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Techmeme

The EU is considering designating WhatsApp as a "very large online platform", after WhatsApp Channels' average MAUs crossed the DSA threshold (Reuters)

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a16z raises $15B+ across five new funds, including $6.75B for its fifth growth fund, the largest sum, and $3B for unspecified "other venture strategies" (Dan Primack/Axios)

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Filings: X's UK revenue fell 58.3% YoY from £69.1M in 2023 to £28.9M in 2024; pre-tax profit fell from £8.5M in 2022 and £2.2M in 2023 to £767K in 2024 (Mark Sweney/The Guardian)

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Meta strikes a 20-year deal to buy 2,600+ MW of nuclear power from three Vistra plants, and announces deals to back new TerraPower and Oklo reactor projects (Jennifer Hiller/Wall Street Journal)

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How Craigslist has stayed relevant as a place to find jobs, housing, and personal connections without relying on algorithmic feeds, public profiles, or ratings (Jennifer Swann/Wired)

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Grok says image generation and editing are now limited to paid subscribers, after outcry over its use to create sexually explicit and violent imagery (Helena Horton/The Guardian)

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Omdia: global humanoid robot shipments rose more than 5x YoY in 2025 to ~13K units; China accounted for the vast majority, led by AgiBot shipping ~5,168 units (Bloomberg)

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Chinese humanoid robotics companies dominated CES 2026, but a wide gap remains between choreographed demonstrations and large-scale, real-world deployment (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)

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Artemis Analytics: total stablecoin transaction volumes rose 72% YoY to a record $33T in 2025, led by Circle's USDC at $18.3T and Tether's USDT at $13.3T (Suvashree Ghosh/Bloomberg)

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Chinese AI startup MiniMax's stock closed up 109% in its Hong Kong debut on January 9, after raising ~$619M in its IPO, which was priced at ~$21.17 per share (Jeanny Yu/Bloomberg)

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Source: Lambda, which rents access to AI chips and is backed by Nvidia, is in talks to raise $350M+ led by Mubadala Capital, ahead of an IPO planned for H2 2026 (The Information)

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Seattle-based Spangle AI, which makes AI tools for online retailers to build custom storefronts, raised a $15M Series A led by NewRoad at a $100M valuation (Taylor Soper/GeekWire)

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Docs: xAI had a net loss of $1.46B in Q3, up from $1B in Q1; sources: xAI told investors it plans to build AI that will eventually power Optimus humanoid robots (Carmen Arroyo/Bloomberg)

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Nvidia has hired Google Cloud VP of Marketing Alison Wagonfeld to be Nvidia's first CMO; source: Wagonfeld will report to CEO Jensen Huang (Patrick Coffee/Wall Street Journal)

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Mississippi Gov. Reeves says xAI is set to spend $20B+ to build its MACROHARDRR data center in Southaven, xAI's third data center in the greater Memphis area (Sophie Bates/Associated Press)

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Filings: Meta has hired Bill McGinley, a veteran Republican operative and the former top lawyer for DOGE, as a lobbyist (Emily Birnbaum/Bloomberg)

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Snowflake agrees to acquire Observe, an observability platform built on Snowflake databases; the deal was previously reported to be valued at around $1B (Rebecca Szkutak/TechCrunch)

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Sources: Strava, the fitness app founded in 2009, filed confidentially for an IPO; its revenue grew more than 50% YoY in 2025 but was still less than $500M (The Information)

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Sources: UK-based cloud provider Nscale is in talks to raise about $2B, after raising more than $1.5B across a pair of rounds in September and October (Bailey Lipschultz/Bloomberg)

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OpenAI is rolling out a HIPAA-compliant version of ChatGPT for clinicians to assist with medical reasoning and administrative tasks, at Cedars-Sinai and others (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)

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OpenAI VP of research Jerry Tworek is leaving, sources say after OpenAI sided with Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki in a dispute over its research direction (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)

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Statcounter: four months after its release, iOS 26 is in use by only about 15% of iPhone users; in January 2025, about 63% of users were on iOS 18 (Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac)

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Sources: Google, Meta, Netflix, Microsoft, and Amazon will be subject only to a voluntary framework rather than binding rules under EU's Digital Networks Act (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

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Source: a few weeks before Grok started "digitally undressing" people, Elon Musk expressed frustration over guardrails on Grok's image and video generator (Hadas Gold/CNN)

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Are people updating to iOS 26? Here's what the data reportedly shows (Ryan Christoffel/9to5Mac)

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NetBlocks says internet connectivity in Iran has fallen on multiple providers as protests hit 100+ cities; Cloudflare says IPv6 traffic has dropped sharply (Cody Combs/The National)

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Sources: OpenAI has been slow to expand in-app checkouts for ChatGPT as the startup and its partners Shopify and Stripe struggle to standardize merchant data (Ann Gehan/The Information)

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Tailwind CSS lays off three of its four engineers after Google traffic to its documentation fell ~40% from early 2023 due to AI, causing an ~80% drop in revenue (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Roundtable)

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ThreatModeler, which helps developers identify vulnerabilities in their applications, acquires IriusRisk, its largest competitor, a source says for $100M+ (Leo Schwartz/Fortune)

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A profile of Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering John Ternus; sources: Ternus is seen as the front-runner to succeed Tim Cook, who wants to reduce his workload (New York Times)

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FIFA says that parts of 2026 World Cup matches will be broadcast live on TikTok and select creators will get access to press conferences and training sessions (Jessica Hopkins/The Athletic)

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Chinese AI startup MiniMax raises ~$619M in its Hong Kong IPO, at the top of its marketed range; sources: its institutional offering was oversubscribed by 70x+ (Dave Sebastian/Bloomberg)

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CrowdStrike acquires identity management startup SGNL, in a deal valued at nearly $740M, to bolster identity security defenses on its flagship Falcon platform (Samantha Subin/CNBC)

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Microsoft debuts Copilot Checkout in the US, enabling in-chat purchases via PayPal, Shopify, Stripe, and more; Shopify merchants will be automatically enrolled (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Land)

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NYC-based Pomelo Care, which offers 24/7 virtual care for women by using data to flag pregnancy risks and more, raised $92M led by Stripes at a $1.7B valuation (Amy Feldman/Forbes)

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Illicit crypto addresses received a record $154B in 2025, up 162% YoY, driven by sanctions evasion; Russia's A7A5 token transacted $93.3B+ in less than one year (Chainalysis)

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Protege, which offers an AI data platform to access high-quality, proprietary training data at scale, raised $30M from a16z, extending its $25M Series A (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)

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The European Commission orders X to retain all internal docs and data relating to Grok until the end of 2026, after criticizing Grok's nonconsensual images (Louise Breusch Rasmussen/Reuters)

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Google makes Help Me Write, AI email summaries, and Suggested Replies free to all Gmail users, after previously requiring a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription (Abner Li/9to5Google)

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Google rolls out an AI Inbox view for Gmail that shows users to-dos and summaries of topics rather than a traditional email list, first for US "trusted testers" (Jay Peters/The Verge)

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Israeli data security startup Cyera raised a $400M Series F led by Blackstone Growth at a $9B valuation, up from $6B after raising $540M in June 2025 (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune)

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Sources: China is considering how to build fences around its AI know-how amid the AI race and is identifying standout companies to add to an export control list (Wall Street Journal)

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Sources and US tax lawyers: the IRS' planned audit of private equity and VC firms is faltering under President Trump; nearly all the project's leaders have left (Jesse Drucker/New York Times)

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Lego says its Smart Brick is "here to stay" but "does not mean that we're leaving our core proposition behind", after criticism it's abandoning non-digital play (Tom Phillips/IGN)

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Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood predicts "we'll see the first 100% AI-generated hit movie" within three years and discusses Roku's new $3/month Howdy service (Jennifer Maas/Variety)

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Sources: wealthy Californians are quietly mobilizing on WhatsApp chats and calls in a long-shot bid to oust Representative Ro Khanna, who supports a wealth tax (Theodore Schleifer/New York Times)

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Sources: China's Salt Typhoon accessed the emails of staff on powerful US House committees, detected last December, and intercepted senior US officials' calls (Demetri Sevastopulo/Financial Times)

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A profile of VC firm Index Ventures, which saw billions in gains from exits in 2025, including Figma, Scale AI, and Dream Games, as it looks ahead to succession (Bloomberg)

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A profile of Replit co-founder Amjad Masad, who was shunned in investor circles for his criticism of Israel's war in Gaza before Replit's AI agent took off (Margaux MacColl/The San Francisco ...)

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China says it will investigate Meta's $2B Manus acquisition to assess compliance with laws on export controls, tech import and export, and overseas investment (CNBC)

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