Techmeme
January 19, 2026, 11:40 AM

Top News

Sarah Friar / OpenAI:
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar says compute grew from 0.2 GW in 2023 to 0.6 GW in 2024 to ~1.9 GW in 2025 and ARR grew from $2B in 2023 to $6B in 2024 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.
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 …
Financial Times:
Katherine Doherty / Bloomberg:
NYSE plans to use its tech that matches buyers and sellers, alongside blockchain networks, to facilitate real-time trading of tokenized securities in 2026  —  The New York Stock Exchange is building a venue using blockchain technology to allow for trading tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds around the clock.
Palmer Luckey / @palmerluckey:
Meta's VR layoffs may help the industry long term, as most of the ~1,500 roles worked 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
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,” …
Olivia Solon / Bloomberg:
UK Gambling Commission says Meta is turning a blind eye to illegal gambling site ads on Facebook and Instagram, calls its ad library a “window into criminality”  —  Meta Platforms Inc. is turning a blind eye to illegal gambling sites that advertise on Facebook and Instagram, according to the UK's Gambling Commission.

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More News

James Peckham / PCMag:

Earlier Picks

Bradley Olson / Wall Street Journal:
More: Telegraph and Anthropic
Bluesky: @andytseng and @markkamstra.comForums: Hacker News
George Hammond / Financial Times: