Techmeme
January 16, 2026, 12:05 PM

Top News

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.
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.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Meta says it will discontinue Workrooms, its VR space for workers, on February 16, and stop selling Quests and Horizon services to businesses from February 20  —  Meta continues to trickle out the bad news for VR. … Today, the company announced it's shutting that space down …
Davis Giangiulio / CNBC:
Cloudflare acquires AI data marketplace Human Native for an undisclosed sum, to help it develop a system where AI developers pay creators for training content  —  Cloudflare is acquiring artificial intelligence data marketplace Human Native, the company said Thursday, as it expands its push …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Trump and Northeastern state governors agree to push grid operator PJM to hold an auction for tech companies to fund new power plants, amid the AI boom  —  President Donald Trump and the governors of several US Northeastern states agreed to push for an emergency wholesale electricity auction …
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
DoorDash Chief Revenue Officer Lee Brown is departing the delivery app company after less than six months; long-term VP Shanna Prevé will succeed Brown as CRO  —  DoorDash Inc. Chief Revenue Officer Lee Brown is departing the delivery app company after less than six months to pursue a new opportunity.
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
Tamara Djurickovic / Tech.eu:
Istanbul-based TaleMonster Games, the studio behind the puzzle game Match Valley, raised a $30M Series A led by Arcadia Gaming Partners and a16z  —  The mobile game studio behind the innovative puzzle title Match Valley will use the new investment to scale its category-creating casual game.
More: GamesBeat
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.

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More News

Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
New York Times:
Peter Senzamici / New York Post:
Boone Ashworth / Wired:

Earlier Picks

Kif Leswing / CNBC:
André Beganski / Decrypt:
Ike Swetlitz / Bloomberg:
Financial Times:
Adamya Sharma / Android Authority: