This Week in Tech (Week Ending Jan 16, 2026)
TL;DR - š„Anthropic's Claude for Healthcare; š¤Apple's partnership w Google deepens
Hey folks!
Happy Friday š Tech news below:
TL;DR -
š„Anthropic announced Claude for Healthcare, a new set of tools and resources that healthcare providers, payers and consumers can use for medical purposes.
š¤Apple has struck a multi-year partnership with Google to help get its artificial intelligence products back on track. Googleās Gemini will power Apple Intelligence features, including the delayed overhaul of Appleās lagging Siri voice assistant.
š Macro (Economic) and Trends
š®š· Iranās crackdown on nationwide protests has killed at least 538 people and even more are feared dead. Tehran warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be ālegitimate targetsā if America uses force to protect demonstrators. President Trump said that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on goods from any country ādoing businessā with Iran ā a group that could include China, India and Turkey ā as he increased pressure on Tehran over its severe crackdown on protesters.
šJerome Powell, Chair of the Fed Reserve, revealed the Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment. The Fed chair said the investigation was a pretext as part of President Trumpās ongoing campaign to pressure the Fed to lower interest rates.
š³ Late last week, Trump demanded a 10 percent cap on credit card interest rates and it took banks by surprise. And yet, bank executives appeared reluctant to voice disagreement - Many C.E.O.s are struggling just to get access to the administration while also seeking to express disagreement over policy.
š¹š¼The Trump administration is close to reaching a trade deal with Taiwan that involves significantly more investments from the islandās largest company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
šØš³The House of Representatives on Monday passed a bipartisan bill, the Remote Access Security Act, that expands U.S. export controls to restrict Chinese companiesā ability to remotely access advanced American AI chips at data centers outside China. The bill is the latest step in Washingtonās effort to limit Chinaās use of critical U.S. technologies due to national security concerns.
šØš³The Chinese government this week told companies it would only approve their purchases of Nvidiaās H200 AI chips under special circumstances, such as for university research and development labs. Meanwhile, the US imposed a 25% tariff on Nvidiaās H200 AI chips headed to China.
Trending - Microdramas: Microdramas ā short, serialized stories built for binging on mobile ā are gaining traction in the U.S. A new wave of apps ā such as ReelShort and DramaBox ā is bolstering the market, which has rebounded from the now-infamous downfall of Quibi.
Trending down - cleantech investments: Global venture capital investments in climate and clean tech have dropped nearly 50% since their high of 2021. Last week, Trump announced heās withdrawing from the worldās 33-year-old flagship climate treaty, making the U.S. the only country not to be part of it.
š¬ Micro (Tech Companies)
š¤Grok is no longer allowed to digitally undress people. Elon Muskās xAI said last night that it would no longer let the chatbot create certain sexualized images, after weeks of uproar over users applying the feature to pictures of women and children.
Amazon has started laying the groundwork to open a big-box retail store in the Chicago suburbs. That marks a return to similar plans for a Target-like store that Amazon shelved a few years ago.
CoreWeave hit its first chip delivery milestone at a data center in Denton, Texas, that itās building for OpenAI. Late last year, it warned investors that its fourth quarter revenue would take a hit because of delays with one of its data center providers.
š§š·Meta was ordered by Brazilās competition watchdog to put on hold its policy that bars third-party AI companies from using its business API to offer chatbots on the Whatsapp app. The agency has also started an investigation against the company to determine if the policy is anti-competitive. The order worked - a few days later WhatsApp is now allowing AI providers to continue offering their chatbots to users in Brazil.
OpenAI is reportedly asking contractors to upload real work from past jobs. This appears to be part of a broader strategy across AI companies that are hiring contractors to generate high-quality training data in the hopes that this will eventually allow their models to automate more white-collar work.
ElevenLabs CEO says the voice AI startup crossed $330 million ARR last year, and that it only took five months to go from $200 million to $330 million in annual recurring revenue.
š¹š¼Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced a record capital expenditure between $52 billion and $56 billion for 2026, as it tries to ease the capacity constraint on its production facilities.
Oracle is being sued by the Ohio Carpentersā Pension Plan. The group is alleging Oracle didnāt properly disclose it would need to raise additional debt to satisfy its roughly $300 billion cloud computing contract with OpenAI when it sold $18 billion in bonds last year.
Saks Global, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, began Chapter 11 proceedings this week.
Finally itās back! Digg just launched and itās kind of set up like a Reddit rival. Itās apparently focused on communities.
š¤ Biohackers rejoice: Daniel Ekās, the founder of Spotify, health startup Neko Health will open for business in NY this spring. The U.S. will be the third market, after Sweden and Britain, for Neko Health, which offers full-body diagnostic scans and is valued at roughly $1.7 billion.
Layoffs: Meta Platforms laid off about 10% of its Reality Labs employees (1000 employees).
š¤ AI News
Meta has created a new ātop-levelā effort called Meta Compute to oversee the construction and long term planning for the companyās data center needs.
Google is adding the ability for users to shop directly within its Gemini chatbot and AI Mode search tool. Googleās efforts come as OpenAI has been ramping up its shopping efforts in partnership with Stripe and Shopify.
š„ Anthropic announced Claude for Healthcare, a new set of tools and resources that healthcare providers, payers and consumers can use for medical purposes.
Anthropicās new Cowork tool offers Claude Code without the code. Built into the Claude Desktop app, Cowork lets users designate a specific folder where Claude can read or modify files, with further instructions given through the standard chat interface
šøxAI burned through $7.8 billion in cash in the first nine months of 2025, and had reported a net loss of $1.46 billion in the September quarter, compared with $1 billion in the first quarter
Anthropic reportedly cut off xAIās access to Claude models last week after discovering Elon Muskās AI lab had been using the rival system through Cursor to speed up internal development
Alibaba Group is connecting its Qwen AI app with the companyās e-commerce, online travel and payment platforms, in a major upgrade that enables the chatbot to serve as an agent helping users with real-life tasks like ordering food online and booking trips.
Bandcamp is banning AI music from the platform.
Seems like a lot: Morgan Stanleyās annual audio survey found that 50-60% of listeners aged 18-44 report consuming 2.5-3 hours of AI-generated music per week. YouTube and TikTok are the primary platforms where young Americans access AI music.
Alright alright alright: Matthew McConaughey is trademarking himself to fight AI misuse.
š¤ Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
Paramount is mounting a proxy fight against Warner Bros. Discovery in the takeover battle. Why it matters: Paramount has refused to increase the price of its WBD offer, arguing its bid is financially superior to Netflixās. Itās now become clear that it believes its best path to winning WBD is through legal pressure.
Amazon acquired Bee, an AI device that can be worn as a clip-on pin or a bracelet. With Bee, Amazon is gaining access to a wearable that could extend its reach outside the home.
Luminar has reached a deal to sell its lidar business to a company called Quantum Computing Inc. for just $22 million unless it receives better offers. Luminar, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December, already announced plans to sell its semiconductor subsidiary to Quantum Computing Inc. for $110 million.
Fundraising
Merge Labs, a āresearch labā dedicated to ābridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human abilityā and started by Sam Altman, raised a $250m seed round at a $850m valuation - with funds raised from OpenAI.
Deepgram, which has a platform for text-to-speech and speech-to-text models and more, raised a $130M Series C round at a $1.3B valuation and acquired a YC AI startup.
Harmattan AI raised a $200M Series B led by Dassault Aviation, becoming a defense unicorn.
Parloa, a Berlin-based startup developing AI agents, has raised $350 million in Series D funding from existing investors, valuing the six-year-old customer service AI startup at $3 billion.
Higgsfield, an AI video startup founded by ex-Snap exec, raised additional funds when it shared its $200 million annual revenue run rate, got more interest and opened its previous Series A round back up and sold another $80 million in shares at a $1.3bn valuation.
Partnerships
āļøApple has struck a multi-year partnership with Google to help get its artificial intelligence products back on track. Googleās Gemini will power Apple Intelligence features, including the delayed overhaul of Appleās lagging Siri voice assistant. Why it matters: The partnership deepens Appleās relationship with Google when OpenAI hoped the Apple partnership could drive billions of dollars in additional revenue to the startup.
OpenAI announced a computing partnership with AI chip startup Cerebras Systems. As part of the deal, OpenAI plans to purchase 750 megawatts of computing power from the company through 2028.
ā±ļø Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
Barbie is launching its first autistic doll, developed with the autism community and designed to reflect sensory and communication differences.
Another podcast? Pete Davidson is launching Netflixās first original video podcast.
New Tomb Raider reboot starring Sophie Turner coming down the pipeline!
š„ššThe Golden Globes happened this past weekend and here are the red carpet looks! āOne Battle After Anotherā, āAdolescenceā and Warner Bros Discovery studio were the big winners. Plus: everybody really enjoyed Leo gifting us some more gifs:
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