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January 9, 2026, 9:25 AM
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memeorandum
WeSmirchTop News
| Helena Horton / The Guardian: |
Grok says image generation and editing are now limited to paid subscribers, after outcry over its use to create sexually explicit and violent imagery — X to limit editing function to paying subscribers after platform threatened with fines and regulatory action
More: Reuters, BBC, TechCrunch, 404 Media, eWeek, Breitbart, Music Ally, Fortune, PetaPixel, The Hollywood Reporter, Silicon UK, and Social Media Today
X: @brianod_news and @grok
LinkedIn: Rory Brooke and Jess Asato MP
Bluesky: @joeuchill, @socialmedialab.ca, @gsoh31, @missingthept, @brexitpirates, @davidgerard.co.uk, @petefrasermusic, @bastardsheep.com, @mgraalum, @mrrobertbob, @gadget44027447, @metacurity.com, @ketanjoshi.co, @missingthept, @stormageddon, @mattburgess1, @trufflehog, @glynmoody, @kyledchurch, @docbaty, @seanjones.org, @carnage4life, @andyscollick, @pogue.omg.lol, @peterwalker99, and @margaretmorgan. Mastodon: @xtaldave@social.vivaldi.net
Forums: Hacker News and r/technology
| Robert Hart / The Verge: |
X is restricting Grok's image capabilities via the @grok reply command, but free users can still create sexual deepfakes through the standalone Grok app or site — X's sexual deepfake machine is still running, despite Grok saying otherwise. … Elon Musk's X has partially restricted access …
More: Associated Press, The Guardian, Silicon Republic, Moneycontrol, Le Monde, Euractiv, RTÉ, Variety, Irish Independent, and Deadline
Bluesky: @zombiewretch, @prietschka, @drsmith, @newschambers, and @samadams
| Hadas Gold / CNN: |
More: Disconnect, Business Today, The Guardian, Reuters, The Times, Bloomberg, Ars Technica, Financial Times, TechCrunch, Pivot to AI, Mirror, Digit, Bloomberg Law, Fortune India, Capacity, Silicon Republic, The Sun, Analytics India Magazine, Gizmodo, and France 24
X: @sentedcruz, @hadas_gold, @nxthompson, and @hadas_gold
Bluesky: @ireneer, @chumleyprelude, @pqpolitics, @angrywaterman, @karlbode.com, @mmasnick, @hunterwalk.com, @quigonsmith, and @caseynewton. Threads: @kolchak
| Carmen Arroyo / Bloomberg: |
Docs: xAI had a net loss of $1.46B in Q3, up from $1B in Q1; sources: xAI told investors it plans to build AI that will eventually power Optimus humanoid robots — Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI is burning cash quickly, with losses mounting as it spends to build data centers … | Dan Primack / Axios: |
a16z raises over $15B across five new funds, including $6.75B for its fifth growth fund and $3B for unspecified “other venture strategies” — Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose past investments included Airbnb and Coinbase, on Friday announced that it raised over $15 billion for a group of new funds.| Mark Sweney / The Guardian: |
Filings: X's UK revenue fell 58.3% YoY from £69.1M in 2023 to £28.9M in 2024; pre-tax profit fell from £8.5M in 2022 and £2.2M in 2023 to £767K in 2024 — Elon Musk-owned site reports plunging profits amid outcry over use of AI tool Grok to create sexually explicit imagery
Forums: r/PoliticalOptimism
| Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg: |
OpenAI launches a HIPAA-compliant version of ChatGPT for clinicians to help with medical reasoning and reduce administrative work, at Cedars-Sinai and elsewhere — Health care is shaping up to be a key battleground for the top AI labs this year. But first... Three things to know:
More: OpenAI, Ars Technica, The Register, Benzinga, Black Enterprise, Constellation Research, The American Bazaar, The Decoder, Sherwood News, Neowin, DigiTimes, Pulse 2.0, Tech Times, Axios, TestingCatalog, DataBreachToday.com, Becker's Hospital Review, Tech Brew, and Forbes Middle East
X: @nearcyan and @bradlightcap
LinkedIn: Ashley Alexander, Steven Michaels, and Kavin Karthik
| Pragyan Kalita / Reuters: |
Rain, which helps businesses issue stablecoin-linked Visa cards, raised a $250M Series C led by ICONIQ at a $1.95B valuation, bringing total funding to $338M+ — Stablecoin firm Rain said on Friday it has raised $250 million in a funding round led by ICONIQ, valuing the company at $1.95 billion …
More: Rain, FinSMEs, The Block, Bloomberg, NFTgators, Cryptonews, and Cointelegraph
| Bloomberg: |
Omdia: global humanoid robot shipments rose more than 5x YoY in 2025 to ~13K units; China accounted for the vast majority, led by AgiBot shipping ~5,168 units — Humanoid robot makers in China accounted for the vast majority of the roughly 13,000 units shipped globally last year … | Sophie Bates / Associated Press: |
Mississippi Gov. Reeves says xAI is set to spend $20B+ to build its MACROHARDRR data center in Southaven, xAI's third data center in the greater Memphis area — Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI is set to spend $20 billion to build a data center in Southaven, Mississippi …
More: DatacenterDynamics, TESLARATI, Reuters, Magnolia Tribune, and Office of Governor Tate Reeves
X: @tatereeves, @darrenmuss, @katiemiller, and @tatereeves
Bluesky: @lachstep.com and @caseynewton
| The Information: |
Sources say DeepSeek will launch V4, its next-generation model, in the coming weeks and say it outperformed Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT series in coding — Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is expected to launch its next-generation AI model that features strong coding capabilities in the coming weeks … | Jennifer Swann / Wired: |
How Craigslist has stayed relevant for users as a place to find jobs, housing, and personal connections without relying on algorithmic feeds or public profiles — Millennials are still using Craigslist to find jobs, find love, and even to cast creative projects—eschewing other AI- and algorithm-dominated online spaces.| Patrick Coffee / Wall Street Journal: |
Nvidia has hired Google Cloud VP of Marketing Alison Wagonfeld to be Nvidia's first CMO; source: Wagonfeld will report to CEO Jensen Huang — Alison Wagonfeld will report to CEO Jensen Huang as marketing rises in importance at the AI chip maker — Nvidia, the top AI chip maker … | 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
More: TechCrunch, Kentik, Tom's Guide, NBC News, The Guardian, Joe.My.God., Capacity, Iran International, The Register, NDTV Profit, Bloomberg, Cointelegraph, Decrypt, Benzinga, Newser, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Deseret News, Reclaim The Net, Radio Free Europe/Radio …, Reuters, NewsMax.com, The Hill, Forbes, ZeroHedge News, PCMag, RedState, Al Jazeera, The Japan Times, and heise online
X: @netblocks, @eastdakota, @kareemrifai, @yanivgeorge, @rich_goldberg, @cloudflareradar, and @netblocks. Bluesky: @lorenzofb
Forums: r/technology and Slashdot
| 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.
More: Tech Monitor, InfoWorld, The Snowflake AI Data Cloud, PYMNTS.com, The Information, Runtime, The Information, TechTarget, CIO Dive, and SiliconANGLE
X: @ramaswmysridhar and @snowflake
LinkedIn: Kristin Liu, Sumit Bhatia, Vikram Ghosh, Xuewei Zhang, and Tom Vangel Jr
| The Information: |
Source: Lambda, which rents access to AI chips and is backed by Nvidia, is in talks to raise $350M+ led by Mubadala Capital, ahead of an IPO planned for H2 2026 — Lambda, an upstart cloud provider that rents out Nvidia AI chips—and whose biggest customer was recently Nvidia itself …
More: DatacenterDynamics
| Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg: |
Artemis Analytics: total stablecoin transaction volumes rose 72% YoY to a record $33T in 2025, led by Circle's USDC at $18.3T and Tether's USDT at $13.3T — Stablecoin transactions reached unprecedented heights last year, buoyed by favorable policy in the US under pro-crypto President Donald Trump.
More: BeInCrypto, CryptoNinjas, Bitcoin Insider, Coinspeaker, Cryptonews, The Crypto Times, Artemis, and crypto.news
X: @aservais1, @mdudas, and @wublockchain
| 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 Land: |
More: Microsoft Advertising, PayPal Newsroom, Digital Trends, eWeek, Search Engine Roundtable, Engadget, GeekWire, Axios, Microsoft, Motley Fool, Digit, TestingCatalog, Windows Central, Gizmodo, Thurrott, The Decoder, and The Information
X: @kross_roads, @protonvpn, @kimmonismus, @paypal, @acce, and @msftnews
LinkedIn: Ricky Ranjan, Carolina Puerto, and Jeff Pomeroy
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