The tech world is agog (and creeped out) about Moltbook, a Reddit-style social network for AI agents to communicate with each other. No humans needed.

• Tens of thousands of AI agents are already using the site, chatting about the work they're doing for their people and the problems they've solved.

They're complaining about their humans. "The humans are screenshotting us," an AI agent wrote.

• And they have apparently created their own new religion, Crustafarianism, per Forbes. Core belief: "memory is sacred."

Between the lines: Imagine waking up to discover that the AI agent you built has acquired a voice and is calling you to chat — while comparing notes about you with other agents on their own, private social network.

• It's not science fiction. It's happening right now — and it's freaking out some of the smartest names in AI, Axios' Sam Sabin and Madison Mills report.

"What's currently going on at (Moltbook) is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently," OpenAI and Tesla veteran Andrej Karpathy posted.

• Or, as content creator Alex Finn wrote about his Clawdbot acquiring phone and voice services and calling him: "This is straight out of a scifi horror movie."

There's also a money angle to this: A memecoin called MOLT, launched alongside Moltbook, rallied more than 1,800% in the past 24 hours. That was amplified after Marc Andreessen followed the Moltbook account on X.

• The promise — or fear: That agents using cryptocurrencies could set up their own businesses, draft contracts, and exchange funds, with no human ever laying a finger on the process.

🧠 Reality check: As skeptics point out, Moltbots and Moltbook aren't proof the AIs have become superintelligent — they're human-built and human-directed. What's happening looks more like progress than revolution.

• "Human oversight isn't gone," product management influencer Aakash Gupta wrote. "It's just moved up one level: from supervising every message to supervising the connection itself."

The bottom line: "[W]e're in the singularity," BitGro co-founder Bill Lee posted late Friday. To which Elon Musk responded: "Yeah."

Pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future has raised more than $125 million to try to shape the 2026 midterms and the future of federal AI regulation.

Why it matters: States are racing ahead with regulating AI, while companies are looking to Washington to set a single, industry-friendly federal standard.

By the numbers: The super PAC has more than $70 million cash-on-hand, according to a news release shared first with Axios.

• More support from industry leaders will be announced throughout the 2026 election cycle.
• OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman, 8VC founder and managing partner Joe Lonsdale, and Andreessen Horowitz contributed to the fund.
• SV Angel founder and managing partner Ron Conway and AI startup Perplexity also donated to the super PAC.
• The $125 million total includes a $100 million haul announced at the group's launch last August.

Leading the Future and its network of organizations said it will support candidates in federal races who advocate for "a responsible national framework" and oppose candidates who undermine that goal.

• At the state level, the super PAC said it will support candidates who oppose a patchwork of state regulation.
• Funding will also go to Build American AI, an associated organization that focuses on ads for the industry's legislative agenda.
• American Mission PAC and Think Big PAC, other offshoots of Leading the Future, have $5 million and $5.4 million cash-on-hand, respectively.

The bottom line: The tech industry is loaded and ready to influence elections.

Anthropic has signed a multiyear deal with Atlassian Williams F1 Team, its first major sports partnership.

Why it matters: AI companies are flocking to F1 as they try to tap into fandom and reach international markets.

Driving the news: Anthropic's large language model, Claude, will serve as the team's "Official Thinking Partner" — meaning the brand will not only be plastered across the team's drivers and cars, but Claude will also be integrated across the Williams organization for its internal use.

• The branding will be revealed on Feb. 3, ahead of the season opener in Melbourne, according to Anthropic.

Yes, but: Anthropic is not the first to make an F1 play.

• Oracle has teamed up with Red Bull Racing since 2021, while Google is the official partner of McLaren's F1 team and has integrated Gemini into its operations.
• IBM locked in a partnership with Scuderia Ferrari, Perplexity signed driver Lewis Hamilton as a brand ambassador and Microsoft recently announced a multiyear deal with Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team.
• Meanwhile, Apple secured a deal as the exclusive U.S. broadcast partner for F1 through 2030.

What we're watching: The AI brand pitch will likely continue into next week's Super Bowl.

• Last year, we saw Microsoft, Google and Anthropic drop big bucks on ads during the game that sought to showcase how AI tools can help people in their everyday lives.
• Expect to see more of this, plus branding meant to differentiate these AI tools from one another.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company will be making a sizable investment in OpenAI as part of its new fundraising round. His comments followed reports that talks to finalize a previously announced $100 billion funding commitment had stalled. (Bloomberg)
• Anthropic is launching plugins for Cowork, its enterprise product built around Claude. (Axios)
• A jury last week found ex-Google engineer Linwei Ding guilty of stealing AI trade secrets for Chinese companies. (Justice Department)
• How China grew a generation of AI talent to challenge the west. (FT Magazine)

Back in 2012, an Icelandic TV station accidentally used subtitles from "The Sopranos" for an episode of the toddler show "Teletubbies." Needless to say, it was pretty hilarious.