Techmeme
January 14, 2026, 10:25 AM

Top News

Reuters:
Sources: Chinese officials told customs agents this week that Nvidia H200s are barred from China and told local tech companies not to buy them unless necessary  —  Chinese customs authorities told customs agents this week that Nvidia's (NVDA.O) H200 artificial intelligence chips are not permitted …
Bloomberg:
Reuters:
Danny Lee / Bloomberg:
Elon Musk says that Tesla will stop selling FSD after February 14 and will offer it only as a monthly subscription; FSD costs $8,000 upfront or $99 per month  —  Tesla Inc. will stop selling the advanced driver-assistance system it calls Full Self-Driving, and instead switch to an entirely monthly subscription service.
BBC:
The UK government drops plans for mandatory digital IDs to work in the country, marking a reversal from when the UK first announced the policy in September 2025  —  The government has dropped plans requiring workers to sign up to its digital ID scheme in order to prove their right to work in the UK.
Reuters:
Sources: Chinese authorities told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by ~12 US and Israeli companies due to national security concerns  —  Chinese authorities have told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by roughly a dozen firms from the U.S …
Maya Perez / WebProNews:
Bandcamp bans music and audio that is “generated wholly or in substantial part by AI”, hoping to build trust with fans that the music they find was human-made  —  Bandcamp has banned music substantially generated by AI to uphold human artistry and authenticity, amid rising concerns over AI flooding platforms like Spotify.
Luz Ding / Bloomberg:
Z.ai releases GLM-Image, an open-source multimodal AI model trained on Huawei chips that it says is China's first to be fully trained using domestic chips  —  Chinese AI startup Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC Ltd. released a new multimodal model that it says is the country's …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
As part of its Reality Labs cuts, Meta is closing three VR gaming studios and will stop developing new content and features for its VR fitness app Supernatural  —  Developers from Twisted Pixel Games and Sanzaru Games have posted about their studios being closed down.
The Information:
A source details how Apple's Gemini deal works: new Siri features will launch in spring and at WWDC, Apple can finetune Gemini, no Google branding, and more  —  In another AI win for Google lately, Apple announced on Monday that it will use Google's Gemini models to power …
Financial Times:
How smuggled Starlink receivers and customized software let some Iranians evade a near-total internet blackout as the regime brutally cracked down on protesters  —  Tehran went from ‘halal internet’ to near-total blackout but activists have smuggled in Starlink devices to get information out
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Airbnb hires Meta executive Ahmad Al-Dahle, who led generative AI and the Llama team after working at Apple, as its CTO, as it aims to integrate AI in its app  —  Airbnb Inc. has hired a former Meta Platforms Inc. executive as its new chief technology officer, as the short-term rental company …
Delphine Strauss / Financial Times:
More: IMF
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg:
Pittsburgh-based Skild AI, which makes robotics foundation models, raised a $1.4B Series C at a $14B valuation, up from $4.5B after raising $300M in June 2025  —  Skild AI Inc., a fast-rising startup that makes software to help robots learn to complete tasks, has secured about $1.4 billion …
More: FinSMEs
Hayden Field / The Verge:
Anthropic shakes up its C-suite: CPO Mike Krieger will become the co-lead of its Labs incubator, and head of product Ami Vora will take over Krieger's duties  —  Chief product officer Mike Krieger will change roles and join the “Labs” team. … Mike Krieger, the Instagram co-founder …
Google Research:
Google announces MedGemma 1.5 with improved medical imaging support, and MedASR for medical dictation, both available on Hugging Face and Vertex AI  —  Daniel Golden, Engineering Manager, and Fereshteh Mahvar, Software Engineer, Google Research  —  We are updating our open MedGemma model with improved medical imaging support.
Josh Noble / Financial Times:
An interview with IMG President Adam Kelly on streaming platforms' increasing share of sports media rights, live sports as an antidote to AI content, and more  —  As Netflix and Apple expand their sports ambitions, the head of IMG says media rights are entering a new phase driven by scarcity, retention and measurable returns
LinkedIn: Adam Kelly
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 …
Jiyoung Sohn / Wall Street Journal:
In South Korea's competition to develop an indigenous AI model, three of the five finalists used foreign open-source code, which they argue is practical  —  Korea's efforts show how hard it is to develop homegrown AI models and break a reliance on U.S. or Chinese tech giants

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