OpenAI has closed what is now the largest private financing in history -- a $110 billion round at a $730 billion pre-money valuation that more than doubles the $40 billion raise it completed just a year ago, itself a record for a private tech company at the time.

Amazon invested $50 billion, SoftBank put in $30 billion, and Nvidia committed $30 billion, and additional investors are expected to join as the round progresses. The valuation is a sharp jump from the $500 billion OpenAI commanded in a secondary financing in October, and the round dwarfs recent raises by rivals Anthropic ($30 billion) and xAI ($20 billion).

The company has been telling investors it is now targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, a more measured figure than the $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments CEO Sam Altman had touted months earlier. OpenAI is projecting more than $280 billion in total revenue by 2030, split roughly equally between consumer and enterprise. ChatGPT now has over 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million paying subscribers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bright Data, a company that operates one of the world's largest residential proxy networks, has been running an SDK inside smart TV apps that turns those devices into nodes for web crawling -- collecting data used by AI companies, among other clients -- and most consumers have had no idea it was happening.

The company has published more than 200 first-party apps to LG's app store alone and still lists Samsung's Tizen OS and LG's webOS as supported platforms, though LG says the SDK is "not officially supported" and its operation on webOS "is not guaranteed." Google, Amazon, and Roku have all since adopted policies restricting or banning background proxy SDKs, and Bright Data no longer supports those platforms.

Several Roku apps still running the SDK disappeared from the store after a journalist with The Verge behind this reporting contacted the company.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Think - Information Society

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Google blijft in 2026 met grote afstand de populairste website ter wereld, met bijna 95 miljard bezoeken per maand. YouTube staat stevig op de tweede plaats, waardoor moederbedrijf Alphabet een ongeëvenaarde grip houdt op het wereldwijde internetverkeer.

Opvallend is de razendsnelle opmars van ChatGPT: de site staat inmiddels op plek vijf, vóór gevestigde namen als Reddit, Wikipedia en X (voorheen Twitter). Dat laat zien hoe snel AI-tools zijn verschoven van curiositeit naar alledaags gereedschap voor zoeken, schrijven, coderen en brainstormen.

De top 20 wordt verder gedomineerd door zoekmachines, sociale media, porno- en videoplatforms en webwinkels. Facebook en Instagram staan beide in de top vijf, terwijl X en TikTok miljarden bezoeken per maand trekken. Ook e-commercegiganten Amazon en Temu staan op de lijst, net als Netflix en Weather.com, die laten zien hoeveel verkeer er zit in respectievelijk streaming en realtime weerinformatie.

Dit is de top 20 van januari 2026 op basis van schattingen van marktonderzoeker Semrush:

1. Google.com – 94,8 miljard bezoeken per maand​
2. YouTube.com – 49,7 miljard​
3. Facebook.com – 9,5 miljard​
4. Instagram.com – 6,1 miljard​
5. ChatGPT.com – 5,5 miljard​
6. Reddit.com – 5,1 miljard​
7. Wikipedia.org – 4,3 miljard​
8. Pornhub.com – 3,8 miljard​
9. X.com – 3,8 miljard​
10. WhatsApp.com – 2,7 miljard​
11. Xvideos.com – 2,5 miljard​
12. Amazon.com – 2,5 miljard​
13. Yahoo.com – 2,3 miljard​
14. TikTok.com – 2,2 miljard​
15. Bing.com – 1,9 miljard​
16. Yahoo.co.jp – 1,8 miljard​
17. DuckDuckGo.com – 1,8 miljard​
18. Temu.com – 1,6 miljard​
19. Weather.com – 1,6 miljard​
20. Netflix.com – 1,5 miljard​

Opvallend is hoe sterk Amerikaanse bedrijven de digitale wereld domineren: het overgrote deel van de sites in de lijst is Amerikaans, met slechts enkele uitzonderingen uit China, Canada en Frankrijk. Dat onderstreept niet alleen de macht van Silicon Valley, maar ook hoe gecentraliseerd ons dagelijks internetgebruik in 2026 eigenlijk is.

Hungarian artist and teacher whose avant-garde works ranged from painting and photography to performance

Talking to the Art Newspaper in 2019, Dóra Maurer made a surprising claim. Her work, she told the interviewer, benefited “from a lack of market”.

It seemed an odd thing to say. The Hungarian artist, who has died aged 88, was about to have her second show at White Cube in London. If an exhibition at Jay Jopling’s fabled gallery was the stuff of dreams – its stable includes such multimillion-pound giants as Anselm Kiefer and Damien Hirst – this was not, however, reflected in Maurer’s own prices. One of her paintings had been auctioned at Sotheby’s three years earlier for £8,000 – a bargain basement figure for a major contemporary artist.

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Got battered at the polls? No problem. Just act like voters want more of what you’re selling – not considerably less

As David Lammy put it on Thursday in a dispatch from Gorton and Denton: “Only Labour can stop Reform.” And listen, stopping them by taking third place and haemorrhaging half your support from a general election that took place 19 months ago in an area where you haven’t lost an election for almost 100 years is definitely an intriguing way to do it.

Only the Tories sound more furniture-munchingly insane after the Green win last night, announcing the result shows that “only the Conservatives have the experience, the plans and the team to ensure a stronger economy and a stronger country”. Guys? Your candidate LOST THEIR DEPOSIT. Your candidate pulled in the worst ever English byelection result in Conservative party history. This is a bit like the German military surfacing the morning after Operation Bagration in 1944, surveying the wreckage of the eastern front and declaring: “Lads, we’ve got this. Trust the process!”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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As Pokémon turns 30, we would like to hear what the franchise means to you

It is 30 years since the game Pocket Monsters was released for the Nintendo Game Boy in Japan. Many more video games, trading cards, toys, an animated series and films followed as the franchise became a worldwide hit. With this in mind, we would like to hear what Pokémon means to you after three decades.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

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Het mediaconglomeraat Paramount Skydance wint de overnamestrijd om het entertainmentbedrijf Warner Bros. Discovery na de terugtrekking van streamingdienst Netflix. Hiermee groeit Paramount uit tot een media-imperium met tientallen tv-kanalen, filmstudio’s en twee prominente nieuwsredacties.