Oh. This is Fine.

Electronic Arts has been acquired for $55 billion by a consortium including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, while Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Elite chips show promise in synthetic benchmarks, and OpenAI adds parental controls and in-app purchasing to ChatGPT.

• EA acquired for $55 billion by Saudi-backed consortium, raising questions about future game influence.

• Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Elite chips show promising synthetic benchmarks, but real-world performance is still unproven.

• ChatGPT now offers parental controls and in-app purchasing for Etsy listings, soon expanding to Shopify.

Electronic Arts was acquired for $55 billion in the largest leveraged buyout ever, raising questions about potential Saudi government influence on its games. Meanwhile, Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Elite chips have been unveiled with promising, but cautiously received, synthetic benchmark results, drawing comparisons to the over-hyped first-gen Snapdragon X series. OpenAI introduced new features to ChatGPT, including opt-in parental controls and an 'Instant Checkout' shopping feature for Etsy listings, with plans to expand to Shopify.

EA Acquisition

• 00:00:19 Electronic Arts (EA) has been acquired for $55 billion by a consortium that includes Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Infinity Partners, founded by Jared Kushner. This deal represents the largest leveraged buyout in history, with shareholders receiving $210 per share. The acquisition raises concerns about how this will impact EA's games and whether Saudi government influence might be reflected in future titles, potentially as part of an effort to improve Saudi Arabia's public image.

Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite

• 00:01:21 Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme chips were benchmarked by tech outlets, primarily showing promising results from Qualcomm pre-installed synthetic benchmarks. This cautious enthusiasm stems from the prior generation Snapdragon X series, which received significant pre-launch hype as 'Windows' answer to Apple Silicon' but delivered only 'just okay' performance with lingering compatibility issues upon release. Skepticism remains regarding the real-world performance of these new chips beyond controlled demo environments.

ChatGPT New Features

• 00:02:43 OpenAI has added two new features to ChatGPT: parental controls and in-app purchasing. Parental controls allow parents to link to a teenager's account to set time limits, and disable voice mode and image generation, provided the teen opts in and doesn't disconnect the account. The 'Instant Checkout' feature, built on an open agent commerce protocol with Stripe, lets users buy products directly from the chatbot, initially supporting Etsy listings with plans to expand to over a million Shopify merchants.

Tech Quick Bits

• 00:05:12 Nvidia's RTX 50 Super series cards are rumored for a March to May 2026 release, with the 5070, 5070 Ti, and 5080 expected to receive Super variants with expanded memory capacity. Asus is addressing long-standing stuttering and performance issues in ROG gaming laptops, dating back to 2021 models, with beta BIOS updates and more finalized fixes expected soon. Apple is internally testing a new ChatGPT-like app called 'Veritas' to revamp Siri, with an upgraded Siri potentially rolling out as early as March 2026, while Microsoft is introducing 'Vibe Working' with AI-generated documents and presentations through its Office agent in Copilot Chat and agent mode in Word/Excel.