker Securities, about why this IPO feels different, how tech employees are cashing out through secondary markets before companies go public, and what investors are actually looking for in pre-IPO shares.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at…

Elon Musk’s X is the latest social network to roll out a feature to label edited images as “manipulated media,” if a post by Elon Musk is to be believed. But the company has not clarified how it will make this determination, or whether it includes images that have been edited using traditional tools, like Adobe’s Photoshop. So far, the only details on the new feature come from a cryptic X post from Elon Musk saying, “Edited visuals warning,” as he reshares an announcement of a new X feature made by the anonymous X account DogeDesigner. That account is often…