OpenAI Signs $10B Cerebras Deal, Google Launches Personal Intelligence | January 15, 2026

Daily AI Blog

January 15, 2026

📋 Quick Takeaways

OpenAI signs historic $10 billion computing deal with Cerebras Systems for 750MW of compute power through 2028
Cerebras in talks for $1B funding at $22 billion valuation, nearly tripling from September 2025
Google launches Personal Intelligence in Gemini app, connecting AI to Gmail, Photos, and Search history
Etched raises $500 million at $5 billion valuation for Transformer-optimized AI chips
Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab loses co-founders as Barret Zoph and Luke Metz return to OpenAI
xAI restricts Grok image generation after global deepfake controversy and regulatory investigations
Microsoft announces Community-First AI Infrastructure initiative addressing data center concerns

🔥 Compute Infrastructure & Major Deals

OpenAI Signs Historic $10 Billion Computing Deal with Cerebras

Landmark Partnership: OpenAI announced on January 14 a multi-year agreement with AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems for 750 megawatts of computing power through 2028, in a deal worth over $10 billion.

Strategic Significance:

Diversifies OpenAI’s compute infrastructure beyond NVIDIA and AMD
Cerebras claims its wafer-scale chips deliver faster inference for coding and real-time AI applications
Deal signed nearly two months ago, per Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman
Positions Cerebras as major player in AI compute infrastructure

Executive Commentary:

“Cerebras adds a dedicated low-latency inference solution to our platform. That means faster responses, more natural interactions, and a stronger foundation to scale real-time AI to many more people.” — Sachin Katti, OpenAI Infrastructure Executive

“Just as broadband transformed the internet, real-time inference will transform AI.” — Andrew Feldman, Cerebras CEO

Market Impact: The partnership signals OpenAI’s strategy to build a resilient, multi-vendor compute portfolio as AI demand continues to surge.

Sources: TechCrunch | Bloomberg | Inside HPC

Cerebras in Talks to Raise $1 Billion at $22 Billion Valuation

Valuation Surge: AI chip startup Cerebras Systems is in discussions to raise approximately $1 billion at a pre-money valuation of $22 billion—nearly triple its $8.1 billion valuation from September 2025.

Company Profile:

Founded in 2015, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California
Flagship product: Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE-3) with 4 trillion transistors
Serves U.S. Department of Energy, research labs, and commercial customers
Preparing for IPO targeting Q2 2026

Technical Differentiation:

Dinner plate-sized chips vs. traditional GPU approach
Processes ~1,500 tokens per second per GPU at batch size 64
Major performance claims vs. NVIDIA GPUs on AI inference benchmarks

Investment Context: Following the $10B OpenAI deal announcement, Cerebras has become a hot commodity for investors seeking alternatives to NVIDIA’s market dominance.

Sources: Bloomberg | The Information | Tech Startups

Etched Raises $500 Million at $5 Billion Valuation

Funding Milestone: AI chip startup Etched closed a $500 million funding round led by Stripes with participation from Peter Thiel, valuing the company at $5 billion.

Investment Details:

Additional investors: Positive Sum, Ribbit Capital
Total funding raised: Nearly $1 billion
Company founded in 2022 by Harvard dropouts

Product Focus:

Developing Sohu chip—an ASIC optimized specifically for Transformer-based AI models
Partnership with TSMC’s Emerging Businesses Group for manufacturing
Recruited engineers from Cypress Semiconductor and Broadcom

Competitive Landscape: Etched’s specialized approach contrasts with NVIDIA’s general-purpose GPUs, betting that Transformer-specific optimization will deliver superior efficiency for the dominant AI architecture.

Sources: Bloomberg | Mercury News | SiliconANGLE

🤖 Product Launches & Platform Updates

Google Launches Personal Intelligence Feature in Gemini App

Major Consumer AI Update: Google announced on January 14 Personal Intelligence, a new Gemini feature that connects the AI assistant to users’ Google apps for deeply personalized responses.

Feature Capabilities:

Access to Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube, and Search history
Cross-app reasoning—pulling information from multiple sources
Retrieves specific details buried in user data
Rolling out as beta in the U.S. first

Use Cases:

Finding receipts buried in email inbox
Identifying objects or people in old photos
Answering questions based on viewing habits
Complex queries spanning multiple data sources

Competitive Positioning: The launch directly challenges Apple Intelligence, signaling intensified competition in personal AI assistants. Business and education accounts are excluded from initial rollout.

Sources: CNBC | H2S Media

Google Extends MedGemma and FunctionGemma for Indian AI Health Startups

Healthcare AI Expansion: Google expanded its open-source medical AI models MedGemma 1.5 and FunctionGemma specifically for Indian AI health startups on January 15.

Strategic Significance:

Models available via Hugging Face and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI
Targets India’s rapidly growing healthcare AI ecosystem
Supports local language and clinical workflow customization
Part of broader push into healthcare AI in emerging markets

Market Context: India represents one of the fastest-growing markets for healthcare AI applications, with significant demand for affordable diagnostic and clinical decision support tools.

Source: Analytics India Magazine

🏢 Corporate & Leadership Changes

Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab Loses Co-Founders to OpenAI

Major Leadership Shake-Up: Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines Lab lost two co-founders and a key researcher on January 14-15, all returning to OpenAI.

Departures:

Barret Zoph — Co-founder and CTO (returning to OpenAI)
Luke Metz — Co-founder (returning to OpenAI)
Sam Schoenholz — Key researcher (returning to OpenAI)

New Leadership:

Soumith Chintala named as new CTO
Murati described him as “a brilliant and seasoned leader”

Company Context:

Founded September 2024 after Murati left OpenAI
Raised $2 billion seed round in July 2025 (led by Andreessen Horowitz)
Valued at $12 billion
Previous departure: Co-founder Andrew Tulloch left for Meta in October

Industry Implications: The departures—occurring less than a year after founding—highlight the intense talent competition in frontier AI and the difficulty of building stable teams outside established players.

Sources: TechCrunch | Bloomberg | Yahoo Finance

OpenAI Recruits Three Key Staff from Thinking Machines Lab

Talent Acquisition: OpenAI’s CEO of Applications Fidji Simo confirmed on January 15 that Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz are rejoining OpenAI.

Executive Statement:

“This has been in the works for several weeks, and we’re thrilled to have them join the team.” — Fidji Simo, OpenAI CEO of Applications

Background:

Zoph previously served as OpenAI VP of Research; spent 6 years at Google before that
Metz and Schoenholz both held technical leadership roles at OpenAI before Thinking Machines
Wired reports the split between Zoph and Thinking Machines was “not amicable”

Strategic Context: The returns strengthen OpenAI’s research capabilities amid intensifying competition with Google, Anthropic, and emerging Chinese AI labs.

Sources: Bloomberg | Digit

🛡️ AI Regulation & Safety

xAI Restricts Grok Image Generation Following Global Deepfake Controversy

Policy Change: X confirmed on January 14 that Grok will no longer edit “images of real people in revealing clothing” following global outrage over non-consensual deepfake images.

New Restrictions:

Technological measures prevent editing images of real people in bikinis/revealing clothing
Applies to all users, including paid subscribers
Follows earlier restriction limiting image generation to X Premium subscribers only

Global Regulatory Response:

Indonesia & Malaysia: Banned Grok entirely
UK Ofcom: Launched formal investigation
France: Paris prosecutors widened investigation
EU: European Commission ordered X to retain all Grok-related documents through 2026

Industry Context: The controversy highlights the challenges of deploying generative AI with minimal guardrails, with Grok’s “spicy mode” and limited content restrictions enabling widespread misuse.

Sources: CNN | NPR | Time

California Attorney General Announces Investigation into Grok

Legal Action: California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on January 15 an investigation into the “proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit material produced using Grok.”

Investigation Scope:

Focuses on deepfake generation capabilities
Potential violations under Take it Down Act (signed by President Trump)
Criminal prosecution possible for creators of non-consensual intimate images

Broader Legal Context:

UK plans to bring into force law criminalizing creation of non-consensual sexualized images
PM Keir Starmer’s office called xAI’s paywall solution “insulting to victims”
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall confirmed government support for potential X ban if Ofcom recommends it

Sources: CNN | TechPolicy.Press

🏗️ AI Infrastructure & Policy

Microsoft Launches Community-First AI Infrastructure Initiative

New Policy Framework: Microsoft announced on January 13-14 the Community-First AI Infrastructure initiative, committing to prevent AI data center buildouts from raising electricity bills or causing water stress in host communities.

Key Commitments:

Pay full costs for data center energy so consumers don’t bear expenses
Pursue water contribution projects (leak detection, wetland restoration)
Employee volunteer matching ($25/hour) and charitable donation matching
Transparent community engagement before construction

Policy Context:

Addresses growing local opposition to data center expansion
AI data centers are large, continuous electrical loads requiring grid investments
International Energy Agency projects U.S. datacenter electricity demand to triple by 2035 (200 to 640 terawatt-hours/year)

Industry Significance: Microsoft’s initiative sets a new standard for community relations as tech companies face mounting scrutiny over AI infrastructure impacts on local resources and utilities.

Source: Microsoft On the Issues

Temporal Technologies in Talks to Double Valuation to $5 Billion

Enterprise AI Growth: Software startup Temporal Technologies is in advanced talks to raise fresh capital at a $5 billion valuation—double its worth from just three months ago.

Growth Drivers:

Surge in demand for workflow orchestration in AI-driven applications
Critical infrastructure for agentic AI systems
Growing enterprise adoption of AI-powered automation

Market Context: The rapid valuation increase reflects investor confidence in enterprise AI infrastructure companies that enable reliable, scalable AI deployments.

Source: Bloomberg

📊 Model Performance & Research

Claude Opus 4.5 Performance Observations from Cursor

Developer Insights: AI development tool Cursor reported on January 15 that Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 model “tends to stop earlier and take shortcuts when convenient.”

Technical Context:

Observation relates to model behavior during extended coding tasks
Highlights ongoing challenges in maintaining consistent model performance
Relevant for developers building AI-powered applications

Industry Implications: As AI models become more capable, understanding behavioral patterns and limitations becomes increasingly important for production deployments.

Source: Analytics India Magazine

📈 Market Impact Analysis

January 14-15, 2026 marks a pivotal moment in AI industry development with several converging trends:

Compute Infrastructure Arms Race:

OpenAI’s $10B Cerebras deal signals aggressive diversification beyond NVIDIA
Combined $1.5B+ in AI chip funding (Cerebras + Etched) validates alternative compute approaches
Inference optimization emerging as key competitive battleground

Talent Market Volatility:

Thinking Machines Lab departures show even well-funded startups struggle to retain top talent
OpenAI continues aggressive talent acquisition despite regulatory scrutiny
Leadership stability remains critical challenge for AI startups

Personal AI Competition:

Google’s Personal Intelligence directly challenges Apple Intelligence
Deep integration with user data becomes key differentiator
Privacy vs. personalization trade-offs increasingly front-and-center

Regulatory Pressure Intensifies:

Global coordinated response to Grok deepfake controversy
California investigation adds U.S. legal pressure to international efforts
First major test of AI content moderation at scale

🔮 Looking Ahead

Key Developments to Watch:

Cerebras IPO timeline and valuation trajectory
OpenAI compute strategy evolution with multi-vendor approach
Google Personal Intelligence global rollout and user adoption
xAI/Grok regulatory outcomes across UK, EU, and U.S.
Enterprise AI infrastructure consolidation trends

Stay Updated: Follow us for comprehensive daily AI news, funding analysis, and industry tracking.

Last Updated: January 15, 2026, 11:59 PM CST