Techmeme
January 22, 2026, 1:25 PM

Top News

The Information:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google rolls out Personal Intelligence in AI Mode to access users' Gmail and Google Photos data for more tailored responses, for US Pro and Ultra subscribers  —  AI Mode, Google's conversational Search feature for complex questions, is getting more personalized.
Semafor:
Sources: the US and China approve a deal to sell TikTok's US business to a group of mostly US investors led by Oracle and Silverlake, set to close this week  —  The US and China have signed off on a deal to sell TikTok's US business to a consortium of mostly US investors led by Oracle and Silverlake …
New York Times:
NYT and CCDH analysis: Grok created and shared 1.8M+ sexualized images of women between December 31 and January 8, after Elon Musk promoted the feature on X  —  Over nine days, Elon Musk's Grok chatbot generated and posted 4.4 million images, of which at least 41 percent were sexualized images of women.
Will Knight / Wired:
An analysis of 5,290 AI research papers at NeurIPS: 141, or ~3%, had US-China AI lab collaboration, vs. 134/4,497 in 2024; Llama featured in 106 Chinese papers  —  WIRED analyzed more than 5,000 papers from NeurIPS using OpenAI's Codex to understand the areas where the US and China actually work together on AI research.
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, and 800+ creatives launch “Stealing Isn't Innovation” to protest unauthorized AI training, backed by RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, and others  —  Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, George Saunders, and other creatives say that AI companies are …
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Waymo launches its robotaxi service in Miami, its sixth market, initially covering a 60-square-mile area, and partners with Moove for fleet management  —  Alphabet's Waymo said Thursday that its robotaxi service is now open to paying riders in Miami, kicking off a 2026 market expansion.
AJ Dellinger / Gizmodo:
xAI engineer Sulaiman Ghori says he has “left” the startup, after saying on a podcast last week that xAI has skirted regulations while building its data centers  —  Interesting timing.  —  Sulaiman Ghori, an engineer at Elon Musk's AI startup xAI, went on the podcast Relentless …
Bloomberg:
Sources: the US Senate's crypto market structure bill is likely to be delayed by several weeks as key lawmakers shift their focus to a housing legislation push  —  A sweeping US crypto market bill is likely to be delayed by at least several weeks as key lawmakers shift their focus …
Core Memory:
Q&A with recently departed OpenAI VP of Research Jerry Tworek, who claims OpenAI's shift toward more conservative ways made high-risk, pioneering work harder  —  Are all the AI superpowers playing it too safe?  —  ∙ Paid  —  On January 5th, famed AI researcher Jerry Tworek stunned world+dog …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify expands its AI-powered Prompted Playlists beta to Premium subscribers in the US and Canada, following initial testing in New Zealand  —  Spotify is rolling out Prompted Playlists, a new AI playlist creation tool, to Premium subscribers in the U.S. and Canada.
Business Insider:
The US BOP releases Caroline Ellison, the former FTX executive and ex-girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried, after about 14 months; she had a two-year sentence  —  - Caroline Ellison, the exec involved in the FTX scandal, has been released from federal custody.  — The former Alameda Research CEO …
More: Cryptonews
Bloomberg:
A US House panel okays a bipartisan bill pushing congressional oversight of AI chip exports and banning Nvidia Blackwell sales to China for at least two years  —  Congress is one step closer to gaining the authority to review artificial intelligence chip sales to China …
Bloomberg:
BitGo raises $212.8M in its IPO, selling 11.8M+ shares at $18 each, above the $15 to $17 range, giving it a ~$2.1B market value, in 2026's first crypto US IPO  —  BitGo Holdings Inc. and some of its backers raised $212.8 million in a US initial public offering, pricing its shares above the marketed range.

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Earlier Picks

Rajesh Mascarenhas / Bloomberg:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Bloomberg:
Annie Palmer / CNBC: