🇺🇸 Forbes 250 Innovators, Spotify 751M, Samsung Unpacked

Happy Wednesday.

Forbes 250 just dropped. A few fun facts from the list 👇

Brian Chesky (#22) — Airbnb
Turned “sleeping on someone’s air mattress” into a global travel behavior shift. Accidentally built the company that made hotels rethink their entire existence.

Noubar Afeyan (#32) — Flagship Pioneering / Moderna
Didn’t just build a biotech company — built a machine for creating them. Moderna is simply the most famous output of that system.

Rodney Brooks (#44) — iRobot
Helped bring robots into ordinary homes long before the AI hype. The Roomba became one of the very few gadgets people actually name.

Can you guess who’s #1?

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Enjoy today’s news.

Forbes publishes 250 Greatest Innovators list, ranking the most influential living American innovators across technology, science, and business as part of America’s 250th anniversary.
🕑 7 m

Spotify hits record 751 million monthly users, up 11% year over year.
🕑 2 m

Anthropic releases Claude Cowork for Windows, with file access, multi-step task execution, plugins, and MCP connectors.
🕑 1 m

Samsung announced its annual Unpacked event will take place on Wednesday, February 25 in San Francisco, where it’s expected to unveil the new Galaxy S26 lineup.
🕑 2 m

Facebook rolls out AI-powered animated profile pictures and creative tools, letting users turn static photos into playful animations and restyle Stories, Memories, and text posts.
🕑 2 m

TikTok parent company ByteDance is developing its own AI chip and is in talks with Samsung for manufacturing.
🕑 3 m

Researchers led by the University of Cambridge say AI-powered stethoscopes can detect serious heart valve disease years earlier than standard exams.
🕑 3 m

YouTube rolls out AI Playlist, letting Premium users generate personalized playlists from a mood, idea, or genre via voice or text prompts.
🕑 1 m

Lindy introduces Lindy Assistant, an AI assistant that works via iMessage, connects with hundreds of apps, and helps manage meetings, emails, and daily workflows.
🕑 2 m

Isomorphic Labs says its drug design engine more than doubles AlphaFold 3’s accuracy on key tests, helping researchers design potential new drugs more quickly and reliably.
🕑 1 m

Loyal raises a $100M Series C to help dogs live longer.
🕑 1 m

Telegram rolls out its redesigned Android app.
🕑 1 m

Lightspeed drops new Out Of Office episode: Michael Mignano sits down with 𝕏’s Head of Product Nikita Bier to discuss his path to 𝕏, building in public, platform growth, and why 𝕏 prioritizes free speech.
🕑 1:15

As promised, tech and startups in under a minute.

See you tomorrow.

P.S. If modern companies existed in the 1980s 📼