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January 21, 2026, 2:20 PM
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Benoit Berthelot / Bloomberg:
Ubisoft cancels six games and delays others amid a restructuring into five genre-specific “creative houses”; it expects net bookings of ~€1.5B for FY 2025-2026  —  Ubisoft Entertainment SA is canceling game projects, shutting down studios and cutting its guidance …
Beatrice Nolan / Fortune:
Anthropic overhauls Claude's “constitution” to enable the AI to generalize and apply broad principles rather than mechanically follow specific rules  —  Anthropic is overhauling a foundational document that shapes how its popular Claude AI model behaves.
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan publishes his annual letter, saying YouTube aims to reduce “AI slop” and has strengthened parental controls, and teases Shorts updates  —  The executive published his annual letter to the YouTube community Wednesday, outlining his priorities for the video platform.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says creators will be able to generate Shorts using their AI likenesses later in 2026, and touts AI tools for making games and music
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
OpenEvidence, which is building “ChatGPT for doctors”, raised $250M led by Thrive and DST at a $12B valuation, up from $6B in October and $1B in February 2025  —  A startup widely known as “ChatGPT for doctors” raised a new funding round that values the company at $12 billion.
The Information:
Sources: OpenAI has begun offering its chatbot ads to dozens of advertisers, initially charging based on ad view, not ad click, asking for <$1M in commitments  —  OpenAI has started offering its new chatbot ads to dozens of advertisers, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Simon P. Couch:
A programmer estimates his typical day of coding with Claude Code is equivalent to running the dishwasher an extra time, much more energy than a “median query”  —  Most of the discourse about the environmental impact of LLM use focuses on a ‘median query.’ What about a Claude Code session?
Bloomberg:
Chinese AI startup Zhipu says it is limiting GLM Coding Plan access after strong demand, taking only 20% of its current daily new subscriptions from January 23  —  China's Zhipu is limiting access to its coding assistant after strong demand for a new AI model siphoned off computing resources.
Bloomberg:
OpenAI says it will pay for the costs of developing energy-related infrastructure used by its Stargate data centers so they don't raise consumers' utility bills  —  OpenAI said it will pay for the costs of developing energy-related infrastructure required by its Stargate data centers …
Mauro Orru / Wall Street Journal:
Jensen Huang says that AI is already bringing economic benefits and needs more investment, and “the AI bubble comes about because the investments are large”  —  Jensen Huang called for higher investments to further spread the technology across developed and emerging economies
Alex Heath / Sources:
Demis Hassabis says Google doesn't have “any plans” for ads in Gemini and, regarding OpenAI testing ads, says “maybe they feel they need to make more revenue”  —  During our convo in Davos, Demis Hassabis and I chatted about ads in AI, Google's new deal with Apple, humanoids, and Gemini 4.
Chris Welch / Bloomberg:
Sony launches the $230 LinkBuds Clip, open-style earbuds that sit outside the ear canal, with IPX4 water resistance and a 9-hour battery life, available now  —  Sony Group Corp. introduced its latest pair of consumer earbuds, with a clip-on design that resembles recent efforts from Bose Corp. …
Nikou Asgari / Financial Times:
Galaxy Digital plans to launch a hedge fund in Q1 2026, investing up to 30% in crypto tokens and the rest in financial stocks; sources say it has raised $100M  —  Billionaire's firm plans portfolio to profit from rising and falling prices, following sharp sell-off in digital assets sector
Theo Wayt / The Information:
Elon Musk and Sam Altman clashed on X after Musk shared a post about a man who committed a murder-suicide following delusional conversations with ChatGPT  —  Elon Musk and Sam Altman traded barbs on X this week over media reports of deaths linked to OpenAI's ChatGPT and other AI-related safety issues.
Gené Teare / Crunchbase News:
European VC funding rose 9% YoY to hit $58B in 2025, vs. North America's 46% YoY jump; AI led with ~$17.5B, followed by biotech's ~$13.4B and hardware's ~$10.8B  —  Venture funding to Europe-based startups last year gained only slightly, around 9% year over year, reaching $58 billion …
Anna Heim / TechCrunch:
Ukrainian-founded language learning marketplace Preply raised a $150M Series D led by WestCap at a $1.2B valuation; out of 750 employees, ~150 are based in Kyiv  —  Language learning marketplace Preply is now valued at $1.2 billion after raising a $150 million Series D round that marks …
Financial Times:
How Ukraine and Russia rely on the same Chinese drone suppliers, whose tech is vital to the war; China has banned sensitive drone tech exports to both countries  —  As both sides scramble to source vital parts, some experts are convinced Russian buyers are being favoured by Beijing
Coco Liu / Bloomberg:
Berlin-based Cloover, which makes software to help install solar, home batteries, and heat pumps, raised $22M from Lowercarbon and others and $1.2B in debt  —  The new funding round comes as residential installations are declining across the bloc.  —  Berlin-based climate technology company Cloover …
Wen-Yee Lee / Reuters:
GlobalWafers Chair Doris Hsu says the Taiwanese silicon wafer maker is preparing for phase two of its Texas plant, after saying in May it will invest $4B more  —  Taiwanese silicon wafer manufacturer GlobalWafers (6488.TWO) is preparing for the phase two expansion of its plant in the U.S. state of Texas …
More: Taipei Times

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:20 PM ET, January 21, 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.

From Mediagazer

Perry Stein / Washington Post:
WaPo files a court motion, demanding the return of two phones, two laptops, a Garmin watch, and other devices seized from reporter Hannah Natanson's home

Michael M. Grynbaum / New York Times:
Mediaite launches One Sheet, a daily media newsletter curated by reporter Colby Hall that aggregates media news from other media newsletters, for $8 a month

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Sources: the EU is expected to approve UMG's $775M acquisition of Downtown Music, after UMG offered to divest Downtown's royalty services platform Curve

More News

Financial Times:
The Gates Foundation and OpenAI plan to invest $50M to use AI to ease the impact of chronic staff shortages in 1,000 primary health clinics in Africa by 2028

Earlier Picks

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple outages affecting multiple services, including Apple TV, the App Store, and iCloud, are now fixed following a nearly four-hour disruption on January 20
Lucas Ropek / TechCrunch:
X open sources its “core recommendation system”, which powers For You, on GitHub, and says the system “ranks everything using a Grok-based transformer model”
Juby Babu / Reuters:
OpenAI rolls out age prediction on ChatGPT consumer plans globally to identify under-18 users and apply content protections, as it prepares to add adult content
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