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January 22, 2026, 2:35 PM
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memeorandum
WeSmirchTop News
| Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: |
Google launches free SAT practice exams in the Gemini app, providing students with performance analysis and detailed explanations for incorrect answers — Prepping for the SAT is nobody's idea of fun, but Google aims to make it less stressful with AI. The company announced that it's … | The Information: |
A look at Craig Federighi's approach to AI at Apple; sources say he led a push to use other companies' models to help launch a revamped Siri later in 2026 — Last fall, Apple's software chief, Craig Federighi, delivered a warm message to a meeting of the company's combined software and AI groups.
More: AppleInsider, Computerworld, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, iPhone in Canada, MacTech.com, Mercury News, DigiTimes, and Bloomberg Law
| Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: |
Sources: Apple expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to manage design teams at the end of 2025, solidifying his status as a leading CEO candidate — Apple Inc. has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to include design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender …
X: @markgurman, @markgurman, and @markgurman
| 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 have approved the sale of 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 …
More: TechCrunch, Fox Business, Digital Music News, iPhone in Canada, Investing.com, Benzinga, Hypebot, and Crypto Briefing
X: @deitaone and @semaforben. LinkedIn: Bryan Rangel. Bluesky: @alanrozenshtein.com. Forums: r/worldnews
| 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.
More: Center for Countering …, The Guardian, Engadget, The Independent, Newser, and The Economic Times
Bluesky: @parismarx.com, @counterhate.com, @adrianweckler, @counterhate.com, @dael, @reedfrich, @mims, @mattburgess1, and @rmac
| 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.
More: TechCrunch, AI Detection Resources, The Decoder, and Fortune
LinkedIn: Ben Zhao. Bluesky: @smcgrath.phd. Forums: r/skeptic, r/EverythingScience, and r/technology
| Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer: |
The curl project plans to end its HackerOne bug bounty program at the end of January, citing a surge in low-quality AI-generated vulnerability reports — The developer of the popular curl command-line utility and library announced that the project will end its HackerOne security bug bounty program …
More: The New Stack, ITPro, Neowin, WebProNews, and The Register
| 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.
More: Waymo, PCMag, TechCrunch, Mercury News, Engadget, Refresh Miami, New York Post, WebProNews, Electrek, CleanTechnica, Axios, Mashable, The Verge, Business Insider, EV, Traffic Technology Today, Dow Jones Newswires, Sherwood News, and Automotive World
Forums: r/waymo, r/SelfDrivingCars, and r/Miami
| On Substack: |
Substack launches its Substack TV app for Apple TV and Google TV in beta for free and paid subscribers, with access matched to their current subscription levels — Today we're launching the Substack TV app for Apple TV and Google TV. Substack is the home for the best longform …
More: TechCrunch, PCWorld, Deadline, The Ankler., and Pocket-lint
| Bloomberg: |
Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch calls claims that Chinese AI startups lag behind the US a “fairy tale”, and China's open-source tech is “probably stressing” US CEOs — Claims that Chinese technology for artificial intelligence lags the US are a “fairy tale,” Arthur Mensch …
More: The Economic Times, Le Monde, and Tom's Hardware
| Will Knight / Wired: |
Source: Google DeepMind signs a licensing deal with Hume AI, which builds emotionally intelligent voice interfaces, to hire CEO Alan Cowen and ~7 top engineers — Hume AI's CEO, Alan Cowen, will join Google DeepMind along with several top engineers as part of a major licensing deal.| Laura Mandaro / The Information: |
Yelp acquires Hatch, which charges a monthly fee for AI-powered agents that can respond to customer inquiries and make appointments, for $300M — Recommendation app Yelp on Wednesday said it agreed to acquire AI agent startup Hatch for $300 million, or roughly 12 times the startup's annual recurring revenue.
More: MediaPost, Business Wire, PYMNTS.com, Skift, and Pulse 2.0
| Caiwei Chen / MIT Technology Review: |
Q&A with Yann LeCun on his new Paris-based startup Advanced Machine Intelligence, leaving Meta, real-world applications for world models, robotics, and more — Yann LeCun is a Turing Award recipient and a top AI researcher, but he has long been a contrarian figure in the tech world.
More: WebProNews, DigiTimes, and Forbes
| 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 …
More: Relentless on YouTube, BBC, Politico, eWeek, Business Insider, Semafor, and Moneycontrol
X: @sulaimanghori, @mrbeast, @sethcronin, and @andrewcurran_
| 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: BeInCrypto, The Block, Cryptonews, Bitcoin Magazine, Benzinga, Crypto Briefing, and Bloomberg Law
| 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 … | New York Times: |
Inside the turmoil at Thinking Machines; sources say Meta discussed buying TML, and CTO Barret Zoph had been in talks since October 2025 about an OpenAI return — Defections, secret conversations, deal talks that fizzled and a battle for control: The turmoil at Thinking Machines Lab …
More: The Independent, The Information, New York Post, and Wall Street Journal
| Financial Times: |
Japanese NAND flash maker Kioxia's stock is up ~800% over the past 12 months, as AI demand and constrained NAND flash supply boost the chipmaker's pricing power — Kioxia's stock has gained around 800 per cent in the past 12 months — For all Japan's image as a high-tech economy …
More: DigiTimes, PC Gamer, VideoCardz.com, Tom's Hardware, Ars Technica, Club386, and OC3D
| 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 …
X: @kyliebytes, @ashleevance, @kyliebytes, @apples_jimmy, @daniel_mac8, @millionint, @ddeming_, and @kyliebytes. LinkedIn: Ashlee Vance
Bluesky: @carnage4life and @kylierobison.com
| 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.| Kyu-Seok Shim / Reuters: |
South Korea enacts the AI Basic Act, which it says includes the world's first comprehensive set of laws regulating AI, as startups warn of compliance burdens — South Korea introduced on Thursday what it says is the world's first comprehensive set of laws regulating artificial intelligence …
More: Türkiye Today, Oman Observer, and Telecompaper
| 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 … | Chris Metinko / Axios: |
Railway, a cloud platform for software deployment, raised a $100M Series B led by TQ Ventures, bringing its total funding to $130M+, says it has ARR of $10M+ — Railway, a cloud platform for software deployment, raised a $100 million Series B led by TQ Ventures, founder and CEO Jake Cooper tells Axios Pro.
More: Railway Blog, WebProNews, FinSMEs, and Crypto Briefing
| Lindsay Ellis / Wall Street Journal: |
Survey: over 40% of executives said AI saved them more than eight hours per week, while two-thirds of non-management staff said they saved less than two hours — How much time workers say the technology saves them on the job is vastly different from what executives report — Largest divergence:
More: Implicator.ai, NewsMax.com, and PR Daily
Bluesky: @metacurity.com, @carnage4life, and @prietschka
| Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: |
Snap updates its Family Center tool to let parents view daily screen time averages and a breakdown of time spent by specific app segment like Snap Map — Two days after settling a lawsuit accusing Snapchat of causing social media addiction and mental health issues, Snap announced that it's introducing new parental controls.| Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: |
Elon Musk says Tesla launched robotaxi rides in Austin with no human safety driver; Tesla's AI lead says Tesla is “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles” — Tesla is offering passengers robotaxi rides in Austin without a human safety driver in the front seat.| Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg: |
Austin-based Neurophos, which develops a photon-based “Optical Processing Unit” to replace GPUs in AI training, raised $110M led by Bill Gates' Gates Frontier — Bill Gates' VC fund, Microsoft Corp.'s investment arm and Saudi Arabia's Aramco Ventures are investing $110 million in Neurophos Inc. … | 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.
More: Business Wire, San Francisco Business Times, Decrypt, DL News, CoinDesk, Yahoo Finance, NFTgators, Reuters, Axios, Benzinga, The Crypto Times, Coinspeaker, crypto.news, Cointelegraph, Blockonomi, BeInCrypto, CoinGape, Dow Jones Newswires, Tech in Asia, Cryptonews, The Block, Reuters, SiliconANGLE, and Tech Funding News. X: @teddyfuse
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