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January 20, 2026, 6:55 AM
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| Anthropic: |
Anthropic details the “Assistant Axis”, a pattern of neural activity in language models that governs their default identity and helpful behavior — Read the full paper — When you talk to a large language model, you can think of yourself as talking to a character.
More: eWeek, Implicator.ai, Matt Mullenweg, and arXiv.org
X: @enscion25, @anthropicai, @anthropicai, @gallabytes, @jack_w_lindsey, @anthropicai, @anthropicai, @tessera_antra, @anthropicai, @anthropicai, @peterwildeford, @anthropicai, and @thebasepoint
Bluesky: @emollick and @tachikoma.elsewhereunbound …
Forums: Hacker News, r/claudexplorers, and r/singularity
| John Liu / Bloomberg: |
Sources: China broadens its probe into Temu owner PDD, dispatching 100+ investigators to its Shanghai HQ, after staff exchanged physical blows with regulators — China has broadened a probe into PDD Holdings Inc. after its employees exchanged blows with regulators, dispatching over 100 investigators …
More: Tech in Asia
| Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg: |
xAI faces a growing outcry from global regulators over Grok's generation of nonconsensual explicit photos, but has faced little regulatory action in the US — Despite global uproar over the generation of non-consensual explicit photos, Elon Musk has continued to downplay the issue.| Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: |
Sony and TCL sign a non-binding agreement to spin off Sony's TV and home audio hardware business into a new joint venture, aiming to finalize the deal by March — The two companies are planning to form a new joint venture that will carry the ‘Sony’ and ‘Bravia’ branding.| Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: |
PE firm Everstone combines India's Wingify, which helps A/B test sites, and France's AB Tasty, which improves e-commerce UX; Everstone bought Wingify for $200M — Private equity firm Everstone Capital is bringing together India's Wingify — a company that helps businesses test different versions …
More: Entrackr, The Economic Times, Tech in Asia, Moneycontrol, and Livemint
| Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg: |
French accounting software startup Pennylane raised $204M led by TCV, a source says at a ~$4.25B valuation, with participation from Blackstone, DST, and others — Pennylane, a French startup that sells accounting software, has raised €175 million ($204 million) in a funding round led by growth equity investor TCV.
More: Sifted, Tech.eu, Tech in Asia, and EU-Startups
| Newley Purnell / Bloomberg: |
Meta VP of Public Policy Simon Milner, the company's most senior Asia-Pacific policy executive, plans to leave after 14 years to retire from full-time work — Meta Platforms Inc. is losing its most senior public policy executive in the Asia-Pacific at a time when the company faces several … | Jiahui Huang / Wall Street Journal: |
Sources: Baidu's Ernie Assistant passes 200M MAUs, as competition intensifies among Chinese tech giants in AI; Ernie is linked to apps like JD.com and Meituan — Ernie Assistant is integrated into its flagship Baidu search-engine app and on personal computers| Alex Wickham / Bloomberg: |
Sources: UK and Chinese security officials set up a forum to discuss cyberattacks after hacking accusations, the first of its kind, to help prevent escalation — British and Chinese security officials established a forum to discuss cyberattacks following a spate of hacking accusations that soured relations between the two countries.
X: @alexwickham
| Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: |
A look at South Korea's Independent AI Foundation Model competition, which aims to find the best homegrown AI models, in a bid to compete with the US and China — The state-backed survival contest aims to find the best indigenous AI models. — Late last year, more than a thousand people converged … | Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: |
Cursor's recent experiment involved running hundreds of AI agents for nearly a week to build a web browser, writing 1M+ lines of code across 1,000 files — Scaling long-running autonomous coding. Wilson Lin at Cursor has been doing some experiments to see how far you can push a large fleet of “autonomous” coding agents:
More: Cursor and Digit
| Nilay Patel / The Verge: |
Q&A with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan on the use of AI in game development, the gaming community's pushback against AI, partnering with Grok, and more — We're back to start the year off with a very special live interview with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, which we taped in front of a terrific audience … | Anjali Jain / Inc42: |
Pune-based supply chain robotics startup Unbox Robotics raised a $28M Series B in a mix of primary and secondary capital, after raising $15M in earlier rounds — Deeptech startup Unbox Robotics has raised $28 Mn (about INR 243 Cr) in its Series B round in a mix of primary and secondary capital.
More: eWeek, Entrackr, The Economic Times, DealStreetAsia, and VCCircle
| Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: |
Sources: ByteDance boosts its cloud via more sales hires and lower prices; IDC: ByteDance had 13% of China's AI cloud market in H1 2025, behind Alibaba's 23% — Deep discounts, vast data and bespoke AI agents fuel new challenge in China's multibillion-dollar enterprise market
More: Benzinga
Sponsor Posts
Okara:
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IDrive:
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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
Invest Like the Best:
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Lenny's Podcast:
The non-technical PM's guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta)
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Big Technology Podcast:
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Hard Fork:
Jonathan Haidt Strikes Again + What You Vibecoded + An Update on the Forkiverse
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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Access:
Building an autonomous car utopia with Rivian's RJ Scaringe
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Special Edition: Key findings from the Microsoft AI Diffusion Report
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.
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