Good morning. It's Thursday, February 5, and we're covering China’s tightening grip on AI, Kling’s new multimodal 3.0 launch, voice agents now making real phone calls, and more.

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📈 Gemini App Surpasses 750 Million Monthly Active Users
Google announced in its Q4 2025 earnings that the Gemini AI app has surpassed 750 million monthly active users, up from about 650 million in the previous quarter. This milestone highlights rapid adoption of the AI chatbot as part of Google’s broader push into artificial intelligence. Despite strong growth, Gemini still trails ChatGPT, which industry estimates place at around 810 million monthly active users.

📉 AI Disruption Rattles Software Stocks (Paywall)
Investors are selling software stocks after new AI tools raised fears of deep industry disruption. Advanced automation from companies like Anthropic has sparked concern that businesses will cut back on traditional software subscriptions. Roughly $300 billion in market value was wiped out in a single day. The market reaction reflects worries that AI could replace existing services.

🎬 Grok Imagine Hits 1.2B Videos
Grok claims its Imagine model generated over 1.2 billion videos in the past 30 days. A post from an external developer says that total exceeds the combined output of rivals like Sora and Veo over the same period. The figures suggest extremely high usage, though no independent verification was provided. The milestone highlights how quickly generative video tools are scaling.

📞 Call Your AI Agent Anywhere
ElevenLabs shows how to connect OpenClaw with its Agents platform to enable real-time voice conversations, including phone calls. The setup lets ElevenLabs handle speech, turn-taking, and telephony, while OpenClaw manages logic, memory, and tools. Using standard chat completions, developers can wire the systems together via ngrok. With Twilio, the agent can even answer a real phone number.

The Recap: China’s leader Xi Jinping declared artificial intelligence an “epoch-making” technology—on par with electricity and the internet—while warning that it must not be allowed to spiral out of control. His remarks capture Beijing’s central dilemma: AI is now core to China’s economic strategy, but it also poses political and social risks that the Communist Party is determined to manage through dense regulation. The result is a push-and-pull system that urges Chinese AI companies to scale rapidly to beat foreign rivals while complying with far more intrusive oversight than most global competitors face.

Highlights:

Forward Future Takeaways:
China’s AI strategy is less about laissez-faire innovation than state-guided acceleration, balancing economic urgency with political control. The approach may protect social stability, but it also risks slowing experimentation just as rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic sprint ahead with fewer constraints. The open question: can China’s tightly regulated model still deliver global AI → Read the full article here. (Paywall)

Chinese AI startup Kling AI announced the launch of its Kling 3.0 model, positioning it as an all-in-one multimodal creation engine for video, audio, and images. The update adds stronger character and scene consistency, 15-second multi-shot video generation with finer control, upgraded native audio supporting multiple characters and accents, and enhanced image generation with 4K output.

The company says Ultra subscribers receive immediate early access via the web. Kling is also running a 24-hour social media promotion offering early access to selected users. → Read the full article here.

Cerebras Systems announced it has closed a $1 billion Series H funding round, valuing the company at approximately $23 billion post-money. The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from major institutional investors including Benchmark, Fidelity, and Coatue, as well as strategic backer AMD.

Cerebras builds wafer-scale processors and systems designed to train and run large AI models at scale. The financing underscores continued investor appetite for alternative AI compute architectures amid surging demand for model training infrastructure. → Read the full article here.

🍏 Apple Supercharges Xcode With AI Agents: Xcode 26.3 adds Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s Codex, letting AI autonomously write, test, and verify apps—raising productivity while intensifying security debates.

🚀 Amazon Launches Alexa Plus Nationwide (Paywall): The AI assistant exits early access, adds a free web and app tier, and bundles unlimited use with Prime, intensifying competition with ChatGPT-style bots.

🪙 Bitcoin Slides as Markets Jitter: Bitcoin sank below $73,000, its lowest since 2024, while US stocks fell as AI disruption fears and rising US-Iran tensions rattled investors.

👩‍❤️‍👨 Tinder Tests AI to Ease Swipe Burnout: New feature Chemistry uses questions and camera-roll insights to suggest fewer, better matches as user fatigue and subscriber declines persist.

💰 ElevenLabs Raises $500M at $11B: The Sequoia-led round, values the voice AI startup at $11 billion, more than triple its January 2025 valuation. Existing investors including a16z and Iconiq increased their stakes.

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Thanks for reading today’s newsletter. See you next time!
Matthew Berman & The Forward Future Team

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