Techmeme
January 19, 2026, 7:00 AM

Top News

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.
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.
George Hammond / Financial Times:
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
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
Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg:
Bitcoin fell 3.6% to under $92K, ether fell ~5%, and solana fell 8.6%, wiping ~$100B from crypto's total value, after Trump proposed new 10% European tariffs  —  Cryptocurrencies fell sharply as risk assets slipped and haven demand strengthened after US President Donald Trump proposed new levies on eight European countries.
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,” …

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
The central nervous system of your business  —  Used by 80% of Fortune 100 companies, Airtable combines AI with the scale of an infinitely flexible, no-code system.  With all your data in one place, it's like mission control for your company.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Introducing PageSense 3.0 - Agency Edition  —  Experimentation is no longer limited to a single team.  For agencies, it's a multi-client discipline, a performance driver, and a growth engine all at once.Over the years …
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

The Upstarts Podcast:
Flexport's Ryan Petersen: tech's trade expert on solving tariff chaos with AI agents & winning again
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
Worst Tech Ever Invented
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Great Chat:
Will empathy make a comeback?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Big Technology Podcast:
Pentagon Insider: What's Next For Anthropic and The Department of War — With Michael Horowitz
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 World's Cup Is Coming to Trump's America, with Roger Bennett
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
His Excellency Khaldoon Al Mubarak: Investing in an AI-Driven World
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:00 AM ET, January 19, 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

Earlier Picks

Jeremy Kahn / Fortune:
Iain Martin / Forbes:
Axios:
Caroline Haskins / Wired: