Techmeme
January 13, 2026, 2:05 PM

Top News

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Meta confirms it is laying off Reality Labs staff and will “reinvest the savings” in wearables; CTO Andrew Bosworth says 1,000+ staff will be notified Tuesday  —  Meta Platforms Inc. is beginning to cut more than 1,000 jobs from the company's Reality Labs division …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Microsoft changes its data center approach, pledging to pay its own power costs, reject tax breaks, and replenish more water than it uses, amid local opposition  —  President Trump was right about Microsoft — but he only leaked part of the story.  —  Microsoft is changing its approach …
Business Insider:
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple unveils Apple Creator Studio, a “groundbreaking collection” of creative apps like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro for $13/month or $129/year  —  Apple has announced Apple Creator Studio, which it describes as a “groundbreaking collection of powerful creative apps designed …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
A look at Confer, an open-source AI assistant project from Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike that is designed to provide end-to-end encryption for AI chats  —  Moxie Marlinspike—the pseudonym of an engineer who set a new standard for private messaging with the creation of the Signal Messenger …
Mike Solana / Pirate Wires:
Decrypt:
The NYC token, launched by former New York City Mayor Eric Adams on January 12, saw its market cap drop from ~$600M to ~$110M, after USDC liquidity manipulation  —  On-chain data shows unexplained liquidity withdrawals as Eric Adam's NYC token's market cap continues to bleed.  —  In brief
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
The US FCC waives a rule that forced Verizon to unlock phones 60 days after they are activated, which could make it harder for people to switch from Verizon  —  The Federal Communications Commission is letting Verizon lock phones to its network for longer periods, eliminating a requirement …
Li Liu / Bloomberg:
Taiwan issues an arrest warrant for OnePlus CEO Pete Lau for allegedly illegally hiring 70+ Taiwanese engineers, as it tries to stop China from raiding workers  —  Prosecutors in Taiwan issued an arrest warrant for the chief executive officer of the Chinese smartphone company OnePlus …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google makes improvements to Veo 3.1's Ingredients to Video feature to make videos “more expressive”, and adds native vertical video generation and 4K upscaling  —  Videos should now be more consistent with the images they're based on, including those in portrait orientations.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Apple and Google say Apple Foundation Models based on Gemini will help power not only a more personalized Siri, but also “future Apple Intelligence features”  —  Google today announced that its AI platform Gemini will help power not only a more personalized version of Siri, but a range of future Apple Intelligence features.
Sabrina Ortiz / ZDNET:
Salesforce makes Slack's new AI-powered Slackbot generally available, helping users answer workflow questions, draft documents, schedule meetings, and more  —  ZDNET's key takeaways Salesforce made Slackbot generally available.Slackbot is an AI agent for work built in Slack.Business …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Mercedes pauses the rollout of Drive Pilot, a Level 3 “eyes off” driving feature available in Europe and the US, citing low demand and high production costs  —  The automaker is instead forging ahead with its new point-to-point Level 2 system that rivals Tesla's Full Self-Driving.
Bloomberg:
The US Senate passes the Defiance Act that would allow victims to sue over nonconsensual, sexually explicit AI-generated images, amid furor over Grok images  —  The US Senate unanimously passed legislation Tuesday that would allow victims to sue over nonconsensual, sexually explicit AI-generated images …
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Flip, which offers an Alexa-like voice AI experience for businesses, raised a $20M Series A, bringing its total funding to $31M  —  Flip, a startup that claims to offer an Amazon Alexa-like voice AI experience for businesses, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
More: Unite.AI and PCWorld
Dan Primack / Axios:
Austin-based webAI, which is building AI models that run locally on devices, raised “high double-digit” millions in a Series A at a $2.5B pre-money valuation  —  WebAI, an Austin, Texas-based sovereign AI platform, raised “high double-digit” millions of dollars at a $2.5 billion pre-money valuation, it tells Axios.

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