TECHNOLOGY

FREMONT, Calif. — Aehr Test Systems shares surged more than 16 percent Thursday as the semiconductor test equipment maker announced a record $41 million follow-on production order from its lead hyperscale customer for package-level burn-in of custom artificial intelligence processor ASICs.

NEW YORK — Alphabet Inc. Class C shares traded modestly lower in early morning action Thursday, slipping about 0.15 percent to around $333.97 as Wall Street digested recent gains and prepared for the tech giant's first-quarter 2026 earnings report later this month amid a record capital expenditure plan focused on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

SAN FRANCISCO — Bluesky experienced a partial outage Thursday, with users across multiple regions reporting difficulties accessing feeds, loading posts and connecting to the decentralized social media platform as its official status page confirmed an ongoing incident.

NEW YORK — Verizon Communications customers across the United States reported no widespread service disruptions Thursday, with real-time monitoring sites showing normal operation for wireless voice, data and home internet services more than three months after the carrier's notorious January outage that affected hundreds of thousands nationwide.

SEOUL, South Korea — Pearl Abyss' ambitious open-world action-adventure game Crimson Desert has sold through more than 5 million copies worldwide just 26 days after its March 19 launch, marking one of the strongest debuts for a new single-player title in 2026 and delivering a significant revenue boost to the South Korean developer.

NEW YORK — As the foldable smartphone market heats up in 2026, buyers face a tantalizing choice between Samsung's battle-tested Galaxy Z Fold 8, expected to launch in July, and Apple's long-awaited first foldable iPhone, rumored for a September or later debut.

NEW YORK — Meta Platforms Inc. has officially ended support for the standalone Facebook Messenger desktop experience, with messenger.com no longer available for messaging as of April 2026 and users now automatically redirected to the integrated Facebook messaging interface at facebook.com/messages.

NEW YORK — Facebook Messenger's standalone website messenger.com stopped functioning for messaging on April 16, 2026, as Meta Platforms Inc. completed a long-planned consolidation that forces desktop users to switch to Facebook's integrated messaging interface at facebook.com/messages.

NEW YORK — Xanadu Quantum Technologies Limited shares rocketed more than 54 percent in midday trading Wednesday, surging to around $22.68 as investors piled into the newly public photonic quantum computing company amid a sector-wide rally triggered by Nvidia Corp.'s launch of open-source AI models designed to accelerate quantum research and development.

NEW YORK — Anthropic's popular AI assistant Claude faced fresh disruptions Wednesday as users worldwide reported elevated errors across claude.ai, the API and Claude Code, prompting frantic searches for alternatives and highlighting the growing pains of rapid AI adoption.

NEW YORK — NVIDIA Corp. shares rose more than 1 percent in midday trading Wednesday as investors cheered ongoing production ramps of the company's Blackwell AI platform and expectations for explosive demand in agentic AI systems throughout 2026.

AUSTIN, Texas — Elon Musk reignited excitement around Tesla Inc.'s long-awaited electric semi-truck Wednesday with a simple two-word post on X that quickly racked up millions of views, spotlighting the production-version Tesla Semi as the company prepares for customer deliveries later this year.

NEW YORK — Alphabet Inc. Class C shares edged lower in early trading Wednesday, dipping 0.47 percent to $329.01 as investors paused ahead of the company's first-quarter earnings later this month while weighing heavy artificial intelligence investments against broader market optimism over potential de-escalation in the Middle East.

BOSTON — Boston Dynamics has unveiled a striking new demonstration of its four-legged robot Spot, now empowered by Google's Gemini Robotics AI, autonomously completing everyday household chores from a handwritten to-do list in a residential setting.

AUSTIN, Texas — Elon Musk congratulated Tesla's AI chip design team Wednesday on completing the tape-out of its next-generation AI5 processor, marking a significant step forward in the electric vehicle maker's ambitious push to build custom silicon that could accelerate autonomous driving, humanoid robotics and energy storage optimization.

NEW YORK — Travere Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: TVTX) emerged as one of the biotech sector's biggest movers in mid-April 2026 after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted full approval for its drug FILSPARI (sparsentan) as the first and only approved treatment for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) in patients without nephrotic syndrome, sending shares surging more than 30 percent in a single session and reinforcing a consensus "Moderate Buy" rating among Wall Street analysts.

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple's long-awaited first foldable iPhone remains on track for a September 2026 launch alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, with the device entering trial production and featuring a striking wide, tablet-like design that promises the most significant form-factor overhaul in iPhone history, according to the latest reports from supply chain sources and analysts.

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple's iPhone 18 Pro Max is shaping up as one of the most compelling flagship upgrades in years, with leaks pointing to a powerful 2nm A20 Pro chip, a groundbreaking variable aperture main camera, a significantly smaller Dynamic Island and potentially record-breaking battery life when it arrives alongside a new foldable iPhone in September 2026.

NEW YORK — xAI's Grok 4.20 Beta 2 continues to dominate AI leaderboards in mid-April 2026, achieving top rankings in medicine, legal reasoning and general benchmarks while generating real-world impact, including reports of the AI helping save human and animal lives through accurate medical advice.

NEW YORK — OpenAI has released its latest ChatGPT update on April 9, 2026, introducing GPT-5.3 Instant Mini as a smarter fallback model and launching a new $100-per-month Pro subscription tier, even as the company faces mounting public criticism, subscription cancellations and security concerns.

More adults are choosing digital entertainment that feels easy to access, simple to understand, and comfortable to revisit in short sessions.

NEW YORK — Shares of Rigetti Computing Inc. jumped more than 10% in early trading Tuesday as excitement continued to build around the quantum computing pioneer's recent launch of its most powerful system to date, the 108-qubit Cepheus-1-108Q, now generally available to customers and partners worldwide.

NEW YORK — Google has begun rolling out its April 2026 software update for all supported Pixel devices, urging owners to install it immediately to address a critical security vulnerability and several annoying bugs affecting Android 16 users.

NEW YORK — As artificial intelligence continues to reshape industries from data centers to enterprise software, investors are eyeing a select group of companies poised for strong growth throughout 2026 and beyond. With hyperscaler capital expenditure projected to exceed $500 billion and global AI infrastructure investment on track to reach trillions in coming years, the AI boom shows no signs of slowing.

TOKYO — Speculation about Sony's PlayStation 6 continues to swirl in April 2026, with insiders and analysts offering conflicting timelines for the next-generation console while highlighting challenges from the global memory chip shortage driven by artificial intelligence demand.

SEATTLE — Microsoft Outlook is not currently experiencing a widespread outage, with official service health dashboards and user reporting sites showing all major components operational as of Tuesday evening, April 14, 2026.

HAWTHORNE, Calif. — Starlink Mini is proving it can deliver reliable high-speed internet even at highway speeds, SpaceX's official account declared Monday in a post on X that quickly gained traction among travelers and tech enthusiasts.

BEIJING — As China pushes aggressively into artificial intelligence under its latest five-year plan, a mix of tech giants and specialized startups is reshaping the global landscape. With over 6,000 AI firms and a core industry scale exceeding 1.2 trillion yuan ($171 billion) in 2025, the country is closing gaps with U.S. rivals through cost-efficient models, domestic chip breakthroughs and widespread adoption.

With the 2025-26 NBA regular season wrapped up and the playoffs set to begin, the race for the 2026 Kia NBA Most Valuable Player award has narrowed to an unusually deep field of five candidates, each making a compelling case in what analysts have called one of the league's most competitive chases in years.