Techmeme
January 11, 2026, 4:15 PM

Top News

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
Google is introducing new personalized ads in AI mode, powered by Gemini, which allow advertisers to offer exclusives for users preparing to buy a product  —  Tech giant moves to gain an edge in race to monetise popular AI tools  —  Google is introducing new personalised advertising …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Google unveils the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard that lets AI agents work across different parts of the customer's buying process  —  Google today announced a new open standard, called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for AI agent-based shopping, at the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference.
Fransiska Nangoy / Reuters:
Terrence O'Brien / The Verge:
Instagram says there was no breach and it fixed an issue that let an external party send password reset emails, after reports that 17.5M users' data was exposed  —  The company claims there was no breach of its systems. … If you're one of the many, many people who received a password reset email …
SemiAnalysis:
A detailed look at the Apple-TSMC relationship: Apple's annual spend at TSMC rose 12x, from $2B in 2014 to $24B in 2025, and once made up 25% of TSMC's revenue  —  Wafer Demand Model, Node Economics, and the shifting power dynamics as AI reshapes the foundry landscape
Reuters:
Documents and sources: India proposes security rules that would force smartphone makers to share source code, prompting quiet pushback from Apple and Samsung  —  India proposes requiring smartphone makers to share source code with the government and make several software changes as part …
Toby Nangle / Financial Times:
Analysis: the AI investment boom represents ~1% of US GDP, roughly half the GDP share during the '90s dot-com boom and comparable to the mid-2010s US shale boom  —  US economist Jason Furman caused a bit of a kerfuffle in 2025 when he estimated that investment in information processing equipment & software …
Anil Dash:
A look at the history and rise of Markdown, which has been adopted across the tech industry in the decades since its quiet launch in 2004 by John Gruber  —  Nearly every bit of the high-tech world, from the most cutting-edge AI systems at the biggest companies, to the casual scraps …
Jaewon Kang / Bloomberg:
Walmart partners with Google to offer AI-enhanced shopping, allowing users to purchase Walmart and Sam's Club items directly on Gemini  —  Walmart Inc. is partnering with Alphabet Inc. to offer AI-enhanced shopping on Google's Gemini platform — part of the retailer's race to apply the technology across its operations.
Andrew Martin / Bloomberg:
Tel Aviv-based Torq, which operates an autonomous AI-powered security operations platform, raised $140M led by Merlin Ventures at a $1.2B valuation  —  The Israeli cybersecurity startup Torq is planning to announce Sunday that it has closed a $140 million funding round, raising its valuation to $1.2 billion.
More: Reuters and Pulse 2.0

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Beyond productivity: Why live captions belong in every meeting  —  You join a meeting, someone starts talking, and within a minute, there are names, numbers, ideas, and unfamiliar terms flying around.  You could ask them to repeat it.
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

Sources:
Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Meta's Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites
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:
Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
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.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:15 PM ET, January 11, 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.

Upcoming Tech Events

Earlier Picks

Vicky Ge Huang / Wall Street Journal: