This Week in Tech (Week Ending Jan 23, 2026)
TL;DR - 🌎🇨🇭World Economic Forum; 🎧Hardware from OpenAI, Apple
Hey folks!
Happy Friday 😎 Hope you had a good short week! The World Economic Forum happened this past week in Davos. Tech news below:
TL;DR -
🌎🇨🇭The World Economic Forum in Davos featured Trump, Greenland, AI and more.
🎧Hardware is getting a spotlight: OpenAI is planning to introduce its first hardware device in the latter half of 2026. Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin that could be released as early as 2027.
M&A: Capital One buys Brex for $5.15 billion. Yelp buys AI agent startup Hatch for $300 million.
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
🌎🇨🇭😎The World Economic Forum in Davos this week: World leaders are not pleased with American rhetoric about taking over Greenland (the S&P 500 shed more than 2% on Wed as Trump doubled down on his desire to take control of Greenland. It was the index’s worst day since October) and they want distance from the US. 🦾 Most every conversation among the Davos elites centered on two topics: AI and Trump. More here.
Plus: French President Emmanuel Macron wore aviator sunglasses, allegedly meant to hide a burst blood vessel in his eye. But people were digging it. Why is it a headline? I don’t know. My reaction when I see stuff like this 👀.
🇬🇱 Why Trump is setting his sights on Greenland: Advisors say bringing Greenland into America’s fold aligns with the president’s national-security goal of dominating the Western Hemisphere.
🇨🇺 The Trump administration is actively seeking a regime change in Cuba by the end of the year.
📈The International Monetary Fund is raising its forecast for global growth, citing investment in A.I.
The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers to be ready for possible deployment to Minnesota, where federal authorities have been conducting a massive immigration enforcement operation.
❄️A massive and dangerous winter storm is set to pummel huge swaths of the country through the weekend. More than 70 million Americans are under a winter storm watch as of Wed afternoon.
⭕️ The builder of the Sphere in Las Vegas is planning to construct a “mini-Sphere” just outside D.C. at National Harbor in Maryland. It’s planned to open in 2030.
🤑The health of the economy increasingly depends on rich people spending money. Why it matters: That puts the U.S. in a fragile place because consumer spending drives growth — so the economy now relies on a smaller number of people to keep things afloat.
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
🇩🇰Apps for boycotting American products are surging to the top of the Danish App Store bc of the threat of US trying to acquire Greenland
The Federal Trade Commission said it is appealing a November ruling that cleared Meta Platforms of accusations that the company improperly monopolized the social media business.
The Department of Justice named three people to a technical committee that will oversee the implementation of the remedy for Google’s illegal search monopoly. The technical committee is tasked with enforcing the remedy against Google, which includes banning exclusive distribution agreements for Google Search and forcing some data sharing with Google’s rivals.
💃TikTok finalized a deal to keep operating in the US. by establishing a joint venture. The app will be operated by a new U.S. entity controlled by investors seen as friendly to the U.S. Its data-management and algorithm-training on American users will be overseen by Oracle, the cloud-computing giant that has safeguarded its U.S. data for years and has close ties to the Trump administration.
Netflix is rolling out a live voting feature: Netflix said that the feature will work globally, and the platform will tally votes in real time.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the retail giant is open to working with other companies to run their AI shopping assistants on its site, where it already offers its own shopping chatbot.
🧷Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin that could be released as early as 2027. The device would position Apple to compete more effectively with OpenAI, which is planning its own AI-powered devices, and Meta Platforms, which is already selling smart glasses.
📣 Netflix reported 17.6% higher revenue in the fourth quarter, ahead of its projections, and revealed that its ad revenue had more than doubled in 2025 to $1.5 billion. That was the first time the company had given a precise number for its ad business, which was launched just over three years ago. The company forecast that its revenue growth rate would slow to between 12% and 14% for 2026, well below last year’s 16% growth.
Shopify has told merchants that use its commerce software that it will open up sales through AI chatbots like ChatGPT later this month.
Spotify is bringing AI-powered Prompted Playlists to the US and Canada.
Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, is planning to build an ultra-fast satellite internet service aimed at large companies, data centers and governments.
Snap reached a settlement in its social media addiction lawsuit.
🤖 AI News
Elon Musk’s lawyers argued that although Musk only donated about $38 million to help establish OpenAI, OpenAI should have to forfeit all of the benefits they gained as a result of those donations - which could be between $65.5 billion and $109.43 billion.
Space-based AI: Elon Musk and his SpaceX team believe they’ve cracked the code on building orbiting data centers to power the future of AI — and plan to use the company’s IPO to help fund the vision. Sources say OpenAI also believes the future of AI is in space. Tesla is even restarting work on Dojo3, its previously abandoned third-generation AI chip, to dedicate it to “space-based AI compute.”
OpenAI is planning to introduce its first hardware device in the latter half of 2026. Many believe it will be earbuds.
OpenAI said Friday it will begin testing ads in ChatGPT in the coming weeks.
⭐️Thinking Machines Lab had some drama when it experienced an exodus of senior talent, many of whom jumped ship to return to OpenAI.
Anthropic
Anthropic released a revised version of Claude’s Constitution, a living document that provides a “holistic” explanation of the “context in which Claude operates and the kind of entity we would like Claude to be.” The document was released in conjunction with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“Claude-pilled”: Claude Opus 4.5 — used within Anthropic’s Claude Code tool — is prompting a sense of awe from programmers, followed by the realization it “could easily replicate expertise they had built up over an entire career.”
Anthropic last month projected it would generate a 40% gross profit margin from selling AI to businesses and application developers in 2025, 10 percentage points lower than its earlier optimistic expectations
Apple plans to bring more conversational capabilities to Siri, turning it more into a chatbot like ChatGPT. The update, codenamed Campos, will take advantage of Google’s Gemini AI model, part of a deal Apple announced with Google last week.
The next major AI battleground is the classroom, as Google, Microsoft and Anthropic race to make their tools the chatbots of choice for teachers and students. Why it matters: Whoever wins schools now could shape how Gen Alpha learns, studies and interacts with AI for years to come.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
Netflix has converted its Warner Bros. Discovery offer into all-cash to try and close the deal faster. Why it matters: Paramount has argued that its all-cash bid offers more certainty than Netflix’s previous cash-and-stock offer, which would have left Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders subject to the fluctuations of the streaming giant’s stock price. Netflix’s latest move eliminates that discrepancy.
Capital One struck a deal to buy payments and credit card startup Brex for $5.15 billion. That is a far cry from Brex’s last valuation of $12 billion during a 2022 fundraising.
Yelp agreed to acquire AI agent startup Hatch for $300 million, or roughly 12 times the startup’s annual recurring revenue. Yelp said it plans to operate Hatch as a standalone business as well as offer Hatch’s services to plumbers, contractors and other professionals that list on Yelp.
Fundraising
Clickhouse, a database management startup competing with Snowflake and Databricks, raised $400 million in a financing valuing the startup at $15 billion including the new investment.
OpenEvidence, the medical info database, hit $12bn in valuation, double its valuation from its last raise in October.
Partnerships
ServiceNow has signed a multi-year deal to pay for OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models in its business software, the two companies said on Tuesday. Under the agreement, OpenAI will now be the “preferred” AI model provider in ServiceNow’s software. In the past, ServiceNow let customers choose between AI models from OpenAI or other providers including Google and Anthropic.
Lemonade launches an insurance product for Tesla Full Self-Driving customers: Lemonade says it worked with Tesla to gain access to previously-restricted vehicle telemetry data, but declined to offer specifics.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
👗RIP Valentino Garavani, the last of the great 20th-century couturiers. He was 93.
🎭 An immersive “Phantom of the Opera” experience called ‘Masquerade’ has fans lining up in New York.
🛍️🙅🏻♀️Move over Dry January: This month, the new challenge is “No Buy January”, with Gen Z and Millennials challenging themselves to forgo buying anything at all.
🏆 Oscar nominations were released and ‘Sinners’ broke records with 16 nominations, including best picture and best actor.
Australia’s hot and it’s not just global warming: the “Australia effect” is taking off on social media, showing before-and-afters of people going to Australia and suddenly getting a glow up.
Wait, this song is by Joe Keery from Stranger Things? Yea apparently his singer name is Djo and the “End of Beginning” has hit the #1 track in the world on Spotify, unseating Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia”
✈️ So where’s everyone traveling this year? Eastern Europe it is.
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Hey, great read as always. Spot on, especially AI hardwere.