X updates Grok to prevent the “editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis” and geoblocks it for all users “where it's illegal”
The company is also blocking image generation entirely from non-subscribers.
Sources: Apple now needs to fight for TSMC production capacity amid the AI boom; Nvidia was likely TSMC's top customer in at least one or two quarters in 2025
Here Are 3 ETFs That Cut Magnificent 7 RiskAdam Clark /Barron's Online:Nvidia Stock Pops. Trump, TSMC Are Boosting the AI Chip Maker.Laura Bratton /Yahoo Finance:Chip stocks jump as Nvidia supplier TS...
The Wikimedia Foundation says Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral joined Wikimedia Enterprise to get “tuned” API access; Google is already a member
The companies have joined Google as the latest members of the Wikimedia Enterprise program.
A source close to Thinking Machines Lab alleges ex-CTO Barret Zoph, who is returning to OpenAI, had shared confidential company information with competitors
The departures are a blow for Thinking Machines Lab. Two narratives are already emerging about why they happened.
Google launches Personal Intelligence, a Gemini feature that links to Gmail, Google Photos, Search, and YouTube history to tailor answers, for paid subscribers
ZDNET's key takeaways — Personal Intelligence scans your apps to improve Gemini answers. — The feature is off by default and won't train on sensitive data.
TSMC reports Q4 net profit up 35% YoY to a record ~$16B, above $15.17B est., as it benefited from surging demand for AI chips and hit $100B in 2025 revenue
TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, posted a 35% jump in fourth-quarter net profit on Thursday, beating market forecasts and hitting a record …
Thinking Machines Lab parts ways with CTO Barret Zoph, with Soumith Chintala taking over the role; sources say the termination is due to “unethical conduct”
BREAKING: Thinking Machines has terminated its CTO, Barret Zoph, due to unethical conduct according to two sources familiar with the matter. CEO Mira Murati announced the news at an all-hands with emp...
President Trump signs an order to impose a 25% tariff on chips “transshipped through the US to other foreign countries”, as part of the Nvidia H200 export deal
The US imposed a 25% tariff on imports of certain semiconductors, a key step in an agreement blessed by President Donald …
The US says Taiwanese companies will invest $250B+ in chip production in the US as part of a trade deal, with Taiwanese government guaranteeing $250B in credit
The U.S. and Taiwan have reached a trade agreement to build chips and chip factories on American soil, the Department of Commerce announced on Thursday.
California AG Rob Bonta opens an investigation into xAI over the proliferation of nonconsensual, sexualized images generated by Grok, and urges xAI to act
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is investigating Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI over the proliferation of nonconsensual …
OpenAI strikes a multibillion-dollar, three-year deal to buy 750 MW of computing capacity from Cerebras, which Sam Altman has backed; sources: it's a $10B+ deal
The ChatGPT-maker is racing to secure more computing power, especially for responding to user queries
OpenAI quietly rolls out ChatGPT Translate, a standalone website that supports plain text translations across 50+ languages and features prompt customization
OpenAI's new standalone translation tool supports over 50 languages and features AI-powered prompt customization. — • — TL;DR
Verizon fixes “an issue impacting wireless voice and data services” that caused 100K+ users to lose reception for 10+ hours on January 14 and gives a $20 credit
The carrier says the outage is now resolved — While Verizon had a good few months, with the last major outage occurring …
Source: Apple's Gemini deal is a cloud contract where it pays Google several billion dollars; a source says OpenAI declined to be Apple's custom model provider
Multibillion-dollar deal to secure Gemini models reflects cautious approach to infrastructure spending
Spotify plans to raise its Premium subscription by $1 to $12.99/month in the US, its first US price hike since July 2024, and increase it in Estonia and Latvia
Spotify Technology SA is raising the price of its premium subscription service by 8% in an effort to achieve sustained profitability.
Researchers detail WhisperPair, vulnerabilities in Google's Fast Pair protocol affecting 17 audio device models from 10 brands; Google rolled out updates
Flaws in how 17 models of headphones and speakers use Google's one-tap Fast Pair Bluetooth protocol have left devices open to eavesdroppers and stalkers.
Amazon files an objection to Saks Global's bankruptcy financing plan, and says its $475M investment in the department store is now effectively “worthless”
Amazon wants a federal judge to reject Saks Global's bankruptcy financing plan, writing in court papers the beleaguered department store …
Coinbase pulls support from the US Senate's crypto market structure bill ahead of a key vote; CEO Brian Armstrong says there are “too many issues” with the bill
CEO Brian Armstrong said there were “too many issues” with the bill. — Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the exchange …
YouTube now lets parents set time limits on their kids' YouTube Shorts feed, ranging from 15 minutes to two hours; an option for zero minutes is coming soon
Parents will also be able to manually create and adjust child and teen accounts on YouTube.
Digg, rebooted under original co-founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, launches its public beta, after being open to 67K invite-only users
The reboot of the early-internet online community Digg, a one-time rival to Reddit, is moving forward.
X revises its developer API policies to “no longer allow apps that reward users for posting on X (aka “infofi")", amid a backlash about increasing AI slop on X
X is making major changes to its API to prevent access by “InfoFi” crypto projects that seek to incentivize “reply spam,” an exec said.
Equal1, which was spun out from University College Dublin, raised $60M to deploy its new quantum server for data centers, bringing its total funding to $85M
UCD spinout has developed a quantum server for data centres — Equal1, the Irish quantum computing company that was spun …
Google releases TranslateGemma, a suite of Gemma 3-based open translation models available in 4B-, 12B-, and 27B-parameter sizes, with support for 55 languages
Today, we're introducing TranslateGemma, a new collection of open translation models built on Gemma 3, helping people communicate across 55 languages …
Replit launches Mobile Apps on Replit, which enables vibe-coding of iOS apps with integrated Stripe monetization
Anthropic researchers say rich countries' higher AI adoption risks deepening economic disparities and widening living standard gaps, assuming productivity gains
Research by AI start-up suggests productivity gains from the technology unevenly spread around world
Scientists say that AI has become a powerful and rapidly improving research tool, and that whether it is generating ideas on its own is, for now, a moot point
For decades, elite mathematicians have struggled to solve a collection of thorny problems posed by a 20th-century academic named Paul Erdos.
Sources: China is drafting Nvidia H200 purchase rules, limiting how many chips local companies can buy and requiring them to justify the need, instead of a ban
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: the US cyberattack that plunged Caracas into darkness during the Maduro mission shows its offensive capabilities; Senators plan to question officials
Senators are expected to ask Lt. Gen. Joshua M. Rudd, President Trump's nominee to lead the U.S. Cyber Command, about the mission in Caracas.
Letter: a top House Republican warns severe DRAM and HBM3E supply shortages will constrain H200 export licenses; Nvidia says it “can serve all approved” orders
Tight memory chip supplies will constrain the number of US export licenses for Nvidia Corp. to sell …
AWS signs a two-year supply deal with Rio Tinto to access its Arizona copper mine, the US' first new source in 10+ years, as AI data centers create huge demand
The copper, which is being produced in Arizona by Rio Tinto with bacteria and acid, will be used for data-center construction
Brain-computer interface startup Merge Labs, which Sam Altman co-founded, raised a $252M seed from OpenAI, Bain Capital, Gabe Newell, and others
Merge Labs, a company co-founded by AI billionaire Sam Altman that is building devices to connect human brains to computers, raised $252 million.
Elon Musk claims he's “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok” and that Grok's operating principle is to “obey the laws of any given country”
California's governor and attorney general said on Wednesday that they were demanding answers …
GlobalFoundries agrees to acquire Synopsys' ARC processor IP business, which includes ARC-V (RISC-V) and ARC CPU IP, and integrate it into its MIPS business
Today sees a bold move to bring two key processor architectures, MIPS and ARC, under one umbrella, as GlobalFoundries announced …
Andrea Vallone, who left OpenAI in November as the head of its safety research team, joins Anthropic's alignment team
Andrea Vallone has joined Anthropic's alignment team. … One of the most controversial issues in the AI industry over the past year was what to do when a user displays signs …
Sources: Replit is in advanced discussions to raise about $400M in a new round of funding that would roughly triple its valuation to $9B
Replit Inc., an artificial intelligence coding startup, is nearing a deal for a new round of funding that would roughly triple its valuation to $9 billion …
Wikimedia celebrates Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, marking its growth from 100 pages to 65M+ articles with nearly 15B monthly views, and releases a docuseries
On 15 January 2026, Wikipedia is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its founding in 2001.Wikipedia:25 years of Wikipedia — From dial-up days to now, travel through Wikipedia's history.Natalie Fear ...
Bitmine, the largest corporate holder of ether, invests $200M in MrBeast's Beast Industries, set to close on January 19; Bitmine holds 4M+ ETH valued at ~$13.6B
The investment gives Bitmine a stake in a brand with strong Gen Z and millennial appeal, reaching over 450 million subscribers across its YouTube channels.
India's Supreme Court rules Tiger Global's $1.6B Flipkart stake sale to Walmart in 2018 is subject to taxes, a ruling that will shape future cross-border deals
India's top court has ruled that Tiger Global's $1.6 billion stake sale in Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart to Walmart (WMT.O) …
OpenAI says it issued a request for proposals to US-based hardware manufacturers as it seeks to push into consumer devices, robotics, and cloud data centers
The AI startup is requesting proposals from hardware makers as part of a product expansion — OpenAI is looking to bolster …
Mytra, which is building autonomous robots for warehouses that can move loads up to 3,000 pounds, raised a $120M Series C led by Avenir Growth
Senior Finance Reporter And Author Of Term Sheet — Mytra's Chris Walti (L) and Ahmad Baitalmal (R).MYTRA — Chris Walti once led engineering for Tesla's humanoid Optimus.
UK PM Keir Starmer says X indicated to government officials it was acting to comply with UK laws by restricting the generation of nonconsensual sexual images
UK prime minister says xAI will restrict the image generator as billionaire pledges to follow laws in all markets
Bandcamp bans music and audio “generated wholly or in substantial part by AI”, hoping to build trust with fans that the music they find “was created by humans”
AWS launches European Sovereign Cloud, creating a new parent company for its sovereign cloud that will be locally controlled in the EU and run by EU citizens
Self-help gurus like Tony Robbins, Gabby Bernstein, and Matthew Hussey are charging up to $99 per month to access AI chatbots that promise personalized advice
Self-help gurus like Matthew Hussey and Gabby Bernstein have expanded their empires with AI chatbots promising personalized adviceLinkedIn:Emma EeckhoutLinkedIn:Emma Eeckhout:Today we had a small but ...
Appfigures: global consumer mobile app spending on Apple's App Store and Google Play rose 21.6% YoY to $155.8B in 2025, but app downloads dropped 2.7% to 106.9B
The subscription economy helped boost mobile app revenues in 2025, even as app downloads declined for the fifth consecutive year …
TSMC projects $52B to $56B in 2026 capital spending, up 25%+ from 2025, and forecasts close to 30% YoY revenue growth in 2026, both above analyst estimates
Bloomberg:NEW
Airbnb hires Meta executive Ahmad Al-Dahle, who led the generative AI and Llama team after working at Apple, as its CTO, as it aims to add more AI to its app
WitnessAI, whose service helps organizations govern and protect their AI operations, raised $58M led by Sound Ventures, taking its total funding to $85M+
The company will use the fresh investment to accelerate its global go-to-market and product expansion.
South Korea dropps Naver's and NCSoft's teams from its competition to develop its first sovereign AI model, as LG's, SK Telecom's, and Upstage's teams advance
South Korea dropped teams led by units of Naver Corp. and NCSoft Corp. from its closely watched competition to develop the nation's …
Google agrees to pay $8.25M to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging its AdMob SDK illegally collected data from children under age 13
Google has agreed to pay $8.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit centered on claims that it habitually and illegally collected data from devices belonging to children under age 13.See also Medi...
Alibaba links Qwen to its online shopping and travel services, including Taobao, Alipay, Fliggy, and Amap, aiming to build a one-stop AI app for its 100M users
AI video startup Higgsfield raised an $80M Series A extension from Accel and others at a $1.3B+ valuation, and says it hit a $200M annualized revenue run rate
Fidji Simo says Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz have returned to OpenAI from Thinking Machines Lab and “this has been in the works for several weeks”
Excited to welcome Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz back to OpenAI! This has been in the works for several weeks, and we're thrilled to have them join the team. Barret will report to me; Luk...
Blockchain-based lender Figure unveils the On-Chain Public Equity Network to issue, trade, and lend stocks natively on a blockchain, not as tokenized replicas
Partner offers — Quick Take — Figure's OPEN platform is designed to handle issuance, settlement, and stock lending onchain …
Yield Sec: the top 10 pirate sports streaming sites in the UK, largely funded by ads from unlicensed gambling operators, had 1.6B views in H1 2025, up 33% YoY
Illegal sports streaming is surging in the UK, fueled by sites that are largely funded by advertising from unlicensed gambling operators …
Symbolic.ai, founded by ex-eBay CEO Devin Wenig and Ars Technica cofounder Jon Stokes, partners with News Corp to offer AI tools to WSJ, Barron's, and others
Exclusive: An AI-based journalism platform aims to do it all. Can it deliver the accuracy and productivity it promises?See also Mediagazer
ASML hits a $500B+ market cap for the first time, the third European company to reach the milestone, after TSMC reported strong earnings; ASML is up 18% YTD
CoinDesk data: Binance's spot crypto trading market share fell to 25% in December 2025, its lowest since 2021, and it is losing ground in derivatives trading
Binance's grip on global crypto trading is weakening as rivals pick up market share and traders shift to new ways of buying and selling digital assets.
Polymarket and Kalshi count Donald Trump Jr. as an adviser, and Trump Media plans to launch Truth Predict, raising ethical questions during Trump's second term
Berlin-based Parloa, which develops AI customer service agents for Booking.com and others, raised $350M at a $3B valuation, taking its total funding to $560M+
Berlin-founded group raises $350mn as it looks to expand its AI customer service agents — Florian Müller in Frankfurt and Melissa Heikkilä in London
Hong Kong-based WeLab, which runs digital banks WeLab in Hong Kong and Saqu in Indonesia, raised $220M in equity and debt from HSBC, Prudential HK, and others
Hong Kong-based fintech firm WeLab Ltd. has secured $220 million from investors including HSBC Holdings Plc and Prudential Hong Kong Ltd. in its largest round of funding.
Sources: Chinese authorities told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by ~12 US and Israeli companies due to national security concerns
Source: at least two more Thinking Machines staffers are expected to join OpenAI soon; some researchers say they are exhausted by the industry's constant drama
Boston-based Tulip, which offers an AI-powered frontline operations platform used by 60K workers, raised a $120M Series D led by Mitsubishi at a $1.3B valuation
Boston-based Tulip announced today it has raised $120 million in a Series D funding round led by Mitsubishi Electric, at a valuation of $1.3 billion.
Project Eleven, which builds tools to prepare blockchains for post-quantum threats, raised a $20M Series A led by Castle Island at a $120M post-money valuation
Bengaluru-based edtech startup Emversity raised a $30M Series A led by Premji Invest, sources say at a $120M post-money valuation, up from $60M in April 2025
As AI automates parts of the workforce, Emversity, an Indian workforce-training startup, is building talent pipelines for roles …
PJM trims summer 2027 peak demand forecast to ~160 GW from ~164 GW because some projects, including data centers, lack firm service or construction commitments
Microsoft agrees to buy a record 2.85M soil carbon credits from Indigo Carbon linked to regenerative US agriculture; a source values the deal at $171M to $228M
Microsoft (MSFT.O) has agreed with Indigo Carbon to buy a record 2.85 million soil carbon credits linked to regenerative agriculture …
Novee, which utilizes proprietary AI models to perform automated penetration testing, emerges from stealth with a $43M Series A and an $8.5M seed
Novee, a penetration-testing cybersecurity startup, launched out of stealth with $51.5 million in funding, co-founder and CEO Ido Geffen tells Axios Pro.
The IMF urges governments to help workers displaced by AI and says policymakers should redesign education so young people use AI “rather than compete with it”
Sources: the Trump administration is weighing a substantial shift in its cyberstrategy, including by enlisting private companies to assist with cyberattacks
Sources: McKinsey pilots an overhaul in how it recruits its next generation, asking candidates to use its AI tool Lilli to analyze a case study during a test
2026 may be the year of the mega IPO, as sources say Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX took early steps to go public, setting up a watershed moment for the AI boom
Call it the year of the mega initial public offering. Or the year of the I.P.O. supercycle. Or the monster listing mania, perhaps.
Depthfirst, which provides AI tools for codebase scanning, credential exposure protection, and threat monitoring, raised a $40M Series A led by Accel Partners
BlackRock raises $12.5B as part of its Microsoft partnership to bankroll data centers and energy infrastructure, bringing it closer to its $30B goal from 2024
BlackRock Inc. has raised $12.5 billion as part of a partnership with Microsoft Corp. to bankroll data centers and energy infrastructure …