Sunday, January 11, 2026

Google is introducing new personalized ads in AI mode, powered by Gemini, which allow advertisers to offer exclusives for users preparing to buy a product (Cristina Criddle/Financial Times)

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
Google is introducing new personalized ads in AI mode, powered by Gemini, which allow advertisers to offer exclusives for users preparing to buy a product  —  Tech giant moves to gain an edge in race to monetise popular AI tools  —  Google is introducing new personalised advertising …



A detailed look at the Apple-TSMC relationship: Apple's annual spend at TSMC rose 12x, from $2B in 2014 to $24B in 2025, and once made up 25% of TSMC's revenue (SemiAnalysis)

SemiAnalysis:
A detailed look at the Apple-TSMC relationship: Apple's annual spend at TSMC rose 12x, from $2B in 2014 to $24B in 2025, and once made up 25% of TSMC's revenue  —  Wafer Demand Model, Node Economics, and the shifting power dynamics as AI reshapes the foundry landscape



Analysis: the AI investment boom represents ~1% of US GDP, roughly half the GDP share during the '90s dot-com boom and comparable to the mid-2010s US shale boom (Toby Nangle/Financial Times)

Toby Nangle / Financial Times:
Analysis: the AI investment boom represents ~1% of US GDP, roughly half the GDP share during the '90s dot-com boom and comparable to the mid-2010s US shale boom  —  US economist Jason Furman caused a bit of a kerfuffle in 2025 when he estimated that investment in information processing equipment & software …



Saturday, January 10, 2026

A profile of Grubhub parent Wonder, which has raised about $2B and is rolling out robotic meal-assembly tech acquired from Sweetgreen for $186M in November 2025 (Joshua Brustein/Bloomberg)

Joshua Brustein / Bloomberg:
A profile of Grubhub parent Wonder, which has raised about $2B and is rolling out robotic meal-assembly tech acquired from Sweetgreen for $186M in November 2025  —  E-commerce mogul Marc Lore's Wonder is leaning into automation in a $2 billion effort to do to restaurants what Amazon did to shopping.



Morgan Stanley survey of audio habits in the US: 50% to 60% of listeners aged 18-44 reported listening to AI-generated music for 2.5 to 3 hours per week (Luke Kawa/Sherwood News)

Luke Kawa / Sherwood News:
Morgan Stanley survey of audio habits in the US: 50% to 60% of listeners aged 18-44 reported listening to AI-generated music for 2.5 to 3 hours per week  —  That's enough AI music to last the run time of “Avatar.”  —  Video may have killed the radio star, but AI is starting to dance on its grave.



Indonesia temporarily blocks Grok due to the risk of AI-generated pornographic content, becoming the first country to deny access to the AI tool (Fransiska Nangoy/Reuters)

Fransiska Nangoy / Reuters:
Indonesia temporarily blocks Grok due to the risk of AI-generated pornographic content, becoming the first country to deny access to the AI tool  —  Indonesia temporarily blocked Elon Musk's Grok chatbot on Saturday due to the risk of AI-generated pornographic content, becoming the first country to deny access to the AI tool.



Stack Overflow recorded just 6,866 questions in Dec. 2025, about the same as in 2008; Stack Overflow now primarily makes money from enterprises and licensing (Claire Yubin Oh/Sherwood News)

Claire Yubin Oh / Sherwood News:
Stack Overflow recorded just 6,866 questions in Dec. 2025, about the same as in 2008; Stack Overflow now primarily makes money from enterprises and licensing  —  The platform is raking in millions of dollars in revenue, with AI an ironic new source of revenue.



Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid western sanctions after its Ukraine invasion (Financial Times)

Financial Times : Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid weste...