Techmeme: Source: at least two more Thinking Machines employees are set to join OpenAI soon; some AI researchers say they are exhausted by the industry's constant drama (Wired)

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January 16, 2026, 9:45 AM

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Wired:

Source: at least two more Thinking Machines employees are set to join OpenAI soon; some AI researchers say they are exhausted by the industry's constant drama — OpenAI is planning to bring over more researchers from Thinking Machines Lab after nabbing two cofounders, a source familiar with the situation says.

More: The Information, David Shapiro's Substack, eWeek, TechCrunch, The Rundown AI, Benzinga, Neowin, Spyglass, The Decoder, Sherwood News, Wired, Digit, and Bloomberg

X: @jonchu, @scobleizer, @ns123abc, @alexrkonrad, @kimmonismus, @signulll, and @fidjissimo

Alex Heath / Sources:

Sources: Thinking Machines lacks a clear product or business strategy and has been struggling over the past couple of months to raise a new round of financing — More Thinking Machines employees are in talks to join OpenAI. Also: Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe on ACCESS and the Sources Live @ Davos lineup.

More: Implicator.ai, The Information, and Analytics India Magazine

X: @miramurati and @kyliebytes. LinkedIn: Alex Heath

Bluesky: @prietschka, @edzitron.com, and @michaeli

Sean Hollister / The Verge:

Meta will discontinue Workrooms, its VR space for workers, on February 16; Quest headsets and Horizon services will not be sold to businesses as of February 20 — Meta continues to trickle out the bad news for VR. … Today, the company announced it's shutting that space down …

More: Engadget, Meta, Road to VR, PCMag, Android Headlines, Tech in Asia, and GeekWire

X: @yoda, @kojirovr, and @playtest_vr. Bluesky: @flglchicago. Mastodon: @rysiek@mstdn.social. Forums: r/OculusQuest

Kif Leswing / CNBC:

The US says Taiwanese companies will invest $250B+ in chip production in the US as part of a trade deal, with Taiwanese government guaranteeing $250B in credit — The U.S. and Taiwan have reached a trade agreement to build chips and chip factories on American soil, the Department of Commerce announced on Thursday.

Darren Loucaides / Financial Times:

A profile of Wikipedia as it faces challenges, including attacks from Elon Musk and the far right, reduced traffic due to AI, and legal challenges in India — As the website turns 25, it faces myriad challenges from regulators, AI, the far right and Elon Musk

More: ZDNET, PCMag, Chicago Tribune, Futurism, The Indian Express, Salon, San Francisco Chronicle, and ABC. Bluesky: @sjvn

Emma Roth / The Verge:

Wikimedia celebrates Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, marking its growth from 100 pages to 65M+ articles with nearly 15B monthly views, and releases a docuseries

More: The Register, Anil Dash, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Foundation, Shelly Palmer, Wikipedia, Forbes, Diff, The Independent, Observer, Wired, 9to5Mac, Freedom of the Press …, and Wikipedia

X: @lsanger, @lsanger, @amritat, @25yearsagolive, and @trevortimm. LinkedIn: Anil Dash

Bluesky: @chrisoregan, @celebrityhottub, @depthsofwikipedia, @newsguy, @wikimediafoundation.org, and @wikimediafoundation.org. Mastodon: @joebeone@techpolicy.social

Emma Roth / The Verge:

The Wikimedia Foundation says Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral joined Wikimedia Enterprise to get “tuned” API access; Google is already a member

More: Ars Technica, Associated Press, TechCrunch, Wikimedia Enterprise, MediaNama, Reuters, CNBC, Social Media Today, The A.V. Club, Sherwood News, The Decoder, Engadget, Constellation Research, and Blockonomi

LinkedIn: Arul George Scaria and Lane Becker

Bluesky: @tjheffernan, @emilymbender, @adzebill, @craiggrannell, and @levikornelsen. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to

Forums: r/BetterOffline, r/news, r/technology, r/wikipedia, and Slashdot

Sam Gutelle / Tubefilter:

YouTube revises policy to allow full monetization of nongraphic videos on sensitive issues including abortion, self-harm, suicide, and domestic and sexual abuse — YouTube's guidelines for ad-friendly content are changing, and creators who cover controversial topics are in line for increased revenue.

More: MediaNama

See also Mediagazer

Davis Giangiulio / CNBC:

Cloudflare acquires AI data marketplace Human Native for an undisclosed sum, aiming to create a new system where AI developers pay creators for training content — Cloudflare is acquiring artificial intelligence data marketplace Human Native, the company said Thursday …

More: WebProNews, Cloudflare, Analytics India Magazine, Tech in Asia, Advanced Television, BMI, SiliconANGLE, Pulse 2.0, Crypto Briefing, and FinSMEs

Reuters:

Italy's competition regulator opens two investigations into Microsoft's Activision Blizzard over sales practices it claims were “misleading and aggressive” — Italy's competition watchdog on Friday announced investigations into Microsoft's (MSFT.O) Activision Blizzard unit over allegedly …

More: Engadget, Italian Competition Authority, and Wall Street Journal

Supantha Mukherjee / Reuters:

TikTok plans to roll out a new age detection system, which analyzes profile information to predict whether a user is under 13, across Europe in the coming weeks — TikTok will start rolling out new age-detection technology across Europe in the coming weeks, it told Reuters on Friday …

More: Engadget, Irish Examiner, and Telecompaper. Bluesky: @westernbirding.com

Marco Chiappetta / Forbes:

SiFive will integrate Nvidia's NVLink Fusion infrastructure with its RISC-V processor IP platforms, allowing SiFive silicon to communicate with Nvidia GPUs — SiFive To Integrate Nvidia NVLink Fusion — In a move that could have major implications for future AI datacenters, SiFive …

More: SiFive, The Register, More Than Moore, Futurum, and ServeTheHome

Peter Senzamici / New York Post:

Ashley St. Clair, mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sues xAI, alleging Grok refused to stop making sexualized deepfakes of her, amid custody disputes — Elon Musk baby mama Ashley St. Clair is suing his AI platform, Grok, for refusing to stop making sexually explicit deepfake images of her …

More: Breitbart, The Verge, Business Insider, The Indian Express, Forbes, Us Weekly, The Economic Times, The Wrap, Digit, The Hans India, Wall Street Journal, NBC News, CNN, The Daily Caller, Vanity Fair, HuffPost, Bloomberg, CBS News, and Page Six

Karissa Bell / Engadget:

X updates Grok to prevent the “editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis” and geoblocks it for all users “where it's illegal”

More: Ars Technica, 9to5Mac, RTÉ, The Verge, BBC, Washington Post, Digiday, Cyber Daily, New York Times, X, The American Bazaar, MobileSyrup, The Shortcut, campaignlive.com, The Hill, The Record, The Mac Observer, Tech Times, Phandroid, Reuters, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Mashable, France 24, and Decrypt

X: @safety, @yacinemtb, @theobertram, @adrianweckler, @helios_movement, @lyeuhm, @digiphile, @loudmouthjulia, @mweinbach, and @jdpoc. LinkedIn: Mark James

Bluesky: @druce.ai, @ashleybelanger, @davidho, @campuscodi.risky.biz, @parismarx.com, and @tatumhunter. Mastodon: @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social. Forums: r/musked

Bloomberg:

Sources: Trump and several state governors agree to direct grid operator PJM to hold an auction for tech companies to fund new power plants due to AI demand — President Donald Trump and the governors of several US Northeastern states agreed to push for an emergency wholesale electricity auction …

More: DatacenterDynamics, Axios, New York Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Heatmap News, ZeroHedge News, Benzinga, BeInCrypto, Financial Times, PYMNTS.com, Reuters, and The Boston Globe

LinkedIn: Almas Kaptagayev and Naureen S. Malik. Bluesky: @manuelsalgado. Mastodon: @waltbaldwin@mastodon.energy. Forums: r/Economics

CNBC:

Replit launches Mobile Apps on Replit, which enables vibe-coding of iOS apps with integrated Stripe monetization — AI coding startup Replit is now letting users create and publish mobile apps for Apple devices using only natural language prompts, the latest evolution in so-called vibe-coding.

More: Android Police, Moneycontrol, eWeek, TechCentral.ie, Digital Trends, and Implicator.ai

X: @dharmesh, @amasad, and @replit. LinkedIn: Mukund Mohan

Bloomberg:

Sources: Replit is in advanced discussions to raise about $400M in a new round of funding that would roughly triple its valuation to $9B

More: Replit Blog, Ainvest, Tech in Asia, and Tech Funding News. Bluesky: @garvanwalshe.org

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Chinese AI companies seek to rent compute in Southeast Asia and the Middle East for Nvidia Rubin access, as Zhipu and Alibaba warn of a widening US gap — Companies in China scrap for access to Nvidia's latest Rubin lineup while better-funded U.S. competitors are first in line

More: Asia Times

Reuters:

Source: Italian police searched the offices of the country's data protection agency, one of EU's most proactive regulators, as part of a corruption probe — Italian finance police searched the headquarters of the country's data protection agency on Thursday as part of an investigation …

Forums: Hacker News and Slashdot

Dina Bass / Bloomberg:

ClickHouse, a Snowflake challenger that offers an OLAP database management system, raised $400M led by Dragoneer at a $15B valuation, up from $6.35B in May 2025 — Dragoneer is leading a $400 million funding round for the startup. — Database technology startup ClickHouse Inc …

More: Towards Data Science

Hayden Field / The Verge:

Andrea Vallone, who left OpenAI in November as the head of its safety research team, joins Anthropic's alignment team — Andrea Vallone has joined Anthropic's alignment team. … One of the most controversial issues in the AI industry over the past year was what to do when a user displays signs …

More: The Decoder, Business Insider, and TechCrunch

X: @amandaaskell. Bluesky: @andytseng and @timkellogg.me. Forums: r/claudexplorers

Suzanne Smalley / The Record:

Google agrees to pay $8.25M to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging its AdMob SDK illegally collected data from children under age 13 — Google has agreed to pay $8.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit centered on claims that it habitually and illegally collected data from devices belonging to children under age 13.

More: Expel. X: @wendyndavis

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From Mediagazer

Mallory Wilson / The Hill:

A US watchdog group files a bar complaint against White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia, requesting a probe into the alleged unauthorized practice of law

Bloomberg:

A judge extends an earlier order to ban taxpayer-funded pro-Trump TV ads until Nov. 8, past Election Day; she'll hold a hearing on a more permanent order Nov. 4

Danny Funt / Columbia Journalism Review:

Q&A with 24-year veteran ESPN producer Nicole Noren, who quit over its gambling deals; her grandfather, father, and brother wrestled with gambling addictions

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Nicole Sperling / New York Times:

Q&A with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos about the WBD bid, Trump's involvement in the deal, maintaining a 45-day theatrical window for WBD releases, and more

More: Engadget, The Hollywood Reporter, and Screen Rant. Forums: r/boxoffice

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The Keyword:

Google releases TranslateGemma, a suite of Gemma 3-based open translation models available in 4B-, 12B-, and 27B-parameter sizes, with support for 55 languages

More: The Economic Times, Digit, Business Standard, Analytics India Magazine, MarkTechPost, Neowin, The Decoder, and Hugging Face

X: @_philschmid, @googleaidevs, @osanseviero, and @googledeepmind

André Beganski / Decrypt:

X revises its developer API policies to “no longer allow apps that reward users for posting on X (aka 'infofi')”, amid a backlash about increasing AI slop on X

Tim Culpan / Culpium:

Sources: Apple now needs to fight for TSMC production capacity amid the AI boom; Nvidia was likely TSMC's top customer in at least one or two quarters in 2025

More: AppleInsider, PC Gamer, Blockonomi, WebProNews, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, 9to5Mac, iPhone in Canada, and Reuters

X: @vadimyuryev, @9to5mac, @tculpan, and @tculpan. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to

Forums: Hacker News, r/intelstock, r/NVDA_Stock, and Slashdot

Bloomberg:

OpenAI says it issued a request for proposals to US-based hardware manufacturers as it seeks to push into consumer devices, robotics, and cloud data centers

More: WinBuzzer, PYMNTS.com, Techstrong IT, The Decoder, and Sherwood News. Bluesky: @edzitron.com

CNBC:

Amazon files an objection to Saks Global's bankruptcy financing plan, and says its $475M investment in the department store is now effectively “worthless”

More: Newsweek, Benzinga, The American Bazaar, New York Post, WebProNews, UPI, Business Insider, Reuters, PYMNTS.com, Crypto Briefing, Bloomberg, and WWD

Forums: r/business and Slashdot

Ike Swetlitz / Bloomberg:

Brain-computer interface startup Merge Labs, which Sam Altman co-founded, raised a $252M seed from OpenAI, Bain Capital, Gabe Newell, and others

More: TechCrunch, Tom's Hardware, OpenAI, Tech Funding News, Livemint, The Register, Core Memory, Wired, Sourcery, and The Decoder

X: @merge, @sumnerln, @mikhailshapiro, @convergent_fros, @kyrannio, and @openainewsroom. LinkedIn: Tom McCann

Financial Times:

Anthropic researchers say rich countries' higher AI adoption risks deepening economic disparities and widening living standard gaps, assuming productivity gains

More: Anthropic, Business Standard, The Decoder, Anthropic, WebProNews, Coverager, and Axios

X: @azeem. LinkedIn: Aliki Foinikopoulou, Sarah Heck, Andrea Trocino, and Ako Sabir. Bluesky: @brianpenny

Adamya Sharma / Android Authority:

OpenAI quietly rolls out ChatGPT Translate, a standalone website that supports plain text translations across 50+ languages and features prompt customization