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January 29, 2026, 2:30 AM
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Microsoft:
Microsoft reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $81.27B, vs. $80.27B est., net income up 60% to $38.5B, and Microsoft Cloud revenue up 26% to $51.5B  —  Microsoft Cloud and AI Strength Drives Second Quarter Results  —  REDMOND, Wash. — January 28, 2026 — Microsoft Corp. today announced …
Reuters:
Microsoft reports Azure Q2 revenue up 39% YoY, vs. 38.8% est.; Microsoft cloud's contracted backlog grew 110% to $625B, ~45% of which was driven by OpenAI alone
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft Q2 gaming revenue fell 9% YoY, including a 32% drop in Xbox hardware revenue and a 5% decline in Xbox content and services, which includes Game Pass
Meta:
Meta reports Q4 revenue up 24% YoY to $59.9B, vs. $58.35B est., net income up 9% to $22.8B, and family DAP up 7% to 3.58B for December; META up 9%+ after hours  —  Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025.
Bloomberg:
Meta expects 2026 capex to be $115B-$135B, compared with a $110.6B analyst estimate and $72.2B in 2025, driven by investments in superintelligence labs  —  Meta Platforms Inc.'s better-than-expected sales outlook helped ease Wall Street concerns about plans for unprecedented spending on artificial intelligence this year.
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Meta reports Reality Labs Q4 revenue of $955M vs. $940.8M est. and a $6.02B operating loss vs. $5.67B est.; Reality Labs now has $75B+ in losses since late 2020
Russell Brandom / TechCrunch:
In Meta's Q4 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg says it plans to start shipping new models and products throughout 2026 and hints at “agentic shopping tools”
Kyle Kucharski / ZDNET:
Google updates Gemini in Chrome with a new side panel, an auto browse feature that can navigate pages and take actions for AI Pro and AI Ultra users, and more  —  ZDNET's key takeaways  — Google Chrome is being upgraded with Gemini 3 and a revamped sidepanel UX.
Connor Jones / The Register:
Security researchers warn Moltbot, previously Clawdbot, requires a specialist skillset to use safely, as data exposure risks persist even when set up correctly  —  The massively hyped agentic personal assistant has security experts wondering why anyone would install it
Hannah Lang / Reuters:
Sources: the White House will meet with banks and crypto firms on Monday to discuss a path forward for crypto legislation stalled by a clash between the sectors  —  The White House on Monday will meet with executives from the banking and cryptocurrency industries to discuss a path forward …
Kara Carlson / Bloomberg:
Tesla says it agreed to invest $2B in xAI for preferred shares as part of xAI's Series E, despite a shareholder vote in November that failed to win approval  —  Tesla Inc. reported fourth-quarter profit that surpassed expectations, showing the automaker is making progress toward overcoming rising costs …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Sebastiaan de With, co-founder of the iPhone camera app Halide who previously freelanced for Apple, says he has joined Apple's Human Interface Design team  —  Halide and Lux co-founder and designer Sebastiaan de With announced today that he is joining Apple's human interface design team.
More: MacRumors, AppleInsider, The Mac Observer, The Verge, and Engadget
X: @sdw, @cultofmac, and @mweinbach.  Bluesky: @sdw.  Threads: @sdw.  Mastodon: @gernot@mas.to.  Forums: MacRumors Forums
Julie Bort / TechCrunch:
US-based AI startup Arcee releases Trinity Large, a 400B-parameter open-weight model that it says compares to Meta's Llama 4 Maverick 400B on some benchmarks  —  Many in the industry think the winners of the AI model market have already been decided: Big Tech will own it (Google, Meta …
Tom Knowles / The Guardian:
The UK's Advertising Standards Authority bans some Coinbase ads, finding them “irresponsible” for suggesting crypto as a solution to the cost of living crisis  —  Advertising Standards Authority says firm advised by George Osborne ‘trivialised risks of cryptocurrency’
Robert McMillan / Wall Street Journal:
Google says it took legal action to take down dozens of domains and disrupt the residential proxy network of Chinese company Ipidea, widely used by bad actors  —  Company targets global network employed by hackers that often use devices running in homes of everyday Americans
Dylan Butts / CNBC:
SK Hynix announces a new US-based “AI Company” from a restructuring of its California-based subsidiary Solidigm, and commits at least $10B to the new entity  —  South Korean memory giant SK Hynix announced Wednesday that it will set up a new U.S.-based company focused …
Anna Tong / Forbes:
Sources: OpenAI is considering using biometric verification like World's eyeball scanning Orb for its planned social network to ensure its users are real people  —  OpenAI is quietly building a social network and considering using biometric verification like World's eyeball scanning orb …
Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
Fidelity Investments announces its own stablecoin, the Fidelity Digital Dollar, or FIDD, available to institutional and retail clients in the coming weeks  —  Fidelity Investments, one of the largest asset managers on the planet, announced on Wednesday it will launch its own stablecoin.
Wired:
DHS reveals that NEC is the vendor that sold Mobile Fortify, a facial recognition app used by federal immigration agents to identify people in the field, to CBP  —  Immigration agents have used Mobile Fortify to scan the faces of countless people in the US—including many citizens.
Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:
A federal judge in Virginia ruled that Norfolk's use of ~200 Flock automated license plate scanners is constitutional and doesn't violate the Fourth Amendment  —  A federal judge in Virginia ruled Tuesday that the City of Norfolk's use of nearly 200 automated license plate readers (ALPRs) …
Forums: Ars OpenForum
Financial Times:
A look at Amazon's and Walmart's differing approaches to agentic AI shopping; Similarweb: Walmart doubled its share of AI referrals in the US to 32.5% in 2025  —  Industry giants Walmart and Amazon are taking different approaches to a technology that could further automate shopping
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable:
Following UK CMA's proposals, Google says it is exploring controls to let websites opt out of AI Overviews and AI Mode

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:30 AM ET, January 29, 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: Barry Diller expressed interest in buying CNN in H1 2025, before WBD said it would spin off cable networks; a WBD spokesman says CNN is not for sale

New York Times:
The $35M marketing campaign for Melania is roughly 10x the budget for similar documentaries like CNN's RBG; some suggest Amazon is currying favor with Trump

Selome Hailu / Variety:
Nielsen: Bluey was the most-streamed title in the US in 2025, with 45.2B minutes on Disney+; Grey's Anatomy was No. 2 with 40.9B minutes on Hulu and Netflix

More News

Sri Muppidi / The Information:
Sources: OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $30B from Nvidia, less than $10B from Microsoft, and $10B-$20B from Amazon as part of a $100B funding round

Earlier Picks

Marie Woolf / Globe and Mail:
Canada says it is talking to Meta to restore news to Facebook and Instagram as the Online News Act is put on the table as part of trade negotiations with the US
Carl Zimmer / New York Times:
Google DeepMind researchers unveil AlphaGenome, an AI model trained on molecular data to predict 11 different genomic processes, such as gene splicing
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Snap launches a wholly-owned subsidiary called Specs Inc. for its upcoming AR glasses, in a bid to facilitate minority investment and offer distinct branding
Beth Galetti / About Amazon:
Amazon plans to cut ~16,000 roles across the company as part of an ongoing effort to reduce organizational layers and bureaucracy, after cuts in October 2025
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