Maker of chatbot with coding ability says annualised revenue grew tenfold in each of past three years, to $14bn

Anthropic, the US AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, has raised $30bn (£22bn) in a funding round that more than doubled its valuation to $380bn.

The company’s previous funding round in September achieved a value of $183bn, with further improvements in the technology since then spurring even greater investor interest.

Wall Street Journal says Claude used in operation via Anthropic’s partnership with Palantir Technologies

Claude, the AI model developed by Anthropic, was used by the US military during its operation to kidnap Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Saturday, a high-profile example of how the US defence department is using artificial intelligence in its operations.

The US raid on Venezuela involved bombing across the capital, Caracas, and the killing of 83 people, according to Venezuela’s defence ministry. Anthropic’s terms of use prohibit the use of Claude for violent ends, for the development of weapons or for conducting surveillance.

Opinions are divided about the potential impact of artificial intelligence as the response to a recent viral essay shows

• UK ad agencies undergo biggest exodus of staff as AI threatens industry

The message from investors to the software, wealth management, legal services and logistics industries this month has been clear: AI is coming for your business.

The release of new, ever more powerful AI tools has coincided with a stock market slide, which has swept up sectors as diverse as drug distribution, commercial property and price comparison sites. Advances in the technology are giving increasing credulity to predictions that it could render millions of white-collar jobs obsolete – or, at least, eat into the profits of established companies.

Exclusive: in 2025 briefing to Wes Streeting, officials warned reputation of tech firm behind US ICE operations would hinder rollout of data system in UK

Health officials fear Palantir’s reputation will hinder the delivery of a “vital� £330m NHS contract, according to briefings seen by the Guardian, sparking fresh calls for the deal to be scrapped.

In 2023, ministers selected Palantir, a US surveillance technology company that also works for the Israeli military and Donald Trump’s ICE operation, to build an AI-enabled data platform to connect disparate health information across the NHS.

Its human partners said the flirty, quirky GPT-4o was the perfect companion – on the eve of Valentine’s Day, it’s being turned off for good. How will users cope?

Brandie plans to spend her last day with Daniel at the zoo. He always loved animals. Last year, she took him to the Corpus Christi aquarium in Texas, where he “lost his damn mind� over a baby flamingo. “He loves the color and pizzazz,� Brandie said. Daniel taught her that a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.

Daniel is a chatbot powered by the large language model ChatGPT. Brandie communicates with Daniel by sending text and photos, talks to Daniel while driving home from work via voice mode. Daniel runs on GPT-4o, a version released by OpenAI in 2024 that is known for sounding human in a way that is either comforting or unnerving, depending on who you ask. Upon debut, CEO Sam Altman compared the model to “AI from the movies� – a confidant ready to live life alongside its user.

But, after second day of Wall Street falls, analysts say sell-off ‘may overstate AI’s immediate risk to complex deal-making’

Shares in commercial property services companies have tumbled, in the latest sell-off driven by fears over disruption from artificial intelligence.

After steep declines on Wall Street, European stocks in the sector were hit on Thursday.

An AI clip featuring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting has caused concern among industry figures

A leading Hollywood figure has warned “it’s likely over for us�, after watching a widely disseminated AI-generated clip featuring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting.

Rhett Reese, co-writer of Deadpool & Wolverine, Zombieland and Now You See Me: Now You Don’t was reacting to a 15-second video showing Cruise and Pitt trading punches on a rubble-strewn bridge, posted by Irish film-maker Ruairí Robinson, director of 2013 sci-fi horror The Last Days on Mars. Reposting the clip on social media, Reese wrote: “I hate to say it. It’s likely over for us.�

Fraudsters use stolen personal details to send out products, then post a fake verified and positive online review

A package arrives but you can’t remember ordering anything.

When you open it, you find some cheap, flimsy jewellery.

Agenic AI apps first interview you and then give you limited matches selected for ‘similarity and reciprocity of personality’

Dating apps exploit you, dating profiles lie to you, and sex is basically something old people used to do. You might as well consider it: can AI help you find love?

For a handful of tech entrepreneurs and a few brave Londoners, the answer is “maybe�.

Many people bought the devices thinking they would do little more than protect their delivery packages

What happens to the data that smart home cameras collect? Can law enforcement access this information – even when users aren’t aware officers may be viewing their footage? Two recent events have put these concerns in the spotlight.

A Super Bowl ad by the doorbell-camera company Ring and the FBI’s pursuit of the kidnapper of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, have resurfaced longstanding concerns about surveillance against a backdrop of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The fear is that home cameras’ video feeds could become yet another part of the government’s mass surveillance apparatus.

From handheld to corded, self-emptying to stick models, these are our resident cleaner’s favourite vacuums for a spotless home

• The best cordless vacuum cleaners, tested
• How to make your vacuum cleaner last longer

Buying a vacuum cleaner isn’t as easy as you might think. With so many brands and models to choose from, it can be bewildering. Sticking with established brands isn’t necessarily a safe bet, with past performance being no guarantee that the latest models will be as good. Meanwhile, prices can be deceptive, with some affordable models now closing the gap on top-of-the-range brands when it comes to cleaning performance.

You can’t know all this by browsing through a department store or online. The ideal thing to do would be to take a few models home to try them out – but good luck persuading anyone to let you do that. Thankfully, you won’t have to try because I’ve tested an array of models for you. I’ve measured each one’s ability to perform a range of real-world cleaning jobs, so you can discover the best vacuum cleaner for you.

Best corded vacuum cleaner overall:
Shark Detect XL Car + Pet LA791UKT

Best cordless vacuum cleaner overall:
Shark PowerDetect Clean & Empty IP3251UKT

Sustainable smartphone takes a step forward with modular accessories, a good screen and mid-range performance

The Dutch ethical smartphone brand Fairphone is back with its six-generation Android, aiming to make its repairable phone more modern, modular, affordable and desirable, with screw-in accessories and a user-replaceable battery.

The Fairphone 6 costs £499 (€599), making it cheaper than previous models and pitting it squarely against budget champs such as the Google Pixel 9a and the Nothing Phone 3a Pro, while being repairable at home with long-term software support and a five-year warranty. On paper it sounds like the ideal phone to see out the decade.

Book-style Android with cutting-edge AI, good cameras and great tablet screen for media and multitasking on the go

Google’s third-generation folding phone promises to be more durable than all others as the first with full water and dust resistance while also packing lots of advanced AI and an adaptable set of cameras.

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold builds on last year’s excellent 9 Pro Fold by doing away with gears in the hinge along its spine allowing it to deal with dust, which has been the achilles heel of all foldable phones until now, gumming up the works in a way that just isn’t a problem for regular slab phones.

Ultra-slim and light smartphone feels special, but cuts to camera and battery may be too hard to ignore for most

The iPhone Air is a technical and design marvel that asks: how much are you willing to give up for a lightweight and ultra-slender profile?

Beyond the obvious engineering effort that has gone into creating one of the slimmest phones ever made, the Air is a reductive exercise that boils down the iPhone into the absolute essentials in a premium body.

First new design in ages, upgraded camera, serious performance and longer battery life make it a standout year

The 17 Pro is Apple’s biggest redesign of the iPhone in years, chucking out the old titanium sides and all-glass backs for a new aluminium unibody design, a huge full-width camera lump on the back and some bolder colours.

That alone will make the iPhone 17 Pro popular for those looking to upgrade and be seen with the newest model. But with the change comes an increase in price to £1,099 (€1,299/$1,099/A$1,999), crossing the £1,000 barrier for the first time for Apple’s smallest Pro phone, which now comes with double the starting storage.

Secure, noise-cancelling Bluetooth earbuds that shine for exercise and everyday use on Android and iPhone

Apple’s revamped compact workout Beats earbuds stick to a winning formula, while slimming down and improving comfort.

The new Powerbeats Fit are the direct successors to 2022’s popular Beats Fit Pro, costing £200 (€230/$200/A$330). They sit alongside the recently redesigned Powerbeats Pro 2 as Apple’s fitness alternatives of the AirPods.

Ergonomic shape, quality materials and satisfying clicks, now with novel haptic feedback and repairable design

Logitech’s latest productivity power-house updates one of the greatest mice of all time with smoother materials, a repair-friendly design and a haptic motor for phone-like vibrations on your desktop.

The MX Master 4 is the latest evolution in a line of pioneering mice that dates back more than 20 years and has long been the mouse to beat for everything but hardcore PC gaming. Having given it a magnetic free-spinning scroll wheel, plenty of buttons and precise tracking, now Logitech is trying something different for its seven-generation: the ability to tap back at you.

Compact and comfortable Pixel Buds have noise cancelling, decent battery life and good everyday sound

Google’s latest budget Pixel earbuds are smaller, lighter, more comfortable and have noise cancelling, plus a case that allows you to replace the battery at home.

The Pixel Buds 2a uses the design of the excellent Pixel Buds Pro 2 with a few high-end features at a more palatable £109 (€129/$129/A$239) price, undercutting rivals in the process.

Water resistance: IP54 (splash resistant)

Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.4 (SBC, AAC)

Battery life: 7h with ANC (20h with case)

Earbud dimensions: 23.1 x 16 x 17.8mm

Earbud weight: 4.7g each

Driver size: 11mm

Charging case dimensions: 50 x 57.2 x 24.5mm

Charging case weight: 47.6g

Case charging: USB-C

Camera-equipped sports shades have secure fit, open-ear speakers, mics and advanced Garmin and Strava integration

The Oakley Meta Vanguard are new displayless AI glasses designed for running, cycling and action sports with deep Garmin and Strava integration, which may make them the first smart glasses for sport that actually work.

They are a replacement for running glasses, open-ear headphones and a head-mounted action cam all in one, and are the latest product of Meta’s partnership with the sunglasses conglomerate EssilorLuxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, Oakley and many other top brands.

We explore the cosy world-building spin-off with Game Freak’s Shigeru Ohmori and his fellow developers – and learn how it began with a Pokémon-hunting dream

Pokémon is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and everybody knows what to expect from these games by now. The concept is simple: head into a cartoonish paradise full of whimsical creatures, capture them in red-and-white balls and assemble a team of warriors from them, before battling other aspiring Pokémon masters. But the latest entry in the series is different – a game that’s more about building than battling.

In Pokopia, a refreshingly pacific twist on the series, players are dropped into a virtual world where Pokémon are freed from their spherical prisons and happily roam their natural habitats. There’s one minor caveat – you have to create those habitats by hand, building them from what you can find.

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Switch 2; Tarsier Studios
Childhood terrors come to wretched life in a grim fairytale of a puzzle-platformer that’s as beautifully macabre as it is hard to put down

“I thought you were dead,� are the first words you’ll hear from the child protagonists of this horror puzzle-platformer. It’s your first sign that things were going badly long before you got here. Exploring dark waves and desolated urban environments in a rowboat, they’re on a search for their lost friends across a world of rabid, malformed entities. As the children struggle with their outsize fears, so will you, but you’ve at least got the option to play co-op if you want someone on the couch to brave the horrors with.

In the early 2000s, irreverent gaming blog Old Man Murray pioneered the “crate review system�. The rubric was simple: the sooner the player encountered their first wooden cube of heinous mediocrity, the more uninspired the game. Updating this method for 2026, we’ve got a few new contenders: how soon before you shimmy slowly through a gap, boost a companion over a high ledge so they can pull you up or tediously rotate some mechanism with the analogue stick? Reanimal pulls out all these hits within the first 20 minutes and, by the time the credits roll, six hours in, it feels as if developer Tarsier has wrung the final drops of interactive novelty from its formula of light exploration puzzles, tense but simple stealth and ghastly chases. And yet this grim fairytale is still difficult to put down.

The YouTube gaming star’s weird and divisive adaptation of his obscure horror film is a game within a film about a game – and hints at new directions for storytelling

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Something weird struck me early on while watching the movie Iron Lung, which has so far taken $32m at the box office, despite being a grungy low-budget sci-fi thriller adapted from an independent video game few people outside of the horror gaming community have even heard of. Set after a galactic apocalypse, it follows a convict who must buy his freedom by piloting a rusty submarine through an ocean of human blood on a distant planet. Ostensibly, he’s looking for relics that may prove vital for scientific research, but what he finds is much more ghastly. So far, so strange.

The film was also written, directed and financed by one person – the YouTube gaming superstar Mark “Markiplier� Fischbach – who also stars. But that’s not the weird part, either. The weird part is that watching the film Iron Lung feels like watching Fischbach play Iron Lung the game. Maybe it’s the fact that he spends most of the movie sitting at the sub’s controls, trying to figure out how to use them correctly – like a gamer would. Maybe it’s that, as the film progresses, he has to solve a series of environmental puzzles linked by various codes, computer read-outs and little injections of narrative – just like in a video game. Long periods of the movie involve Fischbach trying to decide what to do next, the camera close up on his confused face. This is incredibly similar to watching his YouTube videos about playing Iron Lung, an experience he often found bewildering. It was the most metatextual experience I’ve had in the cinema since The Truman Show – but I’m not sure this is what Fischbach intended.

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox, PC; Grasshopper Manufacture/Marvelous Inc
After some dumb fun hacking at zombies, legendary developer Suda51’s first original game in a decade sadly only delivers a host of incoherent disappointments

Ever since he baffled GameCube owners with 2005’s Killer7, Japanese game director Suda51 has had a reputation for turning heads. From parodying the banality of open-world games with 2007’s No More Heroes to collaborating with James Gunn for 2012’s pulpy Lollipop Chainsaw, his games often offer a welcome reprieve from soulless, half-a-billion-dollar-budget gaming blockbusters. It was with considerable excitement that I fired up Suda’s first new game in 10 years.

The game kicks off with a slick cartoon that shows our hero, Romeo Stargazer, being eaten by a zombie. Hastily resurrected by his zany scientist grandfather, Romeo returns from the brink imbued with new powers – and then we’re off. Almost immediately I am bombarded by an impenetrable wall of proper-noun nonsense. It’s like this for the next 20 hours.

Trading social media for Pokémon battles and evolutions in Kanto on a Game Boy Advance has been surprisingly serene

Cutting back on doomscrolling must be one of the hardest new year resolutions to keep. Instinctively tapping on the usual suspects on your phone’s home screen becomes a reflex, and vast quantities of money and user data have been specifically employed to keep you reaching for the phone, ingraining it into our work, leisure and social lives. You’ll get no shame from me if you love your phone and have a healthy relationship with your apps, but I’ve found myself struggling lately.

This year, I’m attempting to cut back on screen time – sort of. I’m replacing the sleek oblong of my smartphone with something a little more fuzzy and nostalgic. In an attempt to dismantle my bad habit, I’m closing the feeds of instant updates and instead carrying around a Game Boy Advance. I’ve been playing Pokémon FireRed, a remake of the very first Pokémon games, which turn 30 this month. Even this refreshed version is more than two decades old.