SpaceX merger 🚀, OpenAI races Anthropic IPO 💰, AI replacing SaaS 👨‍💻

SpaceX may potentially merge with Tesla and xAI. Some investors are pushing the idea, saying it could attract sizable interest ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR 2026-01-30 Start vibe shipping with the new v0 by Vercel (Sponsor) Vibe coding lowered the barrier to entry for prototypes, but can you vibe code production features? With v0 by Vercel, you can. By generating real, production-ready code for each prompt, v0 helps teams escape the prototype trap. It's the same usability as traditional vibe coding with security, compliance, and code review built in. No more poor quality AI code clogging up your backlog. Just prompt, preview, and ship. Start shipping 📱 Big Tech & Startups Elon Musk's SpaceX Said to Consider Merger With Tesla or xAI (3 minute read) SpaceX may potentially merge with Tesla and xAI. Some investors are pushing the idea, saying it could attract sizable interest from infrastructure funds and Middle Eastern sovereign investors. No final decisions have been made, and details could change - the companies may decide to remain separate. SpaceX is considering an IPO in June around Elon Musk's birthday. OpenAI Plans Fourth-Quarter IPO in Race to Beat Anthropic to Market (3 minute read) OpenAI is holding informal talks with Wall Street banks about a potential initial public offering in the fourth quarter of this year. 2026 is expected to be a blockbuster year for stock market debuts after a drought. Some on Wall Street are speculating that this year could be the biggest year ever for IPOs. OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are among the most closely watched tech companies that could go public. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology Custom machine kept man alive without lungs for 48 hours (6 minute read) An artificial lung system built by a team at Northwestern University successfully kept a critically ill patient alive long enough to enable a double lung transplant. The surgery involved temporarily replacing the patient's entire pulmonary system with a synthetic surrogate. The patient lived for two days without lungs. They received donor lungs after 48 hours, when their body was no longer suffering from sepsis. The patient has returned to a normal, independent life with excellent lung function. How do We Quantify Progress in Robotics? (12 minute read) Offline data sets don't work because robots never do exactly the same thing. These errors compound. Robots are hardware plus an algorithm, and hardware factors often matter more to task execution than the algorithm being used. Any real benchmark by necessity should look like a human competition. There are already early versions of such events, like the World Humanoid Games. However, major companies right now have too much to lose and too little to gain to bother competing. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science The future of 10x engineering (2 minute read) Generative AI will make engineers better. While it may make the gap between the median and the max engineer shrink, the gap between the great and the best engineers is about to get much larger. The top engineers of the AI future will probably utilize a different skill set than the top engineers of today. I replaced a $120/year micro-SaaS in 20 minutes with LLM-generated code (8 minute read) It's now possible to replace services with AI-generated code, if you know what you're doing. It's only going to get easier. SaaS businesses that don't give ongoing value are at risk of being replaced by customers. The ease of developing these tools will mean that buying and selling SaaS businesses will become less profitable. 🎁 Miscellaneous Tesla is committing automotive suicide (4 minute read) Tesla's Q4 2025 earnings call made it clear that the company is no longer interested in being an automaker. The company has killed the Model S and Model X and has no plans for new mass-market models. It is pivoting entirely to 'transportation as a service'. Tesla will continue to focus on robotaxis, humanoid robots, and their supporting infrastructure, especially training compute. Amazon in Talks to Invest Up to $50 Billion in OpenAI (3 minute read) Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, is leading negotiations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for an investment of up to $50 billion in OpenAI. The AI startup is seeking up to $100 billion in a funding round that could value it at up to $830 billion. Amazon has deep ties with Anthropic, one of OpenAI's competitors. It has invested $8 billion in Anthropic and is one of its key cloud providers. Amazon also developed an $11 billion data center campus for Anthropic. ⚡ Quick Links TLDR is hiring a Curator for TLDR IT! (TLDR Curator, ~5 hrs/week) We are launching a brand new newsletter covering IT and enterprise tech. If you are an IT leader interested in writing for us, please send your resume or LinkedIn to itcurator@tldr.tech! PlayStation 2 Recompilation Project Is Absolutely Incredible (3 minute read) PS2Recomp is a tool that can recompile PlayStation 2 games to run on modern platforms, such as Windows or Linux desktop PCs. Nvidia, Mercedes-Benz Move Forward With Planned Robotaxis (2 minute read) Nvidia, Mercedes-Benz, and Uber started working together last year on coordinating advanced self-driving technology. The K-Shaped Future of Software Engineering (4 minute read) Some engineers are becoming more valuable than ever, while others are watching their skills depreciate in real time. Apple acquires secretive Q․ai startup for $2 billion (2 minute read) Q.ai is an Israel-based AI startup that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning. Apple's record quarter: Is this what a hit iPhone looks like? (6 minute read) The iPhone 17 family is the strongest iPhone lineup Apple has ever had. Agent Harness Architectures (15 minute read) This post explores emerging best practices for agent memory design. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/7c97ce4b/ Track your referrals here. 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