← Back to news
T

Techmeme

Google rolls out Preferred Sources globally, letting users customize "top stories" in Search, and launches highlighted links from users' news subscriptions (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Land)

T

ChatGPT was 2025's most downloaded free app in the US iOS App Store, up from No. 4 in 2024, followed by Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, and Instagram (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

T

Adobe reports Q4 revenue up 10% YoY to $6.19B, Digital Media revenue up 11% to $4.62B, and forecasts FY 2026 revenue above estimates (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)

T

Oracle reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $16.06B, vs. $16.21B est., raises FY capex forecast to ~$50B, up from $35B as of September; ORCL drops 11%+ after hours (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

T

Reddit starts a limited test of verified profiles, an opt-in feature that places a gray checkmark beside the usernames of notable people or businesses (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)

T

Sources: Google is set to be hit with a potentially large EU fine in Q1 2026 if it does not do more to ensure Google Play complies with EU competition rules (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

T

OpenAI says the capabilities of its frontier AI models are accelerating and warns that upcoming models are likely to pose a "high" cybersecurity risk (Ina Fried/Axios)

T

Google releases fully managed, remote MCP servers to help developers connect AI agents to services such as Maps, BigQuery, Compute Engine, and Kubernetes Engine (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)

T

Sources: Blue Origin has worked for over a year on tech for orbital AI data centers; SpaceX plans to use upgraded Starlink satellites for AI computing payloads (Wall Street Journal)

T

Sources: ByteDance and Alibaba have asked Nvidia about placing large orders for H200 chips after Trump's export approval, as they remain concerned about supply (Reuters)

T

Sources: EU competition watchdogs raided Temu's European headquarters in Dublin last week, amid suspicions Temu may have received unfair subsidies from Beijing (Peter Chapman/Bloomberg)

T

Tim Cook met with US lawmakers in a closed-door meeting to lobby against provisions in pending legislation that would require app stores to verify users' ages (Bloomberg)

T

Nick Clegg joins London-based VC firm Hiro Capital as a general partner, and Yann LeCun joins the firm as an adviser; sources: Hiro looks to raise a €500M+ fund (Financial Times)

T

Google unveils Emergency Live Video, similar to iOS' Emergency SOS Live Video, letting US users on Android 8 or later to share live video with 911 responders (Stevie Bonifield/The Verge)

T

Dropbox says its CFO Timothy Regan will step down after five years in the role and will be succeeded by Avalara president Ross Tennenbaum; DBX drops 5%+ (Anhata Rooprai/Reuters)

T

TikTok launches a podcast series called TikTok in the Mix, featuring four 30-minute episodes streamed live on TikTok; the first episode stars Demi Lovato (Jem Aswad/Variety)

T

Amazon plans to let authors offer their DRM-free ebooks in the EPUB and PDF formats through Kindle Direct Publishing, starting January 20, 2026 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

T

YouTube TV plans to launch over 10 genre-specific, cheaper YouTube TV Plans in early 2026, including a Sports Plan featuring ESPN Unlimited and Fox Sports 1 (Todd Spangler/Variety)

T

Shopify launches Product Network, an ad tool that lets merchants recommend and advertise products on other merchants' storefronts (Lauren Johnson/Adweek)

T

Geothermal energy company Fervo, which aims to power data centers and more, raised $462M from Google and others, taking its total funding to $1.5B since 2017 (Benoît Morenne/Wall Street Journal)

T

Starcloud, which launched a satellite with a Nvidia H100 chip in November, says the satellite is running and querying responses from Google's Gemma (Pia Singh/CNBC)

T

In a series of lawsuits, Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, and Berkshire were accused of failing to keep their tech out of Russian-made weapons used in Ukraine (Bloomberg)

T

Nvidia says that it hasn't seen "substantiation or received tips" about chip smuggling via data centers outside of China, after The Information's DeepSeek story (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)

T

Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: the $630 pen-enabled e-reader is a tough sell for most people, even with its big 11" display and productivity features (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg)

T

The RSL Collective, backed by Ziff Davis, Yahoo, and others, launches RSL 1.0, which lets publishers set licensing and compensation rules for AI web crawlers (Emma Roth/The Verge)

T

Sources: Meta's new AI model, codenamed Avocado, may launch in spring 2026 as a "closed" model, and was trained using Google's Gemma, OpenAI's gpt-oss, and Qwen (Bloomberg)

T

Google launches a cheaper AI Plus plan in India, costing ~$2.21 per month for the first six months and ~$4.44 thereafter, to compete with ChatGPT Go (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

T

Instagram launches Your Algorithm, which shows users an AI analysis of their activity to let them customize the topics shaping their Reels recommendations (Reece Rogers/Wired)

T

How US startups like Oakland-based Brimstone are racing to develop sources of raw materials that the US needs for tech, an industry China has long dominated (Heather Somerville/Wall Street Journal)

T

Adobe launches free ChatGPT-integrated Photoshop, Acrobat, and Express apps on desktop, the web, and iOS, after OpenAI added ChatGPT app integrations in October (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

T

Sources: Lip-Bu Tan's dual roles as Intel CEO and tech investor cause consternation in the industry and at Intel; four ex-Intel execs say it caused them to exit (New York Times)

T

Betting exchange Matchbook plans to launch a prediction market platform in the UK in January 2026 as a "road test" before a planned US launch as early as March (Justina Lee/Bloomberg)

T

McDonald's Netherlands pulls an AI-generated Christmas ad, made by ad agency TBWA\NEBOKO with film production company The Sweetshop, after social media backlash (Joe Wilkins/Futurism)

T

The Tech Transparency Project: Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store host dozens of apps for US-sanctioned companies; Google removed 17 and Apple removed 35 (Joseph Menn/Washington Post)

T

Sources: DeepSeek is developing its new AI model using several thousand Nvidia Blackwell chips, which were smuggled into China via third-party countries (The Information)

T

How President Trump's tariffs ended China's monopoly on making US game consoles, boosting Vietnam, whose exports jumped from $30M/month in 2024 to $400M in May (Bloomberg)

T

Sources: this fall, Alexandr Wang told people that he disagreed with top Meta execs like Chris Cox and Andrew Bosworth, including on using Instagram data for AI (Eli Tan/New York Times)

T

A survey of UK adults in 2025: on average, they spend 4.5 hours per day online, up 10 minutes on 2024, and 50%+ of time is on Google- and Meta-owned services (Ofcom)

T

As Australia bans under-16s from social media platforms, TikTok-powered video app Lemon8, friends-only photo app Yope, and others climb Apple's App Store charts (Nasteho Said/Bloomberg)

T

President Trump letting Nvidia sell advanced AI chips to China reverses decades of US tech restrictions on its adversaries, giving China a boost in the AI race (David E. Sanger/New York Times)

T

The EU's General Court reduces a 2023 EU antitrust fine on Intel to €237.1M, down from €376.36M; the EU fined Intel a record €1.06B in 2009, then overturned (Samuel Stolton/Bloomberg)

T

The US CBP proposes vetting five years of social media history for travelers from the UK, France, Germany, and more; the current system only requires basic info (Christine Chung/New York Times)

T

Australia's under-16 social media ban currently excludes Discord, GitHub, LEGO Play, Roblox, Steam, Google Classroom, Messenger, WhatsApp, and YouTube Kids (Bloomberg)

T

Documents and former US government officials detail ICE's digital surveillance capabilities, amid a drive to deport 1M people in President Trump's first year (Peter Andringa/Financial Times)

T

An interview with Tencent Games Global CEO Michelle Liu, whose hands-on dealmaking approach generated $10B in international gaming revenue over the past year (Bloomberg)

T

Cambridge, UK-based Nu Quantum, which builds networking infrastructure to link and scale quantum computers, raised a $60M Series A led by National Grid Partners (Isabella Ward/Bloomberg)

T

A survey of 1,458 US teens: 64% use AI chatbots, and 28% use them daily; 59% say they use ChatGPT, 23% use Gemini, 20% Meta AI, 14% Copilot, and 9% Character.ai (Pew Research Center)

T

Nexperia's former CEO Frans Scheper says Wingtech, which bought the Dutch chipmaker in 2019, quickly plotted to send Nexperia's research and IP to China (New York Times)

T

The European Commission says Apple and Google's Android-iPhone data transfer tool, which will be available globally, is an example of the benefits of the DMA (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)

T

Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant says under-16s slipping through the cracks of the social media ban will be "booted off" the platforms in time (The Guardian)

T