Techmeme
January 26, 2026, 6:15 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils the Maia 200, its 2nd-generation AI accelerator built on TSMC's 3nm process, deploying today in its Azure US Central data center region  —  The Maia 200 chip is starting to roll out to Microsoft's data centers today. … Microsoft is announcing a successor to its first in-house AI chip today, the Maia 200.
Barbara Moens / Financial Times:
The EU opens a formal DSA investigation into xAI over Grok generating sexualized images of women and children; xAI faces fines of up to 6% of global revenue  —  European regulators begin investigation into creation and spread of sexualised images of women and children
Bloomberg:
Nvidia invests $2B more in CoreWeave to speed up an effort to add 5GW+ of AI computing capacity by 2030 and deploy Nvidia's new Vera CPUs; CRWV closes up 5.7%  —  Nvidia Corp., the dominant maker of artificial intelligence chips, invested an additional $2 billion in CoreWeave Inc. to help speed …
Axios:
As tech CEOs stay silent after two fatal shootings, 450+ workers at Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and others urge CEOs to cancel any ICE contracts and speak out  —  Some tech workers are pressuring the industry's top leaders to speak out against ICE after federal officers killed Alex Pretti …
M.G. Siegler / Spyglass:
Axios:
In a 38-page essay, Dario Amodei warns of civilization-level damage from superintelligent AI, questioning whether humanity has the maturity to handle such power  —  - Massive job loss: “I ... simultaneously think that AI will disrupt 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1-5 years …
Dan Whateley / Business Insider:
TikTok US says it's working to restore services after a power outage at a data center and that any algorithm changes users noticed were likely due to the outage  —  - TikTok's algorithm was disrupted on Sunday as the company dealt with a data center outage.  — Users reported seeing a flurry of old videos in their feeds.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
Apple unveils a second-gen AirTag with an updated speaker and the same second-gen Ultra Wideband chip as in the iPhone 17, costing $29 for one and $99 for four  —  Apple has announced a brand new AirTag 2 that's available to order now, here are the details on the update.
Robert Hart / The Verge:
Anthropic rolls out a new extension to MCP to let users interact with apps directly inside the Claude chatbot, with support for Asana, Figma, Slack, and others  —  Anthropic's one step closer to having an everything app. … Anthropic's Claude got a bit livelier today thanks …
Qwen:
Qwen releases Qwen3-Max-Thinking, its flagship reasoning model that it says demonstrates performance comparable to models such as GPT-5.2 Thinking and Opus 4.5  —  · QwenTeam丨Translations:.体中文  —  Introduction#  —  We present Qwen3-Max-Thinking, our latest flagship reasoning model.
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Google agrees to pay $68M to settle a class action lawsuit claiming that Google Assistant inappropriately recorded private conversations on users' devices  —  Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle a lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant spied inappropriately on smartphone users, violating their privacy.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
A group of YouTubers with a combined 6.2M subscribers adds Snap to a class action lawsuit, alleging the company trained its AI systems on their video content  —  A group of YouTubers suing tech giants for scraping their videos without permission to train AI models has now added Snap to their list of defendants.
Angus Loten / Wall Street Journal:
Upwind Security, which filters out false security alerts in cloud apps to let security teams address actual risks, raised a $250M Series B at a ~$1.5B valuation  —  The startup aims to filter out a torrent of false alarms in cloud apps and workloads, enabling security teams to address actual risks
Tim De Chant / TechCrunch:
Nvidia announces its Earth-2 Medium Range weather model, built on its Atlas architecture, claiming it outperforms Google DeepMind's GenCast in 70+ variables  —  In the run-up to the winter storm currently pummeling much of the U.S., weather forecasts for some regions were all over the map, with snowfall predictions varying wildly.
The Information:
Source: OpenAI targets ~$60 per 1,000 views for ChatGPT ads, on par with live NFL broadcasts and above Meta's sub-$20 CPM, while offering little conversion data  —  In its initial rollout of ads, OpenAI is charging prices that rival those for coveted video programs like the NFL …
Anupriya Datta / Euractiv:
The EU Commission says WhatsApp's Channels fall under the DSA's Very Large Online Platform rules, joining Instagram and Facebook, requiring it to address risks  —  Commission designation means Meta-owned messaging giant's public channels must comply with the EU's Digital Services Act rules for very large platforms
Jesse Coburn / ProPublica:
Sources: the US DOT plans to use Gemini to draft federal regulations, cutting the process to just 30 days; the DOT used it to draft a still-unpublished FAA rule  —  The Transportation Department, which oversees the safety of airplanes, cars and pipelines, plans to use Google Gemini to draft new regulations.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Wikimedia data puts iOS 26 adoption at ~50% in January vs. iOS 18's 72% in 2025 as Apple slows auto-updates; Statcounter showed 15% after missing Safari changes  —  A few weeks ago there were a rash of stories claiming that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates from iPhone users.
Eliyahu Kamisher / Bloomberg:
Billionaire Tom Steyer, who is running for California governor, says he'll vote for the one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth if it reaches the November ballot  —  Billionaire Tom Steyer came out in favor of a proposed tax on California's wealthiest residents, adding a prominent voice …
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Intel Panther Lake laptop CPU review: the 18A-based Core Ultra X9 388H outperforms Apple's M5 and AMD's top-tier Strix Halo in some tests like 4K video exports  —  Intel's been talking the talk for months about its new generation of laptop chips, the first made on its long-anticipated 18A process.
Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal:
Quantum computing company IonQ acquires US chipmaker SkyWater for ~$1.8B, paying $35/share, in IonQ's biggest deal yet; SkyWater will operate as a subsidiary  —  IonQ works with the U.S. government and has been on a deal spree  —  Quantum-computing company IonQ struck a deal …

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More News

Cade Metz / New York Times:
Irina Anghel / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Jasmine Sun / @jasmine's substack: