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.



Friday, January 9, 2026

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

Dan Primack / Axios:
a16z raises over $15B across five new funds, including $6.75B for its fifth growth fund and $3B for unspecified “other venture strategies”  —  Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose past investments included Airbnb and Coinbase, on Friday announced that it raised over $15 billion for a group of new funds.



Filings: X's UK revenue fell 58.3% YoY from £69.1M in 2023 to £28.9M in 2024; pre-tax profits fell from £2.2M in 2023 to £767,000 in 2024 (Mark Sweney/The Guardian)

Mark Sweney / The Guardian:
Filings: X's UK revenue fell 58.3% YoY from £69.1M in 2023 to £28.9M in 2024; pre-tax profits fell from £2.2M in 2023 to £767,000 in 2024  —  Elon Musk-owned site reports plunging profits amid outcry over use of AI tool Grok to create sexually explicit imagery



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

Jennifer Hiller / Wall Street Journal:
Meta strikes a 20-year deal to buy 2,600+ MW of nuclear power from Vistra, and announces deals to back new reactor projects from TerraPower and Oklo  —  Facebook parent will back nuclear projects with Oklo, Bill Gates-backed TerraPower and Vistra  —  Meta Platforms on Friday unveiled …



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

Jennifer Swann / Wired:
How Craigslist has stayed relevant for users as a place to find jobs, housing, and personal connections without relying on algorithmic feeds or public profiles  —  Millennials are still using Craigslist to find jobs, find love, and even to cast creative projects—eschewing other AI- and algorithm-dominated online spaces.



Sources: after five Thinking Machines staff left, investors are rattled, potentially impacting fundraising; two researchers quit via Slack during an all-hands (The Information)

The Information : Sources: after five Thinking Machines staff left, investors are rattled, potentially impacting fundraising; two researc...