Techmeme
January 20, 2026, 1:40 PM

Top News

Brian Stelter / CNN:
Netflix and WBD say Netflix revised its WBD offer to an all-cash deal for $27.75/share, with the same $82.7B value; its original bid had $59B in debt financing  —  In an ongoing struggle over the future of Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix says it is now prepared to pay all cash for Warner Bros. and HBO …
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Humans&, founded by ex-Anthropic, xAI, and Google staff to build collaborative AI, raised a $480M seed from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and others at a $4.48B valuation  —  As a research scientist at Anthropic, one of the world's leading A.I. companies, Andi Peng was part of a team that tried …
Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal:
OpenAI and ServiceNow sign a three-year deal to integrate OpenAI's models into ServiceNow's business software, including embedding OpenAI's AI agents  —  The AI model maker and business-software provider signed a three-year pact that underscores how AI agents are increasingly being embedded in corporate software
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Sony and TCL sign a non-binding agreement to spin off Sony's TV and home audio hardware business into a new joint venture, aiming to finalize the deal by March  —  The two companies are planning to form a new joint venture that will carry the ‘Sony’ and ‘Bravia’ branding.
Anthropic:
Anthropic details the “Assistant Axis”, a pattern of neural activity in language models that governs their default identity and helpful behavior  —  Read the full paper  —  When you talk to a large language model, you can think of yourself as talking to a character.
Naga Avan-Nomayo / The Block:
Portugal orders Polymarket to stop operations and blocks it in the country after heavy activity tied to its recent presidential election, with €110M+ in volume  —  Partner offers  —  Quick Take  — Portugal's gambling regulator has ordered prediction market platform Polymarket …
Michael Thomsen / New York Times:
How Zynga uses a secretive VIP program with personal account managers and exclusive sweepstake entries to keep top players spending on games like FarmVille  —  CSR 2 Realistic Drag Racing is a simple game, even by smartphone standards.  Players compete in short street races …
John Liu / Bloomberg:
Sources: China broadens its probe into Temu owner PDD, dispatching 100+ investigators to its Shanghai HQ, after staff exchanged physical blows with regulators  —  China has broadened a probe into PDD Holdings Inc. after its employees exchanged blows with regulators, dispatching over 100 investigators …
More: Tech in Asia
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
xAI faces a growing outcry from global regulators over Grok's generation of nonconsensual explicit photos, but has faced little regulatory action in the US  —  Despite global uproar over the generation of non-consensual explicit photos, Elon Musk has continued to downplay the issue.

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Earlier Picks

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Kiran Stacey / The Guardian:
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Ryan Vlastelica / Bloomberg:
Olivia Solon / Bloomberg: