📋 Quick Takeaways

• xAI closes historic $20 billion Series E with strategic investments from NVIDIA, Cisco, Fidelity, and Qatar Investment Authority at ~$230B valuation
• NVIDIA unveils Vera Rubin AI platform featuring six co-designed chips optimized for agentic AI and trillion-parameter models
• NVIDIA releases Alpamayo open-source models for Level 4 autonomous driving, partnering with Mercedes-Benz for Q1 2026 US launch
• Google DeepMind integrates Gemini into Boston Dynamics Atlas in landmark robotics collaboration
• Mobileye acquires Mentee Robotics for $900M betting on humanoid robots as next AI frontier
• Hyundai announces $26B US investment over four years for robotics and autonomous driving ecosystem
• AMD reveals Ryzen AI 400 Series with 60 TOPS NPU and Helios rack systems challenging NVIDIA

💰 Major AI Funding

xAI Raises Record $20 Billion in Series E Funding

Historic Round: Elon Musk’s xAI announced on January 6 the completion of a $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding its initial $15 billion target and representing one of the largest single funding rounds in tech history.

📋 Quick Takeaways

• NVIDIA unveils Vera Rubin platform — first extreme-codesigned six-chip AI system promising 10x reduction in inference token cost
• “ChatGPT moment for physical AI” declared by Jensen Huang as NVIDIA releases robotics foundation models for Boston Dynamics, Caterpillar, and LG
• NVIDIA launches Alpamayo — world’s first open-source reasoning AI for autonomous driving, shipping in Mercedes-Benz CLA this year
• AMD counters with Helios — “world’s best AI rack” featuring 72 MI455X GPUs to directly challenge NVIDIA’s dominance
• Intel debuts Core Ultra Series 3 — first consumer chips built on 18A process technology, pre-orders start January 6
• World Labs demonstrates Marble — Dr. Fei-Fei Li showcases 3D world model creating physics-accurate virtual environments

🚀 NVIDIA Vera Rubin: Next-Generation AI Computing Platform

NVIDIA Unveils Vera Rubin — The Most Powerful AI Platform Ever Built

Landmark Announcement: At CES 2026 in Las Vegas on January 5, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang unveiled Vera Rubin, the company’s first extreme-codesigned AI platform featuring six integrated chips designed to revolutionize AI training and inference.

📋 Quick Takeaways

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang keynote at CES 2026 focuses on “what’s next in AI,” featuring robotics, autonomous driving, and next-gen GPU innovations
• AMD CEO Lisa Su delivers opening keynote unveiling Ryzen AI 400 series, refreshed desktop CPUs with 3D V-Cache, and enterprise AI roadmap
• Johns Hopkins research challenges AI training paradigm — brain-inspired AI models produce intelligent behavior without massive training data
• Boston Dynamics next-gen Atlas robot makes first public CES debut at Hyundai’s AI Robotics presentation
• Intel launches Core Ultra 300 (Panther Lake) — first chips built on revolutionary 18A process with 15% efficiency gains
• Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite delivers 44% better CPU performance per watt than Intel competitors

🚀 Nvidia CES 2026 Keynote: The AI Industry’s Most Anticipated Event

Jensen Huang Takes Center Stage for 90-Minute AI Showcase

Date & Time: January 5, 2026, 1:00 PM PT / 4:00 PM ET

📋 Quick Takeaways

• CES 2026 officially kicks off with Samsung’s “The First Look” presentation unveiling AI-driven customer experiences
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang set to deliver highly anticipated 90-minute keynote on January 5
• Anthropic challenges OpenAI’s $1.4 trillion compute strategy with “do more with less” efficiency approach
• Anthropic projects $26 billion revenue for 2026, up from $1 billion at start of 2025
• OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX all eyeing potential IPOs in 2026, with OpenAI targeting up to $1 trillion valuation
• Google wins Pentagon GenAI.mil contract with Gemini AI, challenging Palantir’s defense dominance
• Peter Thiel sells entire Nvidia stake, pivots to Microsoft for AI platform exposure

🚀 CES 2026 & Industry Keynotes

Nvidia CES 2026 Keynote: Jensen Huang to Showcase AI Future

Market-Moving Event: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will deliver a highly anticipated 90-minute keynote on Monday, January 5 at CES 2026, with investors and the tech industry watching closely.

📋 Weekly Summary

The transition into 2026 has been marked by seismic shifts in capital and competition. SoftBank redefined the landscape with a massive $40 billion investment in OpenAI, while Google surged past its rival in user metrics, prompting a “code red” at OpenAI. The industry is bracing for a historic year of IPOs with combined valuations potentially exceeding $1.5 trillion. Meanwhile, CES 2026 signaled the arrival of physical AI, with Boston Dynamics and LG debuting next-gen robotics. DeepSeek continued to challenge Western dominance with efficient architecture, and Agentic AI became the new standard for interoperability.