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January 21, 2026, 1:25 PM
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Top News

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 …
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.
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.
Beatrice Nolan / Fortune:
Anthropic overhauled 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.
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.
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.
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 …
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
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?
Wall Street Journal:
Barret Zoph says Thinking Machines Lab fired him only after learning he was leaving, and at no time did the company cite his performance or unethical conduct  —  After a relationship with a colleague, a Thinking Machines co-founder had his role changed.  Months later, he was fired after a contentious meeting.
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
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. …
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
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  —  Gates Foundation partners with tech group to ease impact of chronic staff shortages in Rwanda and other countries
Yi-Ling Liu / Wired:
The Cyberspace Administration of China requires companies to file their AI tools in a public algorithm registry, creating a map of the country's AI ecosystem  —  How the Cyberspace Administration of China inadvertently made a guide to the country's homegrown AI revolution.
More: WebProNews
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

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:25 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

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the DOJ closed an investigation of Paramount's bid for WBD before career staffers who were concerned about the acquisition had an opportunity to object

Nieman Lab:
RISJ's 2026 Digital News Report: social media and video networks are now more popular as a source of news than TV and owned and operated news websites and apps

Kerry Flynn / Axios:
Substack hires former Roku exec Dan Robbins as its first head of brand sponsorships, and launches Creator Kits for publishers interested in brand collaborations

More News

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

Earlier Picks

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”
Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Greg Peters says Netflix plans to include new types of content, like video podcasts, in its vertical video feed, and will roll out a new mobile UI later in 2026
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
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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