Week 2 in AI: CES 2026 defines the ‘Physical AI’ era with NVIDIA, Boston Dynamics, and LG. xAI raises $20B and Anthropic reportedly seeks $350B valuation. OpenAI enters healthcare market. Meta signs historic 6.6GW nuclear deal. AMD challenges NVIDIA with Helios rack. Industrial AI OS launches.

📋 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

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💰 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

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🚀 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.