ChatGPT growth leaks 📈, rise of Reddit search 🔍, Opus 4.6 vs Codex 5.3 👨‍💻

Sam Altman told employees on Friday that ChatGPT is back to exceeding 10% monthly growth. The company is preparing to launch an updated Chat model ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR 2026-02-10 Improved Strength for All Seasons (Sponsor) Aging starts in your 30s as mitochondria in the cells break down. Since these cellular batteries are responsible for 90% of the body's energy, you may feel this decline in the form of fatigue and muscle weakness. Mitopure® is a clinically backed supplement to support mitochondrial function and healthy aging. This longevity breakthrough tackles the root cause of aging at the foundation by directly renewing your cellular energy centers. The result is increased muscle strength, even without a change in exercise. Start your journey to improved strength and vitality today with 40% off Mitopure, while supplies last. Get 40% off 📱 Big Tech & Startups Sam Altman touts ChatGPT's reaccelerating growth to employees as OpenAI closes in on $100 billion funding (3 minute read) Sam Altman told employees on Friday that ChatGPT is back to exceeding 10% monthly growth. The company is preparing to launch an updated Chat model this week. OpenAI has officially begun testing ads within ChatGPT. The company expects ads to make up less than half of its revenue long term. Fundraising talks are expected to heat up over the next two weeks. AirPods Pro 4 Could Feature Cameras to 'See Around You' (2 minute read) The next AirPods Pro will be able to see its surroundings to provide hand gesture recognition and create an enhanced spatial audio experience with the Apple Vision Pro headset. They will be released at the same $249 price as the current model. Apple tends to wait around three years to make major changes to AirPods, so it is unclear whether the company plans to release a new high-end version of the AirPods Pro 3 or a full-fledged AirPods Pro 4. All AirPods announcements so far have been made at Apple's annual iPhone event in September. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology Why would Elon Musk pivot from Mars to the Moon all of a sudden? (6 minute read) SpaceX is pivoting its focus from building a settlement on Mars to building a 'self-growing' city on the Moon. Elon Musk says that a Moon settlement could be achieved in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take more than 20 years. SpaceX was founded with the original goal of settling Mars. However, focusing on the Moon, SpaceX is making a decision that benefits NASA and the US. Decoding China's New Space Philosophy (4 minute read) China recently released a plan that lays out its priorities for 2026 through 2030 that contains plenty of ambitious goals for the space sector. The country plans to harvest water from space in the not-too-distant future, with the next five years focused on tech demos on things like robot drills and in-orbit processing. China's plans mention building gigawatt-level space digital infrastructure. It also has the beginnings of a new space tourism industry. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science Front-end and back-end silos killing your UX? (Sponsor) You know there's a UX problem. But what's causing it? In this Datadog eBook, you'll get practical steps for getting answers end-to-end observability. Learn how to identify performance bottlenecks and solve UX issues without slogging through tedious manual investigations. Get the eBook Write-Only Code (12 minute read) We are moving toward a future where a large amount of production code will never be read by a human. This Write-Only Code future will happen when software production scales beyond human attention. The organizations that will succeed in this transition will be the ones that invest early in new primitives for trust, accountability, and control. Refusing to adapt will ensure adaptation happens accidentally, under pressure, and without intent. Opus 4.6, Codex 5.3, and the post-benchmark era (10 minute read) OpenAI and Anthropic both recently unveiled the next iterations of their coding assistants. Benchmarks are getting less and less meaningful as coding assistants get better. Over time, the industry will develop better ways of articulating the differences in agentic models, but for now, people will have to experience them for themselves, or read other people's experiences about them, to track frontier models. Consistent testing and clear articulation will be the only way to monitor the pace of progress in agentic capabilities in the near future. 🎁 Miscellaneous Meet the One Woman Anthropic Trusts to Teach AI Morals (15 minute read) Amanda Askell is the resident philosopher at Anthropic. She spends her days learning reasoning patterns and talking to the model to build its personality and address misfires. Her role's aim is to endow Claude with a sense of morality. She's training Claude to detect the difference between right and wrong while imbuing it with unique personality traits. Reddit says 80 million people now use its search weekly (3 minute read) 80 million people are now using Reddit search every week after Reddit merged its core search with its AI-powered Reddit Answers. People are now starting and completing searches on the platform without ever touching Google. Reddit is now the most-cited source in AI-generated answers. The company sees AI summaries as an opportunity to move users into Reddit communities, where they can read discussions, ask follow-up questions, and participate. ⚡ 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! Of course they're putting ads in AI (14 minute read) Ads are the best way to bring a service on the internet to the largest possible number of consumers. Elon Musk's Go-To Banker Is Back in Action for the SpaceX IPO (3 minute read) Michael Grimes has rejoined Morgan Stanley as chairman of investment banking after leaving a year ago to take a role leading the Commerce Department's Investment Accelerator. OpenAI starts testing ads in ChatGPT (2 minute read) ChatGPT Free and Go users will start seeing ads based on their topic of conversation, prior chats, and previous interaction with ads. Google: Actually, AI Hasn't Hurt Search at All. In Fact, It's Accelerating It (5 minute read) Google Search revenue growth accelerated every single quarter in 2025. Stripe Valuation Set to Hit $140 Billion in New Tender Offer (2 minute read) Stripe has set up frequent tenders since 2024 to let employees sell shares without going public. The hidden danger of shipping fast (11 minute read) Make announcements for major features and let the rest be quietly excellent. 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. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us. Want to work at TLDR? 💼 Apply here, create your own role or send a friend's resume to jobs@tldr.tech and get $1k if we hire them! TLDR is one of Inc.'s Best Bootstrapped businesses of 2025. If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! Thanks for reading, Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders Manage your subscriptions to our other newsletters on tech, startups, and programming. Or if TLDR isn't for you, please unsubscribe. Disclaimer: *500mg Mitopure® have been shown to (1) induce gene expression related to mitochondria function and metabolism and (2) increase the strength of the hamstring leg muscle in measures of knee extension and flexion after 4 months in overweight 40-65 year olds.