Gavin McNamara has abandoned his keyboard and spends all day talking rather than typing.

He speaks for hours with his computer and phone, sending emails, writing presentations, posting on LinkedIn and even coding through conversations using an AI dictation app from San Francisco startup, Wispr Flow.

The AI punctuates, formats and adapts his rambling into coherent copy. McNamara averages 125 words per minute, which is twice the average typing speed.

“At this point, anything that could be done by typing, I do by speaking,” said the 32-year-old, founder of software agency Why Not Us. “I just talk.”

Across 77 apps, he has dictated nearly 300,000 words in the past five months — that’s equivalent to writing three novels.

California’s tech titans and startups are at the forefront of a movement to use AI and the large language models they are based on to push people to interact with technology using their voices rather than their fingers.

“AI and LLMs have changed the dynamic,” said CJ Pais, the San Diego-based creator of free voice-to-text dictation app Handy. “Using your voice is much faster than typing.”

A mix of independent developers and startups, including Handy, San Francisco’s Wispr Flow and Willow and others, have sprung up to offer accurate voice interaction with artificial intelligence.

The biggest names in tech are also creating new ways for people to partner with AI. Meta’s latest smart glasses rely on voice. OpenAI and Meta have designed distinct personalities for their bots’ voice chats. Even Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are undergoing AI upgrades, which the companies anticipate will have everyone talking to their tech much more.

These free and paid methods for using spoken words with computers have attracted millions of users, including coders, executive assistants, lawyers, content creators, and medical practitioners. Some optimists think the keyboard could become obsolete.

“I’m excited to announce that we’ve removed keyboards from the most prestigious television awards in the world,” Allan Guo, the founder of Willow, said in a post on LinkedIn, noting that the Emmy Awards team used Willow’s voice dictation for sending Slack messages and clearing inboxes faster in preparation for the 2026 awards.

Over the years, big tech companies have adapted many of their products with voice-first features — for convenience. Today’s pivot away from voice as an accessibility feature to a productivity tool.

In late 2022, the maker of ChatGPT started giving away unfettered acccess to its automatic speech recognition model called Whisper, trained on 680,000 hours of multilingual data. OpenAI shared the tech for accurate audio transcription, once a closely guarded big tech secret. Anyone could now download and run high-quality AI transcription for free on their laptop.

The new wave of AI dictation apps uses Whisper as the foundation and builds on top to offer live dictation. While there are free alternatives, paid subscription costs between $8 and $12 a month.

AI-powered dictation is now gaining a toehold among programmers and regular users — and getting people to talk to their laptops. Be it writing emails, sending SMS, designing a website, or giving AIs tasks, early adopters say dictation allow them to work faster, think more clearly, and be more productive.

“The people who’ve adopted voice heavily aren’t going back. Once you’re talking 20 hours a week to your laptop, typing feels like friction,” said Naveen Naidu, the general manager of New York-based voice dictation app Monologue. “Where I think it’s heading: Voice becomes the delegation layer. You speak your intent, and things happen.”

These new AI dictation apps leverage Apple’s advanced chips on iPhones and Macs to run private on-device dictation.

Geoffrey Huntley, an independent software developer, switched almost completely to voice for work in June.

He often starts projects by opening a voice prompt and asking the AI to interview him about his concerns and project requirements before any code is generated.

“I speak to it, like I’m riffing in a jazz band, backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards,” Huntley said. This vocal dance helps refine the specifications, then the AI takes the wheel, and builds software.

Beyond coding, Huntley uses voice to “let it rip” when capturing blog post ideas or messaging, using apps like Superwhisper or Wispr Flow to get a “first dump” of thoughts before moving to a keyboard for final editing.

A growing number of software developers in Silicon Valley are dictating coding instructions for hours at a time instead of typing. The combination of rapidly advancing AI agents that can code for hours, with voice inputs capturing thoughts faster than typing, has boosted their productivity.

Self-described “vibe coder” McNamara built over 25 web apps in a few months, a speed of development that would be impossible without voice instructions.

“I don’t think that [typing], by any means, would be even efficient or effective to get there as fast as I did with talking,” McNamara said.

He used a meandering conversation and a few hours to get AI to build Sprout Gifts, a gifting registry for kids, and an app to appraise any items via photos.

To be sure, AI can make mistakes, and its work needs to be checked.

Meanwhile, wide adoption has brought new inconveniences, as even power users feel awkward talking to their laptops. Crowded open offices are not designed for many people to be conversing with their computers at the same time.

“Love voice, but not in an office setting,” said one user on X. “I dislike talking around other people. I would do it in a closed-door office, or go work in my car.”

McNamara uses headphones so people assume he is on a call.

“It’s like the social hack that I have,” he said.

While it is too early to call whether and when the Qwerty keyboard might follow the ticker tape and fax machines into obsolescence, the velocity toward voice is accelerating, said Dylan Fox, founder of San Francisco-based AssemblyAI, which offers audio models to companies.

“We’re definitely in the beginning of what we think of as like this 10 to 100x increase in demand for voice, AI applications and interfaces,” he said.

For the coder, McNamara, talking more to chatbots has made him a better buddy.

He used to be bad at responding to texts. Now he gets back to friends right away.

“I am so quick to respond, they are like ‘Who’s this guy?’” he said.

Shaking off its defeat in the Warner Bros. bidding war, Comcast is focusing on its big sports bet.

NBCUniversal will broadcast the Winter Olympics, Super Bowl, NBA, Major League Baseball and the World Cup this year.

The Philadelphia giant released its fourth-quarter earnings Thursday and its sports-heavy strategy is revealing both the benefits and costs. NBCUniversal’s new NBA deal has had the hoped-for effect of boosting subscribers to its Peacock streaming service.

Peacock now has 44 million customers and streaming revenue grew 23% to $1.6 billion. But Peacock’s losses swelled to $552 million in the fourth quarter as the streaming service absorbed the expense of NBC’s NBA TV rights agreement and an exclusive NFL game.

Comcast executives said during an earnings call that Peacock reduced its full-year losses by $700 million compared to 2024. Last year, the service lost $1.1 billion and profitability is still a ways off.

Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts noted that the entertainment industry is in the throes of a major transformation and that NBCUniversal has laid the groundwork for its own metamorphosis. His company has made a sharp pivot away from NBC’s 1990s glory days of “Must-See TV” comedies, water-cooler dramas like “ER” and “West Wing,” as well as a fleet of formidable cable channels, including USA and CNBC.

This month, the cable channels were spun off into a new company called Versant.

Comcast entered last fall’s high-stakes Warner auction with hopes of combining NBCUniversal with Warner Bros. to create a new Hollywood behemoth. But Netflix swooped in with a $82.7-billion deal and David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance also made an all-cash bid. Paramount has refused to accept defeat, launching a hostile takeover to attempt to claim its rival — a pursuit that Warner board members are fighting.

“In terms of Warner Bros., what can you say?” Roberts said. “It’s still underway, obviously.”

Marrying NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. would have made a compelling company, Roberts said. But as soon as its competitors turned to all-cash offers, “We were just not interested in these values, stretching our balance sheet to do something like that,” he said.

The longtime cable chief pointed to the silver lining.

Preparing its bid for Warner Bros. “forced us on the journey to really take a good look at what we have and what we’re building,” Roberts said. “We have a wonderful studios business … 2026 should be a great year for the film business. … We have two studios in the television business, which is feeding Peacock.”

NBCUniversal is moving closer to its goal of becoming “an integrated media business that is profitable and [has] got a lot of sports,” a streaming service and Universal theme parks, Roberts said, adding the Warner auction has prompted other firms to discuss possible combinations.

NBC, which turns 100 this year, has long carried live sports.

But it has doubled down and February will be packed with the Winter Olympics in Italy, the Super Bowl near San Francisco and the NBA All-Star game in Inglewood.

In March, NBC and Peacock will begin broadcasting MLB games, including the Dodgers hosting the Arizona Diamondbacks on opening day.

The company’s Spanish-language network Telemundo will broadcast the World Cup this summer, including a stop in Los Angeles.

“We’re very confident and comfortable that we’re in the right part of the industry,” Roberts said. “We hope the Olympic Games can offer a moment of connection for our country and for people everywhere” during such divisive times, he said.

Comcast has been struggling in its core broadband business as cellphone carriers with 5G service have cut into its former dominance. Millions of customers have ditched their cable TV packages.

The company switched up management in Philadelphia in October, installing Steve Croney as chief executive of its connectivity and platforms business. And Comcast has trimmed some of its internet package prices to better compete.

In the fourth quarter, Comcast lost 181,000 domestic broadband customers — more than what analysts had forecast. The company said some of the losses were offset by gaining international customers.

Comcast generated quarterly revenue of $32.3 billion, a slight increase that was in-line with expectations. Adjusted earnings a share decreased 12% to 84 cents, higher than expected.

Net income attributed to Comcast came in at $2.2 billion, which was more than 50% lower than the year-earlier period. The decline reflected a tough comparison to the prior year period, which included a $1.9 billion income tax benefit attributed to an internal corporate reorganization.

NBCUniversal produced $12.7 billion in revenue, a 5.4% increase.

The media unit, which includes television and streaming, contributed $7.6 billion in revenue, a 5.5% gain. (The numbers included results from the profitable cable channels, which became a separate entity on Jan. 2.) Higher advertising sales and Peacock, which began carrying the NBA, helped deliver the gains. Peacock recently raised its monthly fee.

But media earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization tumbled 141% to a loss of $122 million to account for the NBA contract.

Theme parks, which now boast Universal’s Epic Universe near Orlando, produced $2.9 billion in revenue — a 22% increase. It generated $1 billion in profit.

NBCUniversal’s studio business generated $3 billion in revenue, a decline of 7.4%. It notched $351 million in earnings, a decline of 38%.

Although shut out of the Oscar nominations, Universal Pictures’ “Wicked: For Good” roared at the box office. The two-part “Wicked” franchise has fetched $1.3 billion in global ticket sales.

Comcast shares were up 2.9% to $29.24 on Thursday.

California quantum computing company D-Wave is moving its headquarters to Boca Raton, Fla., and opening a new research and development facility.

In an announcement this week, the Palo Alto company said its new office will be housed in the Boca Raton Innovation Campus before the end of this year. The 1.7-million-square-foot office facility, previously used by tech company IBM, is the birthplace of the personal computer, according to the campus’ website.

“The state offers a rich scientific and educational environment, a growing pool of highly skilled tech talent, and a vibrant spirit of innovation that made it attractive to D-Wave,” Chief Executive Alan Baratz said in a statement.

The company is among businesses that have recently opened new offices or moved out of California, underscoring the competition the state faces to attract more jobs.

California, home to companies such as Google, Apple and Meta, is known for being a major hub for the technology industry. California cryptocurrency startup BitGo recently said that it was moving to South Dakota.

The announcement comes after business leaders criticize a proposed ballot measure to tax billionaires to mainly fund healthcare. Under the Billionaire Tax Act, Californians worth more than $1 billion would pay a one-time 5% tax on their total wealth. The initiative still needs enough signatures to make it on the November ballot, but it’s already prompting criticism from some of California’s wealthiest residents who have urged companies to move.

D-Wave, founded in 1999, describes itself the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers. It also provides quantum computing systems, software, and services. Quantum computers are able to solve complex problems more quickly than a classical computer.

A company spokesperson said its decision to move its headquarters to Florida wasn’t related to the proposed billionaires tax and its executives haven’t publicly commented on the idea. D-Wave will still have a Palo Alto office and it also has a presence in Marina del Rey.

Cities try to lure companies to relocate their operations by offering tax breaks.

In January, the Boca Raton City Council approved a resolution that would allow a tech company — referred as Project Vernon — to be a “qualified applicant” for economic development incentives.

The resolution said that once the company, which turned out to be D-Wave, revealed its identity the city would move forward with completing an economic development agreement.

D-Wave would receive up to $500,000 as part of a relocation incentive. The new headquarters would result in the creation of 100 new jobs over the next five years in Boca Raton. The average annual salary for the jobs shouldn’t be less than $125,000, according to the resolution.

The company also considered relocating its headquarters and R&D facility to Tennessee and North Carolina along with staying in California, the resolution said.

The new Florida site will provide D-Wave a “bicoastal presence for system redundancy in the case of disaster recovery,” according to the news release about the new headquarters.

The company said it will install a quantum computer at Florida Atlantic University’s Boca Raton campus as part of a $20-million agreement.

D-Wave has more than 200 employees, according to its website.

The quantum market is projected to grow. It could reach roughly $100 billion by 2035 with most of the revenue growth coming from quantum computing, according to a 2025 report from McKinsey & Company.