TL;DR: It’s the end of a very long, eventful first month of 2026, and we’ve compiled a list of some of the most unhinged takes, tone-deaf reversals, and self-owns from the tech industry so far—from Sam Altman’s 180 on ChatGPT ads to Satya Nadella learning the hard way what happens when you tell the internet to stop doing something.

What happened: Congratulations, you made it to the end of January. There’s only 11 more months to go—but we’ve already seen enough head-scratching moves and heard enough baffling sound bites from tech founders, CEOs, and criminal biotech entrepreneurs to last a lifetime.

The following list runs from mildly amusing AI prognostications to whiplash-inducing hypocrisy and a profound inability to read the room. Two honorable mentions from 2025: Altman can’t imagine raising a newborn without ChatGPT, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp, quoting a political scientist, says the “rise of the West” was made possible “by its superiority in applying organized violence.” Chilling words in 2026. If we had one piece of advice to give these founders, it might be to avoid appearing on any more podcasts or late night shows for the time being.

• Elon’s… optimistic predictions. Recently, the Tesla CEO claimed that one day there would be an army of brilliant Optimus robot surgeons to give us all “access to medical care that is better than what the President receives right now.” Oh, and stop contributing to your 401(k). Thanks to AI, Elon says society will soon progress past the need for retirement savings, or money, for that matter. The economy of 2046 will obviously run on Bezos Bucks.
• Sam Altman vs. Sam Altman. In late 2024, the OpenAI CEO said he thought of ads in ChatGPT as a “last resort for us as a business model.” Well, apparently life comes at you fast. A little over a year later, the company announced it was, in fact, putting ads in its popular chatbot—and might charge about triple what Meta typically does. These are very reasonable prices that clearly have nothing to do with the billions of dollars OpenAI is burning every second.
• Nadella meets the Streisand Effect. At the very end of December, the Microsoft CEO wrote a blog post waxing poetic about AI in 2026. In it, he suggests people stop thinking of AI as “slop” and instead as “bicycles for the mind.” (We’re still not sure what that means.) How did the internet react? In true Reddit fashion, people began calling the Copilot-maker “Microslop,” and there’s even a Chrome extension that will convert every mention of “Microsoft” to its new pejorative nickname.
• AI skeptics hurt Jensen Huang’s feelings. In early January, Huang said on a podcast that criticisms of AI were “extremely hurtful” and not helpful to society. More like not helpful to his company’s share price, considering Nvidia is essentially the duct tape holding the whole AI industry (don’t call it a bubble) together. Again, the internet predictably mocked the Nvidia founder and centibillionaire.
• AI leader discovers tortured metaphors. At Davos, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made a melodramatic statement: Selling AI chips to China “is crazy” and akin to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.” Cut to: Huang on the verge of tears. Move over, Lockheed Martin—Nvidia is the new weapons manufacturer in town.
• Making art is such a chore. Mikey Shulman, the CEO of controversial AI music generation app Suno, declared on a podcast that people “don’t enjoy” making music. “It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of practice. You need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software,” he said. In other words, thank God we have AI to offload the irritating burden of creative expression.
• An Elizabeth Holmes jump scare. The disgraced Theranos founder popped back up like a groundhog predicting six more years of egregious tech fraud, writing on X, “People thought what we were doing was a fraud because they couldn't do the same!! Turns out Theranos was just 10;years ahead.” In other words, if she hadn’t lied and messed with people’s health, people would be applauding her now. It’s the famous “if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike” defense.

We’ll check back in at the end of the year to crown the most ridiculous tech figure of 2026—and whether any of their forecasts came to pass. There's probably already a prediction market for it on Kalshi. —WK

Hide your IG Stories, not your shame

Admit it. We’ve all posted an Instagram story just to see if that one person views it. It’s the modern-day equivalent of Gatsby throwing a party just for Daisy to notice. And Meta knows how to monetize our neuroses. The parent company of Instagram is teasing a paid subscription tier that would empower voyeurs, lurkers, and stalkers—allowing them to view Stories anonymously and see which of the people they follow don’t follow them back.

But what if you need to wean yourself off the performative posting for one person? Or what if your mom or your boss follows you, and you don’t want them to see your debaucherous night out, but you still want to post your walk of shame stride of pride?

Hide Stories selectively

In case you didn’t already know, there are a few ways to block your Instagram Stories from being shown to everyone. Beyond the exclusive green circle “Close Friends” story, you can also hide your story from individual accounts. Here’s how to do it:

Close Friends: Your profile page → Settings (the hamburger menu) → Close Friends → select your close friends from your list of followers. When adding to your story, at the bottom, select Close Friends, and it will automatically post the story to this list. (Note: Make sure you choose this or it’ll go to everyone!)

Hiding Stories and Highlights: Navigate to the profile page of the person you want to hide your story from → click on the ellipses in the top right-hand corner → select Hide your story (this will also hide your Highlights).

Keeping Reels likes (mostly) private

Instagram also lets you opt out of having the Reels you’ve liked populate the Friends tab. So your friends may still know you’ve been double-tapping those breakup motivational therapy quotes scored with sad instrumental music if they show up in their regular feed, but they won’t be served to them quite so obviously.

Hiding Reels likes: Your profile page → Settings (hamburger menu) → Activity in Friends tab → Select No one.

Want to know if someone has blocked you from their Stories?

There's a glitch in Instagram's code. If someone comments on a grid post and has an active story, the pink and orange circle appears around their profile picture on the comment (even if it doesn’t show up on their profile page or in your story carousel). But click on it, and all you will see is a black screen if you’ve been blocked from their Stories. Not that I’d know from experience or anything. —JK

If you have a tech tip or life hack you just can’t live without, fill out this form and you may see it featured in a future edition.

Among Meta’s many products, one little app has an especially passionate (and currently furious) fandom: a virtual reality fitness game called Supernatural. Playable on Meta’s Oculus VR headsets, the app lets users punch and dodge flying targets in scenic arenas, ranging from icy mountaintops to landmarks like Machu Picchu, synced to licensed music from pop stars like Madonna, Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, and The Weeknd.

But with Meta laying off all the Supernatural staff, as well as a big chunk of other Reality Labs employees, the game—which it acquired in 2023 for $400 million—will no longer receive updates. A Facebook community of over 100,000 Supernatural fans have taken the news like an unexpected eviction notice. While most of us were working out our scrolling fingers on Instagram, they were improving their VO2 max. For some, it was the only reason to use VR. “I feel like I’m going to puke,” one fan told Business Insider. Angry users are taking shots directly at Meta’s founder, calling him “Mark Suckerberg.” (And yes, there’s a Change.org petition for the game.)

It’s a rare moment of passion in Meta's dead-eyed VR world. Despite rebranding itself around the metaverse in 2021, the company’s VR efforts never quite took off beyond awkward avatar hangouts and that one couple who got married in Horizon Worlds. Now, Meta’s pivoting to AI, leaving Supernatural loyalists—the ones who actually used VR for something meaningful—to dust off the ol’ Peloton or, as a last resort, go for a run outside. —WK

Chaos Brewing Meter: /5