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January 19, 2026, 6:30 AM
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memeorandum
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| George Hammond / Financial Times: |
Sources: Sequoia is planning a big investment in Anthropic, joining a round led by GIC and Coatue, which are investing $1.5B each; Anthropic aims to raise $25B+ — Silicon Valley investor to write first cheque for AI start-up after recent leadership overhaul| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Similarweb: Threads had 141.5M DAUs on iOS and Android as of January 7, driven by Instagram promotions, while X had 125M DAUs; X continues to lead on the web — A report from market intelligence firm Similarweb suggests that Meta's Threads is now seeing more daily usage than Elon Musk's X on mobile devices.
More: Forbes, Digit, Gizmodo, PYMNTS.com, Analytics Insight, and Ukrainian National News
X: @theandreboso, @wongmjane, @gmiller, @jeremiahdjohns, @the_ai_investor, @clairlemon, @briannawu, @theandreboso, @aziz0nomics, @aziz0nomics, @boredelonmusk, and @jeremiahdjohns. Bluesky: @carnage4life
Threads: @dikaiosvne, @thespacemechanic, @calbucci, and @tomgara
| Bradley Olson / Wall Street Journal: |
Similarweb: Claude's web audience more than doubled in December 2025 compared with December 2024, as many coders spent their holiday breaks on a “Claude bender” — Developers and hobbyists are comparing the viral moment for Anthropic's Claude Code to the launch of generative AI| Sarah Friar / OpenAI: |
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar says the company's compute grew from 0.2 GW in 2023 to ~1.9 GW in 2025 and annualized revenue grew from $2B in 2023 to $20B+ in 2025 — We launched ChatGPT as a research preview to understand what would happen if we put frontier intelligence directly in people's hands.
More: Benzinga, CTech, Neowin, Sadagopan's weblog …, and Analytics India Magazine
X: @signulll, @chatgpt21, @benitoz, @zephyr_z9, @vraserx, @signulll, @andrewcurran_, @the_ai_investor, @bearlyai, and @dr_gingerballs. LinkedIn: Sarah Friar
Forums: r/OpenAI and r/singularity
| Palmer Luckey / @palmerluckey: |
Meta's VR layoffs may help the industry long term, as most affected roles focused on first-party content and games that competed with the broader ecosystem — I have an opinion on the Meta layoffs that is contrary with most of the VR industry and much of the media, but strongly held. This is not a disaster. They still employ the largest team working on VR by about an order of magnitude. Nobody else is even close. The “Meta is
More: Futurism, Business Insider, The Game Business, and GameSpot
| Jack Dunn / Variety: |
On Joe Rogan's JRE, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck discuss Hollywood and AI; Damon says Netflix wants movies to restate the plot because viewers are on their phones — Matt Damon and Ben Affleck recently appeared on the “Joe Rogan Experience” to promote their new Netflix film “The Rip,” …
More: International Business Times, Business Insider, Deadline, WCSH, Screen Rant, Just Jared, The Independent, PowerfulJRE on YouTube, The A.V. Club, primetimer.com, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, Benzinga, The Week, Daily Mail, Whiskey Riff, World of Reel, RADAR, Yahoo Finance, Dexerto, and Fox News
X: @jtfoz, @clairlemon, @zymazza, @trungtphan, @pourfairelevide, @forrestpknight, @xqc, @dead_baseball, @barondestructo, @thecinesthetic, @tom_lsoo, @robkhenderson, @jackposobiec, @freightalley, @blackmajikman90, @bearlyai, @dead_baseball, @lynaldencontact, @hdmoviesource, @lookatmymeat1, @danielrpk, @colin_gladman, @groditid, @khuze_elikhulu, @dead_baseball, @mattzeitlin, @ross__hendricks, @grummz, @lthomasnews, @ctachio83984, and @andthatsbb. Threads: @carnage4life. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to
| The Information: |
Sources: after five Thinking Machines staff left, investors are rattled, potentially impacting fundraising; two researchers quit via Slack during an all-hands — The timing couldn't have been more awkward for Thinking Machines Lab. — On Wednesday, during an all-hands meeting at the AI startup …
More: The Information and The Indian Express
| John Sakellariadis / Politico: |
Sources: political appointees at the US CISA blocked Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala's attempt to oust the agency's Chief Information Officer Robert Costello — The personnel spat began late last Thursday afternoon after Costello was given a so-called management-directed reassignment …
Bluesky: @laurenmeidasa
| Maggie Eastland / Bloomberg: |
Chinese media: phone makers Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Transsion trimmed their 2026 shipment targets, with Oppo cutting up to 20%, due to the memory chip shortage — Nvidia Corp. supplier Micron Technology Inc. said an ongoing memory chip shortage has accelerated over the past quarter …
More: Barron's Online, Tech in Asia, and DigiTimes
| Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica: |
The memory shortage that is spiking RAM prices is now expanding to the broader PC market, driving price hikes for GPUs, high-capacity SSDs, and hard drives — GPU makers may prioritize more profitable models; large SSDs are harder to find. … Standalone, direct-to-consumer RAM kits … | Wall Street Journal: |
A look at the business and geopolitical considerations behind TSMC's international expansion, as Taiwan commits to spend $250B+ in the US in a trade deal — TSMC has for decades provided a ‘Silicon Shield’ to its namesake island. Now it sees both business and geopolitical reasons for going big in the U.S.
More: The Nation, DigiTimes, NewsMax.com, CNBC, Taiwan News, Focus Taiwan, and Taipei Times
| Counterpoint Research: |
Chinese smartphone shipments fell 1.6% YoY in Q4 2025 and 0.6% YoY for 2025 due to weak demand, rising prices, and memory shortages; iPhone shipments rose 28% — Type: — Insight — Team Counterpoint — Counterpoint research is a young and fast growing research firm covering analysis of the tech industry.
More: Moneycontrol, The Economic Times, and DigiTimes
| Bloomberg: |
Shenzhen-based UBTech signs deals to supply its Walker S2 humanoid robots to Airbus and Texas Instruments, and says it aims to produce 10,000+ units in 2026 — UBTech Robotics Corp. shares jumped after the China-based humanoid maker received an order from Airbus SE, bolstering the outlook … | New York Times: |
Inside the 2026 National Retail Federation conference in New York City, where integrating AI into retail businesses was the overarching theme on the expo floor — Stores of all kinds are using artificial intelligence to sell everything from luxury handbags to hay for horses.
More: The Economic Times. LinkedIn: Thomas Ross, Mathias Cohen, and Kim Bhasin. Bluesky: @janerosenzweig
Forums: r/technology and Slashdot
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