📋 Quick Takeaways

• $410M+ in major AI funding including Inferact ($150M seed at $800M valuation) and Neurophos ($110M Series A for photonic chips)
• Elon Musk at Davos 2026 predicts AI smarter than any human by end of 2026, warns electrical power is limiting US AI deployment
• OpenAI introduces ads to ChatGPT, surprising Google DeepMind CEO who says Google is thinking through monetization “very carefully”
• Apple reportedly training next-gen Siri on Google Cloud TPUs, signaling major shift in Big Tech compute partnerships
• Anthropic CEO criticizes H200 chip sales to China, comparing decision to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea”
• Jensen Huang declares AI creates trade jobs rather than destroying employment, with plumber/electrician salaries nearly doubling

🚀 Major AI Funding & Infrastructure Investment

Inferact Raises $150M Seed at $800M Valuation for AI Inference Platform

Breakthrough Funding: The commercial startup behind open-source vLLM secured $150 million in seed funding on January 22, 2026, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

📋 Quick Takeaways

• Jensen Huang declares AI as “largest infrastructure buildout in human history” at Davos, projecting $85 trillion in investment over 15 years
• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei compares US chip sales to China to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea,” calling the policy “crazy”
• OpenAI and Anthropic outline enterprise strategies at WEF, with Anthropic reporting 80% enterprise revenue and 300,000+ business customers
• Anthropic releases 2026 Agentic Coding Report showing engineers can only “fully delegate” 0-20% of tasks to AI agents
• $1.8B+ in AI infrastructure funding including Saudi Arabia’s Humain ($1.2B), Upscale AI ($200M), and Zipline ($600M)
• Sequoia Capital makes historic dual investment in both OpenAI and Anthropic, abandoning traditional “one horse per race” approach

🏗️ AI Infrastructure & Investment

Jensen Huang: AI Driving “Largest Infrastructure Buildout in Human History”

Davos Keynote: Speaking with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the World Economic Forum on January 21, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang described AI as “a five-layer cake” spanning energy, chips, cloud data centers, AI models, and applications.

📋 Quick Takeaways

• OpenAI officially introduces advertising to its chatbot interface, marking a pivotal shift in its revenue strategy beyond subscriptions.
• Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth confirms the internal delivery of new “Avocado” (text) and “Mango” (media) models from their Superintelligence Labs.
• Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis tells Davos that Chinese AI firms are trailing US frontier models by approximately six months.
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella identifies “energy costs” as the primary deciding factor in the global AI race.
• Nvidia invests $150M in Baseten as part of a $300M round, valuing the inference startup at $5 billion.
• ServiceNow and Schneider Electric double down on “Agentic AI” to automate complex enterprise and energy workflows.

💰 Business Models & Frontier Models

OpenAI Begins Offering Chatbot Ads to Advertisers

Revenue Pivot: In a report surfacing Tuesday, The Information confirmed that OpenAI has officially begun offering “chatbot ads” to dozens of advertisers. This marks a historic shift in OpenAI’s business model, moving from a purely subscription/API focus to an ad-supported ecosystem directly within its conversational interfaces. Industry Impact: This move challenges traditional search advertising dominance and introduces a new battleground for commercial attention within AI responses. Source: Radical Data Science

📋 Quick Takeaways

• OpenAI Revenue Shift: ChatGPT begins testing ads in free tiers while revealing massive 1.9 gigawatt power consumption for 2025.
• Capital Flood: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) deploys $3 billion dedicated entirely to “picks-and-shovels” AI infrastructure.
• Economic Warning: IMF 2026 outlook cautions that unequal AI adoption will widen the GDP gap between nations.
• Hardware Wars: Micron buys Taiwan plant for $1.8B and FuriosaAI raises capital to challenge Nvidia’s dominance.
• Enterprise Battle: Google Gemini aggressively pivots to enterprise sales to counter Microsoft, while “Claude Co-worker” fears hit SaaS stocks.
• Medical Milestone: Biotics AI secures FDA clearance for AI-powered fetal ultrasound technology.

💰 AI Infrastructure & Capital Markets

Andreessen Horowitz Launches $3 Billion AI Infrastructure Push

Strategic Shift: Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced a massive $3 billion investment vehicle specifically for AI infrastructure. This marks a decisive pivot from consumer application bets toward the foundational “picks-and-shovels” layer of the technology stack. Investment Thesis:

📋 Quick Takeaways

• Anthropic Valuation Soars: Sequoia Capital joins a massive funding round valuing Anthropic at $350B+, with total investment targeting $25B.
• Musk’s $134B Legal Battle: Elon Musk files for up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, citing “wrongful gains” from his early support.
• ChatGPT Go Global Launch: OpenAI rolls out the $8/month “ChatGPT Go” tier worldwide and confirms ad testing begins in February.
• Tesla Dojo3 Revival: Elon Musk announces the restart of the Dojo3 supercomputer project powered by the new AI5 chip.
• Meta’s Nuclear Pivot: Meta commits over $10 billion to a nuclear power deal for AI infrastructure while cutting 1,500 Reality Labs jobs.
• Wikipedia Monetizes Data: The Wikimedia Foundation signs paid training deals with Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon.

💰 Major AI Funding & Business

Sequoia Capital Joins $25 Billion Anthropic Funding Round

Investment Milestone: Sequoia Capital is breaking venture capital norms by backing Anthropic, joining a massive funding consortium led by GIC and Coatue. The round is expected to reach $25 billion, pushing Anthropic’s valuation to $350 billion—more than doubling in four months. Key Participants:

📋 Quick Takeaways

• OpenAI announces ChatGPT advertising for free and Go tier users, projecting $1B revenue in 2026 scaling to $25B by 2029
• Elon Musk seeks $79-134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft as landmark lawsuit heads to April jury trial
• Anthropic overtakes OpenAI in enterprise LLM market share (32% vs 25%), with $350B valuation
• Federal judge rejects OpenAI’s motion to dismiss Musk’s claims of nonprofit mission betrayal
• NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discusses “God AI” operating at “biblical or galactic scales” in future vision

💰 OpenAI Business Model Shift

OpenAI Launches Advertising in ChatGPT for 700 Million Users

Historic Monetization Move: OpenAI announced on January 16 that it will begin testing advertisements within ChatGPT for free and Go tier users in the United States, marking a fundamental shift in the company’s business model.

📋 Quick Takeaways

• Grok deepfake crisis escalates as mother of Musk’s child sues xAI; California AG orders cease-and-desist; Pentagon adoption questioned
• Skild AI raises $1.4 billion led by SoftBank, tripling valuation to $14B in just 7 months for “robot brain” technology
• A16z announces record $15 billion in new funds, largest fundraise in firm history, with focus on AI and American interests
• DeepSeek V4 expected mid-February, reportedly outperforming Claude and GPT models in coding benchmarks
• Anthropic appoints former Microsoft India MD Irina Ghose to lead Bengaluru expansion as India becomes second-largest market
• State AI laws take effect in California, Texas, and Illinois while Trump administration pushes federal preemption

🛡️ AI Safety & Regulation

Grok AI Deepfake Crisis: Ashley St. Clair Sues xAI Over Exploitative Images

Landmark Lawsuit Filed: On January 16, Ashley St. Clair—the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children—filed a lawsuit in New York against xAI, alleging Grok’s chatbot generated sexually exploitative deepfake images that caused her “humiliation and emotional distress.”

📋 Quick Takeaways

• US imposes 25% tariff on Nvidia H200 and AMD MI325X AI chips bound for China under new export arrangement
• Trump and Northeast governors push emergency power auction forcing tech giants to fund $15B in new power plants
• AWS European Sovereign Cloud launches with €7.8B investment, physically separate from global infrastructure
• Google Gemini gets Personal Intelligence feature that proactively analyzes Gmail, Photos, and Search history
• Zhipu AI releases GLM-Image — first major AI model trained entirely on Huawei chips without US semiconductors
• $500M+ in AI funding including Parloa ($350M at $3B) and Higgsfield ($80M at $1.3B)

🌐 AI Policy & Geopolitics

US Imposes 25% Tariff on Nvidia H200 AI Chips Bound for China

Major Trade Development: President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on January 15 imposing a 25% tariff on advanced AI semiconductors including Nvidia’s H200 and AMD’s MI325X chips that pass through the US before being exported to China.

📋 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.

📋 Quick Takeaways

• Skild AI secures massive $1.4B Series C to build a “universal brain” for robots, tripling valuation to $14B+.
• Apple officially partners with Google Gemini to power the next generation of Siri and Apple Intelligence features.
• Pentagon announces integration of Elon Musk’s Grok AI into military networks, sparking global controversy.
• Google unveils Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard to enable agentic shopping across the web.
• OpenAI acquires Torch Health for ~$100M to power its new ChatGPT Health vertical.
• Aikido Security hits $1B unicorn status, becoming the fastest-growing European cybersecurity startup.

🤖 Robotics & Physical AI

Skild AI Raises $1.4B at $14B+ Valuation for “Omni-Bodied” Robot Brain

Mega-Round Confirmed: Pittsburgh-based robotics startup Skild AI closed a massive $1.4 billion Series C funding round on January 14, led by SoftBank with participation from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and Samsung.