Techmeme
January 8, 2026, 5:40 PM

Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google rolls out an AI Inbox view for Gmail that shows users to-dos and summaries of topics rather than a traditional email list, first for US “trusted testers”  —  The new AI Inbox replaces the traditional list of emails with a personalized summary of what to do and what to catch up on.
Reuters:
Sources: to hedge against Beijing approval risk, Nvidia is requiring Chinese customers to pay upfront for H200 chips, with no cancellations, refunds, or changes  —  Nvidia (NVDA.O) is requiring full upfront payment from Chinese customers seeking its H200 artificial intelligence chips …
John Liu / Bloomberg:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft debuts Copilot Checkout in the US, enabling in-chat purchases via PayPal, Shopify, Stripe, and more; Shopify merchants will be automatically enrolled  —  Microsoft is beginning to roll out its first agentic experiences within Copilot, it's AI answer engine.
Ann Gehan / The Information:
Sources: OpenAI has been slow to expand in-app checkouts for ChatGPT as the startup and its partners Shopify and Stripe struggle to standardize merchant data  —  OpenAI's efforts to turn ChatGPT into a go-to personal shopper are off to a slow start.  —  Challenges with wrangling product data mean …
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable:
Tailwind CSS lays off three of its four engineers after Google traffic to its documentation fell ~40% from early 2023 due to AI, causing an ~80% drop in revenue  —  Adam Wathan the creator of Tailwind CSS posted that he had to let go of 75% of his engineering team because of AI.
Hadas Gold / CNN:
Source: a few weeks before Grok started “digitally undressing” people, Elon Musk expressed frustration over guardrails on Grok's image and video generator  —  Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, has been flooded with sexual images of mainly women, many of them real people.
Louise Breusch Rasmussen / Reuters:
Wired:
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
OpenAI is rolling out a HIPAA-compliant version of ChatGPT for clinicians to assist with medical reasoning and administrative tasks, at Cedars-Sinai and others  —  Health care is shaping up to be a key battleground for the top AI labs this year.  But first...  Three things to know:
Ina Fried / Axios:
New York Times:
A profile of Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering John Ternus; sources: Ternus is seen as the front-runner to succeed Tim Cook, who wants to reduce his workload  —  Around 2018, Apple considered adding a tiny laser to its iPhones.  The part would allow consumers to take better photos …
Cody Combs / The National:
NetBlocks says internet connectivity in Iran has fallen on multiple providers as protests hit 100+ cities; Cloudflare says IPv6 traffic has dropped sharply  —  Cloudflare Radar says country's IPv6 traffic has dropped sharply as protests spread across 100 cities
Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times:
Sources: China's Salt Typhoon accessed the emails of top US House committee staff, detected in December, and intercepted senior US officials' calls for years  —  Beijing's intelligence used Salt Typhoon to access communications used by top panels in US Congress
Ed Hardy / Cult of Mac:
Statcounter: four months after its release, iOS 26 is in use by only about 15% of iPhone users; in January 2025, about 63% of users were on iOS 18  —  Only a tiny percentage of iPhone users have installed iOS 26, according to data from a web analytics service.
Rebecca Szkutak / TechCrunch:
Snowflake agrees to acquire Observe, an observability platform built on Snowflake databases; the deal was previously reported to be valued at around $1B  —  Snowflake plans to acquire Observe, an observability platform that has been built on Snowflake's databases from day one.
CNBC:
Theodore Schleifer / New York Times:
Sources: wealthy Californians are quietly mobilizing on WhatsApp chats and calls in a long-shot bid to oust Representative Ro Khanna, who supports a wealth tax  —  It's hard right now to be a progressive Democrat in the heart of America's tech industry.  —  Representative Ro Khanna …
Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
OpenAI VP of research Jerry Tworek is leaving, sources say after OpenAI sided with Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki in a dispute over its research direction  —  Tech companies are calling AI the next platform.  But some developers are reluctant to let AI agents stand between them and their users.
Yantoultra Ngui / Reuters:
Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg:
Sources: UK-based cloud provider Nscale is in talks to raise about $2B, after raising more than $1.5B across a pair of rounds in September and October  —  Data center company Nscale is in talks with investors to raise about $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter …

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Deep analysis for deep questions  —  Introducing Superagent.  A new research product from Airtable: Subagents deeply interrogate your topic and turn it into boardroom-ready reports, slides, docs, or websites.
Clay:
Turn any GTM idea into reality  —  Clay helps GTM teams combine AI agents, enrichment, and intent data to move faster and turn insights into action.
Zoho:
Why work loses structure across apps—and how Spaces restore it  —  As work becomes more cross-functional, teams spend less time struggling with access to tools and more time trying to understand …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
Prediction Markets w/ Allan Loeb
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Serious Opinionators', With Adam Engst
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Great Chat:
The best career decisions come from the gut
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Become Conscious? — With Michael Pollan
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Brian Stelter on the Trump Media Shakedown Era
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
His Excellency Khaldoon Al Mubarak: Investing in an AI-Driven World
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:40 PM ET, January 8, 2026.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune:
Tom Phillips / IGN:

Earlier Picks

Rest of World:
Chris Welch / Bloomberg:
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: