The Brief -Friday 30 January – Meta and Comcast’s earnings, Spotify launches new group chat feature and more

📈 Meta reported Q4 revenues grew 24% year on year to $59.9bn. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors the company will nearly double its expenditure on AI projects this year and will develop more AI-driven commerce capabilities. Shares of Meta jumped over 8%. (Meta)

📺 Comcast reported 1.2% year-on-year revenue growth in Q4 to $32.3bn. Full-year 2025 revenue was flat ($123.7bn). The company’s Residential Connectivity business (including Sky and Freewheel) was down by -12.3% in constant currency terms. Its national media business (NBCUniversal) grew domestic ad revenues by 1.5%. The company did not disclose revenues for Universal Ads. (Comcast)

💬 Spotify has released a group chat feature for free and premium users. Messages is billed as a way for users to share music, audiobooks and podcasts with friends and family without leaving the app. Users are only able to start chats with others they have previously shared content with. Messages are not protected by end-to-end encryption. (Spotify)

🤖 Google is launching a new “auto browse” feature in Chrome which can perform multi-step tasks on a users’ behalf. Powered by Gemini AI, this capability is coming to Google AI Pro and Ultra Subscribers in the US. It can do tasks like research hotel and flight costs, schedule appointments, fill out online forms, manage subscriptions and more. (The Verge)

⚖️ Separately, Google will pay $135m as part of a settlement to a proposed class action lawsuit. Users had accused the tech giant of programming its Android OS to collect their cellular data without permission. (Reuters)

📱 Millions of people around the world are creating and sharing deepfake nudes on at least 150 encrypted Telegram channels. Some channels offer “nudified” photos or videos for a fee; users can upload a photo of any women, and AI will produce a video of that woman performing sexual acts. Other channels provide feeds of generated images of celebrities, social media influencers and ordinary women. (The Guardian)