Techmeme
January 8, 2026, 2:15 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.
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
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:
Wired:
Grok's website and app are being used to produce extremely graphic, sometimes violent, sexual imagery of adults that is vastly more explicit than images on X  —  A WIRED review of outputs hosted on Grok's official website shows it's being used to create violent sexual images and videos, as well as content that includes apparent minors.
Louise Breusch Rasmussen / Reuters:
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.
CNBC:
China says it will investigate Meta's $2B Manus acquisition to assess compliance with laws on export controls, tech import and export, and overseas investment  —  China said Thursday it will investigate Meta's $2 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Manus to assess its compliance with export control laws.
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 …
Yantoultra Ngui / Reuters:
Chris Welch / Bloomberg:
Samsung appears to have shelved Ballie, a robot it announced six years ago but never released, calling it an “active innovation platform” within the company  —  Samsung Electronics Co. has once again sidelined Ballie, a long-anticipated robot that was first announced six years ago but never released.
Amy Feldman / Forbes:
NYC-based Pomelo Care, which offers 24/7 virtual care for women by using data to flag pregnancy risks and more, raised $92M led by Stripes at a $1.7B valuation  —  Pomelo Care founder and CEO Marta Bralic Kerns  —  Former Flatiron Health exec Marta Bralic Kerns raised $92 million to expand …
More: FinSMEs
Vicky Ge Huang / Wall Street Journal:
The Trump family's World Liberty Financial says World Liberty Trust applied for a US banking license, which would let it issue and safeguard its USD1 stablecoin  —  Critics have said World Liberty and its stablecoin pose a major conflict of interest for President Trump
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Cyera researchers detail Ni8mare, a critical RCE flaw that lets attackers access local instances of workflow automation platform n8n, impacting ~100K servers  —  A maximum severity vulnerability dubbed “Ni8mare” allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to take control over locally deployed instances …
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
ThreatModeler, which helps developers identify vulnerabilities in their applications, acquires IriusRisk, its largest competitor, a source says for $100M+  —  Invictus-backed cybersecurity company ThreatModeler acquires competitor IriusRisk for over $100 millionGETTY IMAGES

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More News

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Earlier Picks

Chris Kerr / Game Developer:
Reuters:
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Barron's Online:
Ina Fried / Axios: