Techmeme
January 17, 2026, 4:30 PM

Top News

Daniel Kuhn / The Block:
ZachXBT: a crypto user lost $282M+ in BTC and LTC in a hardware wallet social engineering scam; XMR jumped as the attacker began converting the funds to Monero  —  Partner offers  —  Quick Take  — XMR hit an all-time high of $797.73 on Jan. 14, coinciding with a series …
Glenn Coin / Syracuse Post-Standard:
Maria Sherman / Associated Press:
Luminate 2025 report: the global music industry hit 5.1T streams, up 9.6% YoY and a single-year record; AI artist Xania Monet had 125M on-demand audio streams  —  The global music industry hit 5.1 trillion streams in 2025.  It's a new single-year record, up 9.6% from 2024, which held the previous record.
Robert Burnson / Bloomberg:
Filing: Elon Musk seeks $79B-$134B damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging OpenAI defrauded him by abandoning nonprofit roots and partnering with Microsoft  —  Elon Musk wants OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft to pay him damages in the range of $79 billion to $134 billion over his claims …
Financial Times:
OpenAI plans to test ads below ChatGPT replies for users of free and Go tiers in the US; source: OpenAI expects to make “low billions” from ads in 2026  —  $500bn start-up seeks ways to fund expansion and fend off competition from rivals Google and Anthropic
More: OpenAI, Ars Technica, CNBC, The Verge, Spyglass, Axios, Engadget, New York Times, Enterprise AI Trends, WebProNews, Digit, Search Engine Journal, Appleosophy, Tech in Asia, The American Bazaar, The Guardian, Neowin, The Indian Express, Communicate Online, Notebookcheck, 9to5Google, TestingCatalog, Deadline, BleepingComputer, Fortune, Bloomberg, San Francisco Chronicle, The Information, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Nairametrics, AdTechRadar, Birchtree, Tom's Guide, Fast Company, Variety, PC Gamer, Business Insider, PPC Land, KGW-TV, Forbes Middle East, Vogue, KTVZ-TV, Barron's Online, CBS News, PCMag, Reuters, The Decoder, MediaPost, Sherwood News, Capital Brief, Implicator.ai, Adweek, The Economic Times, Mobile Dev Memo, Search Engine Land, BBC, Türkiye Today, NewsMax.com, Axios, The Deep View, Barrett Media, and Wired
Elissa Welle / The Verge:
Dara Kerr / The Guardian:
The US EPA rules that xAI acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power its Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centers in the Memphis area  —  Win for Memphis activists who say ‘Colossus’ facilities add extra pollution to already overburdened communities
Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
Sources: leaders at Thinking Machines Lab confronted Barret Zoph over an alleged relationship with another employee, who is no longer at the lab, in summer 2025  —  Leaders at Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab confronted the startup's cofounder and former CTO, Barret Zoph …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Step into smarter meetings: Zoho Cliq Rooms is now available on Neat devices  —  The meeting landscape has completely transformed over the last few years, moving from conference rooms to people joining across locations and time zones.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Acquired:
Home Depot
Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Subscribe to Acquired.
Big Technology Podcast:
Special Report: Will AI Wipe Out Humanity? (And Who Profits)
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Sources:
Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Lenny's Podcast:
How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Invest Like the Best:
Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:30 PM ET, January 17, 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.

More News

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Reuters:
Ian Carlos Campbell / Engadget:

Earlier Picks

Julianna Bragg / Axios:
Lauren Feiner / The Verge: