Techmeme
January 19, 2026, 7:10 PM

Top News

Katherine Doherty / Bloomberg:
The NYSE plans to use its tech that matches buyers and sellers, plus blockchain networks, to facilitate the real-time trading of tokenized securities in 2026  —  The New York Stock Exchange is building a venue using blockchain technology to allow for trading tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds around the clock.
Kiran Stacey / The Guardian:
The UK launches a consultation on whether to ban under-16s from using social media, alongside restrictions on addictive app features like infinite scrolling  —  Move comes as peers prepare to vote on an amendment to a bill that would enact a ban within a year of the bill passing
Axios:
OpenAI executive Chris Lehane says the startup is “on track” to unveil its first device in H2 2026; reports suggest it won't have a screen and may be a wearable  —  OpenAI is “on track” to unveil its first device in the second half of 2026, the company's policy chief, Chris Lehane, said Monday at Axios House Davos.
Jez Corden / Windows Central:
Sources: Microsoft is preparing to launch a session-based ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming tier in 2026; users note Xbox Cloud Gaming now references “ad support”  —  Users have been noticing that Xbox Cloud Gaming has begun referencing “ad support” while launching games, confirming our earlier report.
The Information:
Sources: after five Thinking Machines staff left, investors are rattled, potentially impacting fundraising; two researchers quit via Slack during an all-hands  —  The timing couldn't have been more awkward for Thinking Machines Lab.  —  On Wednesday, during an all-hands meeting at the AI startup …
Ryan Vlastelica / Bloomberg:
Anthropic's Claude Cowork launch has revived fears about disruption that weighed on SaaS stocks in 2025; Morgan Stanley SaaS index is down 15% so far in 2026  —  The new year was supposed to bring opportunities for beaten-down software stocks.  Instead, the group is off to its worst start in years.
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  —  They ended up running planners and sub-planners to create tasks, then having workers execute on those tasks - similar to how Claude Code uses sub-agents.
James Peckham / PCMag:
Taiwanese media: Asus Chair Jonney Shih says the company won't release any new smartphones in 2026, which may signal the brand's exit from the Android market  —  Asus won't release any new smartphones in 2026, and that may signal the brand's exit from the Android space altogether.
Counterpoint Research:
Chinese smartphone shipments fell 1.6% YoY in Q4 2025 and 0.6% in 2025 due to weak demand after memory shortages increased prices; iPhone shipments rose 28% YoY  —  Type:  —  Insight  —  Team Counterpoint  —  Counterpoint research is a young and fast growing research firm covering analysis of the tech industry.
Jack Dunn / Variety:
On Joe Rogan's JRE, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck discuss Hollywood and AI; Damon says Netflix wants movies to restate the plot because viewers are on their phones  —  Matt Damon and Ben Affleck recently appeared on the “Joe Rogan Experience” to promote their new Netflix film “The Rip,” …
Palmer Luckey / @palmerluckey:
Meta's VR layoffs may help the industry long term, as most of the ~1,500 roles worked on first-party content and games that competed with the broader ecosystem  —  I have an opinion on the Meta layoffs that is contrary with most of the VR industry and much of the media, but strongly held. This is not a disaster. They still employ the largest team working on VR by about an order of magnitude. Nobody else is even close. The “Meta is
Sarah Friar / OpenAI:
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar says the company's compute grew from 0.2 GW in 2023 to ~1.9 GW in 2025 and its annualized revenue grew from $2B in 2023 to $20B+ in 2025  —  We launched ChatGPT as a research preview to understand what would happen if we put frontier intelligence directly in people's hands.

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Alex Isenstadt / Axios:
Financial Times:

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