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January 16, 2026, 12:35 PM
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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:
Wikimedia celebrates Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, marking its growth from 100 pages to 65M+ articles with nearly 15B monthly views, and releases a docuseries
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
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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 lets creators and small-business owners vibe code Android and iOS apps and monetize them via a Stripe integration  —  AI coding startup Replit is now letting users create and publish mobile apps for Apple devices using only natural language prompts …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:35 PM ET, January 16, 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.

From Mediagazer

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
Sources: the BBC plans to announce a major deal to make bespoke shows for YouTube for the first time, which will later be aired on the BBC iPlayer and Sounds

Jeremy Barr / The Guardian:
Some CBS News staffers expressed deep skepticism about a story that used unnamed sources to report that the ICE officer who shot a woman had “internal bleeding”

Mike Fleming Jr / Deadline:
Q&A with Kathleen Kennedy about the highs and lows of her 14 years at Lucasfilm, going back to producing, the future of Star Wars, exploring AI tools, and more

More News

Alex Heath / Sources:
Unsealed docs from Elon Musk's OpenAI lawsuit, set for a jury trial on April 27: Sutskever's concerns about treating open-source AI as a “side show”, and more
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
Q&A with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos about the $83B WBD bid, Trump's involvement in the deal, maintaining a 45-day theatrical window for WBD releases, and more
New York Times:
Australia's eSafety Commissioner reports social media platforms “removed access” to ~4.7M accounts under its ban for under-16s, which took effect in December
Peter Senzamici / New York Post:
Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sues xAI, alleging Grok refused to stop making sexualized deepfakes of her, amid custody disputes
Boone Ashworth / Wired:
As Meta cuts employees from its Supernatural VR fitness service and shifts resources away, users mourn the community formed around the platform and its coaches

Earlier Picks

Kif Leswing / CNBC:
The US says that Taiwanese companies will invest $250B+ in chip production capacity in the US as part of a trade deal, and Taiwan will guarantee $250B in credit
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
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
Financial Times:
Anthropic researchers say rich countries' higher AI adoption risks deepening economic disparities and widening living standard gaps, assuming productivity gains
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
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