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January 20, 2026, 12:40 PM
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Mediagazer
memeorandum
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| 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.
More: Sony Corporation, Spyglass, 9to5Google, PCMag, CNET, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Hindustan Times, Mashable, SamMobile, Pocket-lint, Too Much TV Newsletter, Business Today, Engadget, The Shortcut, Tom's Guide, Digit, Phandroid, FlatpanelsHD, Telecompaper, and Nikkei Asia
Bluesky: @wario64 and @thomasfuchs.at
Forums: r/hometheater, r/tcltvs, and r/4kbluray
| 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 …
More: Thurrott, The Verge, TechCrunch, About Netflix, CNBC, New York Daily News, Sports Business Journal, Investing.com, Proactive, UPI, The Irish Times, StreamTV Insider, The Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, The Independent, Ukrainian National News, Front Office Sports, primetimer.com, WebProNews, Reuters, New York Times, Sharecast, CBS News, Yahoo Finance, The Standard, Dow Jones Newswires, Associated Press, New York Post, Blockonomi, Livemint, Wall Street Journal, The Wrap, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Axios, Deadline, Barrett Media, Screen, Far Out Magazine, Cord Cutters News, iPhone in Canada, Advanced Television, The Daily Upside, Outlook Business, Forbes, Broadband TV News, Screen Rant, Fox Business, and Mediaite
| 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 …
More: TechCrunch, Reuters, Bloomberg, and humans&
| Max Hunder / Reuters: |
Ukraine says it plans to share nearly four years of combat data, including millions of hours of drone footage, with allies to help train AI models — Ukraine will establish a system allowing its allies to train their artificial intelligence models on Kyiv's valuable combat data collected throughout … | Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: |
Setapp Mobile, one of the first alt iOS app stores launched in 2024 after the EU's DMA, plans to shut down, blaming “still-evolving and complex business terms” — Ukraine-based developer MacPaw is set to close Setapp Mobile, its alternative app store for iOS devices in the European Union, next month.
More: TechCrunch, Daring Fireball, The Verge, and Trusted Reviews
| 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.
More: WinBuzzer, Implicator.ai, eWeek, Matt Mullenweg, and arXiv.org
X: @tessera_antra, @peterwildeford, @enscion25, @gallabytes, @thebasepoint, @jack_w_lindsey, @anthropicai, @anthropicai, @anthropicai, @anthropicai, @anthropicai, @anthropicai, and @anthropicai
Bluesky: @emollick and @tachikoma.elsewhereunbound …
Forums: Hacker News, r/claudexplorers, and r/singularity
| Christina Kyriasoglou / Bloomberg: |
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says selling AI chips to China is a blunder with “incredible national security implications”, calling it a “big mistake” and “crazy” — Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei said selling advanced artificial intelligence chips …
More: The Economic Times, Quartz, and Silicon UK
| Newley Purnell / Bloomberg: |
Meta VP of Public Policy Simon Milner, the company's most senior Asia-Pacific policy executive, plans to leave after 14 years to retire from full-time work — Meta Platforms Inc. is losing its most senior public policy executive in the Asia-Pacific at a time when the company faces several … | 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 … | Jaspreet Singh / Reuters: |
Substack challenger Beehiiv expects to nearly double its annual revenue to $50M in 2026; it now has over 40,000 MAUs, including nearly 15,000 paying subscribers — Beehiiv expects to nearly double annual revenue to $50 million this year as the newsletter startup challenges larger rival Substack … | 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 … | Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg: |
French accounting software startup Pennylane raised $204M led by TCV, a source says at a ~$4.25B valuation, with participation from Blackstone, DST, and others — Pennylane, a French startup that sells accounting software, has raised €175 million ($204 million) in a funding round led by growth equity investor TCV.
More: Tech.eu, Tech in Asia, Pulse 2.0, EU-Startups, and Sifted
| Alex Wickham / Bloomberg: |
Sources: UK and Chinese security officials set up a forum to discuss cyberattacks after hacking accusations, the first of its kind, to help prevent escalation — British and Chinese security officials established a forum to discuss cyberattacks following a spate of hacking accusations that soured relations between the two countries.| Zach Vallese / CNBC: |
Sensor Tower: Reels accounted for 50%+ of all Instagram ads in 2025, up from 35% in 2024; Reels accounted for 46% of time spent on Instagram in the US in 2025 — More than half of all ads on Meta's Instagram ran in the service's short-form video Reels product in 2025, up from 35% in 2024 … | 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.| 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
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