Markets showed turbulence this week as Trump nominated Kevin Warsh for Fed chair last Friday, sending the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq lower, while silver suffered its worst single-day drop since 1980; analysts, however, see limited long-term fallout. Amid this backdrop, Google reported over $400B in annual revenue, fueled by resilient advertising, accelerating cloud growth, and rising adoption of its Gemini AI, prompting plans for up to $185B in AI-focused capital expenditure despite investor concerns about spending. Tech stocks took a hit as a rapid AI-driven selloff erased nearly $1T from software valuations after Anthropic unveiled new tools, stoking fears of AI-driven disruption across business models, banks, and suppliers. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s anticipated $100B OpenAI megadeal stalled, with CEO Jensen Huang downplaying its likelihood; instead, Nvidia is expected to invest $20B while both companies will continue close collaboration as OpenAI explores alternative funding and prepares for a 2026 IPO amid intensifying AI competition.
We’ve published our Monthly AI Deck for January 2026. Check it out here.
Top 5 AI Highlights
[1] 🚀SpaceX’s $1.25T acquisition of xAI, the largest M&A deal in history, unifies Musk’s AI and space ambitions ahead of a potential IPO. Executed through a triangular merger, it avoids debt triggers, legal liabilities, and taxes. More on the acquisition and tax benefits.
[2] 🤖 OpenAI unveiled GPT-5.3-Codex, a 25% faster frontier coding model that helped build itself, accelerates AI development, expands beyond coding, and raises cybersecurity and safety questions. Separately, on February 13, 2026, OpenAI will retire GPT‑4o, GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1 mini, and o4‑mini in ChatGPT, as most users have shifted to GPT‑5.2. More on 5.3 Codex and GPT-4o.
[3] 🗣️ As Alexa+ rolls out in the U.S., Amazon is reportedly negotiating with OpenAI to customize models for Alexa, addressing ongoing AI shortcomings and intensifying competition with Google, Anthropic, and Apple’s Siri. More from Forbes.
[4] 💰 Cerebras raised $1B in funding at a $23B valuation, led by Tiger Global, positioning it to challenge Nvidia. The AI chip firm powers clients like Meta, IBM, and OpenAI’s $10B deal through 2028. (Bloomberg)
[5] 🏈 Anthropic released Super Bowl commercials that mocked OpenAI’s launch of advertisements in ChatGPT, sparking a sharp response from Sam Altman, who called them “dishonest” and accused Anthropic of being “authoritarian,” defending ChatGPT’s approach. Anthropic is also planning to offer employees a $350B share tender. See more on TechCrunch, Anthropic’s YouTube channel, and Bloomberg.
✨Open Source AI Development
[1] 🚨 Mistral AI dropped Voxtral Transcribe 2, adding Voxtral Realtime (open-weights Apache-2.0) for ultra-low-latency live speech + diarization—strong signal for on-device / regulated-industry voice workflows. More on Mistral
[2] 🧑💻 Qwen released Qwen3-Coder-Next, an open-weight model tuned for coding agents + local dev, emphasizing tool use and agentic workflows. More on Qwen.
[3] 📄 Z.ai launched GLM-OCR, an open OCR model aimed at complex docs (layout/tables/formulas) with supporting docs + release notes.
[4] 🧩 Andrej Karpathy open-sourced nanochat, a minimal end-to-end LLM harness (tokenize → pretrain → finetune → eval → inference + chat UI) meant to be hackable on a single GPU node. More on GitHub
[5] 🧪 OpenScholar, an open-source AI model using 45M open-access articles, outperforms humans and major LLMs in literature reviews, providing accurate citations and low-cost, locally deployable scientific research support. Dive deeper into Nature.
Founder’s Corner
Startup Layoffs 2018 to Q3 2025
Source: X
What We Read This Week
- Google DeepMind’s AI can analyze 3D athlete motion, helping snowboarder Maddie Mastro refine her form, rotations, and jumps. Team USA is seeing the potential to leverage the technology to enhance training, analyze performance insights, and increase fan engagement beyond the Olympics. (WSJ)
- A KKR-led consortium will acquire a 75% stake in major Singaporean data center developer STT GDC for $10.9B, boosting its Asia-Pacific AI-focused data-center portfolio. Deal closes H2 2026; Singtel retains 25%. (WSJ)
- Waymo is planning a $16B funding round, valuing it near $110B.Alphabetleads with $13B, withSequoia, DST, Dragoneer, and Mubadala expected to invest the remaining $3B.The company’s expansion is targeting more US cities and the UK. (Bloomberg)
- Varonis Systems is acquiring AI security firm AllTrue for $125M in cash, bolstering its AI trust and risk management capabilities as it shifts to SaaS amid growing AI governance and cybersecurity demands. (WSJ)
- Apple’s Xcode 26.3 adds agentic coding, letting developers use AI agents like Claude and Codex to build, test, and iterate apps with full access to project metadata, documentation, and automation tools. (TechCrunch)
- Gizmo, a TikTok-like app from Atma Sciences, lets users create interactive mini apps using AI prompts without coding. In under six months, it hit 600K installs, with high engagement and rapid growth. (TechCrunch)
- Uber named Balaji Krishnamurthy as CFO, signaling a push into autonomous vehicles. The company plans AV trips in 15 cities by 2026, backed by equity investments, partnerships, and $14.37B Q4 revenue. (TechCrunch)
Special Earnings
- Alphabet (Q4’25 / FY’25): 2025 revenue hit a record $403B, driven by AI-powered ads and cloud growth.Net income rose 30% to $34.5B. Capital spending will nearly double to $175–185B for AI/data centers.(WSJ)
- AMD (Q4’25 / FY’25): Revenue surged 34% to $10.27B, driven by a 39% jump in data-center sales. Adjusted EPS $1.53 beat $1.32 estimates, but shares fell 7% amid AI stock concerns. (WSJ)
- Palantir (Q4’25 / FY’25): Shares surged 7% after Q4 beat:$1.41B revenue vs. $1.33B expected, EPS $0.25 vs. $0.23. Strong but controversial U.S. government adoption and AI spending fuel growth, with major defense contracts boosting outlook.(CNBC)
AI Fundraising News (Jan 30 — Feb 5)
- Airrived: Agentic AI for enterprise security and IT operations, raised $6.1M seed
- Alaffia Health: Agentic AI for clinical review in health claims, raised $55M Series B
- Berget AI: Run open language models on Swedish infrastructure, raised $2.5M seed
- Cadastral: AI agent for commercial real estate workflows, raised $9.5M seed
- Cerebras: AI chipmaker with IPO plans, raised $1B round
- Datalinx: Converts raw customer data into AI-ready datasets, raised $4.2M seed
- Day AI: CRM with AI to flag deal and churn risk, raised $20M Series A
- ElevenLabs: AI-generated voice tools for enterprise and creatives, raised $500M Series D
- EnFi: AI agents for bank credit decisioning, raised $15M round
- Eliyan: Interconnect tech for AI and computing chips, raised $50M round
- Fieldguide: AI tools for accountants and audits, raised $75M Series C
- Fibr AI: Real-time AI adaptation for websites, raised $7.5M seed
- Levellr: AI insights from Discord for game studios, raised $2.5M seed
- Loop AI: AI platform for restaurant and retail ops, raised $14M Series A
- Lotus Health AI: AI-powered no-cost primary care service, raised $35M Series A
- Machina Labs: AI-driven metal manufacturing platform, raised $124M Series C
- MITO AI: Collaborative AI tools for video creation, raised $4.5M pre-seed
- Nixtla: AI foundation model for time series forecasting, raised $16M Series A
- Northslope: AI apps for orgs on Palantir stack, raised $22M Series A
- Nullify: AI workforce for product security, raised $12.5M round
- Orion Security: AI to track data and prevent leaks, raised $32M Series A
- Overland AI: Autonomous vehicles for military logistics, raised $100M round
- Pasito: AI for automating group benefits workflows, raised $21M Series A
- Phylo: AI biology environment for lab data management, raised $13.5M seed
- Poetiq: Meta-system for LLM reasoning across businesses, raised $45.8M seed
- Polaron: AI to analyze and guide material design, raised $8M round
- Positron: High-speed AI memory chips, raised $230M Series B
- Qureos: AI hiring platform for enterprise recruiters, raised $5M seed
- Recare: AI to manage hospital discharge workflows, raised $44.3M round
- Resolve AI: Detects and fixes live software failures, raised $125M round
- Sixfold: AI underwriting platform for P&C insurers, raised $30M Series B
- Skyryse: Aviation automation startup, raised $300M+ Series C
- Synthpop: AI agents for health insurance workflows, raised $15M Series A
- Uptool: AI price quoting for small manufacturers, raised $6M seed
- Waymo: Robotaxi company, raised $16B round
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