Artificial Intelligence: News, Business, Science

Jan 29, 2026

OpenAI's latest funding round might hit peak circularity. According to The Information, the AI company is in talks with Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon about investments totaling up to $60 billion. Nvidia could put in as much as $30 billion, Amazon more than $10 billion—possibly even north of $20 billion—and Microsoft less than $10 billion. On top of that, existing investor SoftBank could contribute up to $30 billion. If these deals go through, the funding round could reach the previously rumored $100 billion mark at a valuation of around $730 billion.

Critics will likely point out how circular these deals really are. Several potential investors, including Microsoft and Amazon, also sell servers and cloud services to OpenAI. That means a chunk of the investment money flows right back to the investors themselves. These arrangements keep the AI hype machine running without the actual financial benefits of generative AI showing up in what end users pay.

Comment Source: The Information

Jonathan Kemper

Jan 29, 2026

Short News

AI coding assistant Cursor now indexes large codebases in 21 seconds instead of over four hours. The trick: instead of building an index from scratch for each new user, Cursor reuses existing indices from team members. According to the company's blog post, copies of the same codebase within a team are 92 percent identical on average, making this approach highly efficient.

Diagramm: Merkle-Bäume vergleichen Dateihashes von Client und Server, synchronisieren nur unterschiedliche Einträge und löschen fehlende Dateien. — Merkle trees compare file hashes between client and repository, only synchronize files that differ and delete missing entries.

A Cursor study found that the semantic search enabled by these indices improves AI response accuracy by 12.5 percent. The technology relies on Merkle trees - a data structure using cryptographic hashes - to ensure users only see code they're authorized to access. For typical projects, wait times for the first search query drop from nearly 8 seconds to just 525 milliseconds. The startup behind Cursor shipped version 2.0 with its own coding model in October 2025 and now generates around $500 million in annual revenue.

Comment Source: Cursor

Jonathan Kemper

Jan 29, 2026

AI in practice

Google's new Chrome AI agent is supposed to book trips, fill out forms, and manage appointments

Jonathan Kemper

Jan 29, 2026

Short News

Google is working on a feature that lets users clone their own voice in AI Studio. According to TestingCatalog, a hidden option called "Create Your Voice" shows up when selecting the "Flash Native Audio Preview" model, which is currently tied to Gemini 2.5 Flash. Clicking it opens a window for recording and uploading audio, but the feature isn't functional yet. The discovery suggests Google is getting ready to ship native audio capabilities with Gemini 3 Flash. This would let developers create artificial voices based on recorded voice samples. Google released an update for Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio back in December 2025 that improved voice quality and made the model follow instructions more precisely.

Screenshot von Google AI Studio im Playground-Modus. Rechts in der Seitenleiste ist unter der Stimmauswahl "Zephyr" ein Button mit der Aufschrift "Create your voice" zu sehen, auf den ein roter Pfeil zeigt. Oben rechts steht die Modellbezeichnung Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio Preview. — The hidden "Create your voice" option in Google AI Studio hints at upcoming voice cloning functions.

In addition, a new option has been found that allows entire code collections to be imported via GitHub repositories. The start page is also apparently being revised and will display activities and usage statistics separately in future.

Comment Source: TestingCatalog

Maximilian Schreiner

Jan 28, 2026

Short News

China has authorized ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent to purchase Nvidia's H200 AI chips, Reuters reports, citing four people familiar with the matter. The three tech giants can import more than 400,000 H200 chips combined. Additional companies are on a waiting list for future approvals.

The approval came during Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's visit to China. Huang arrived in Shanghai last Friday and has since traveled to Beijing and other cities. The Chinese government is attaching conditions to the approvals that are still being finalized. A fifth source told Reuters the licenses are too restrictive, and customers aren't converting approvals into orders yet. Beijing has previously discussed requiring companies to buy a certain quota of domestic chips before they can import foreign semiconductors.

The H200 is Nvidia's second most powerful AI chip, delivering roughly six times the performance of the H20. Chinese companies have ordered more than two million H200 chips, according to Reuters - far more than Nvidia can deliver. Beijing had previously held off on allowing imports to support its domestic chip industry. The U.S. approved exports in early January.

Comment Source: Reuters

Maximilian Schreiner

Jan 28, 2026

AI research

Figure AI shows robot that really puts its hip into dishwasher duty

Maximilian Schreiner

Jan 28, 2026

Short News

AI startup Decart has unveiled Lucy 2.0, a real-time video transformation model. The system can modify live video at 30 frames per second in 1080p resolution with near-zero latency. Users can swap characters, place products, change clothing, and completely transform environments - all controlled through text commands and reference images while the video is still running.

According to Decart, Lucy 2.0 doesn't rely on depth maps or 3D models. Instead, the system's understanding of physics comes entirely from patterns learned during video training. A new technique called "Smart History Augmentation" prevents image quality from degrading over time, letting the model run stably for hours, the startup says.

The technology runs on AWS Trainium3 chips. A demo is available at lucy.decart.ai.

Comment Source: Decart

Maximilian Schreiner

Jan 28, 2026

AI in practice

Google Deepmind gives Gemini 3 Flash the ability to actively explore images through code

Maximilian Schreiner

Jan 28, 2026

Short News

OpenAI has launched Prism, a free AI workspace for scientific writing. The tool runs on GPT-5.2 and combines a LaTeX editor, reference manager, and AI assistant in a cloud-based environment. Researchers can create unlimited projects and invite collaborators.

The AI has access to the entire document and can help with writing, editing, and structuring. Users can search and incorporate academic literature from sources like arXiv. Whiteboard sketches or handwritten equations can be converted directly to LaTeX via image upload. Real-time collaboration with co-authors is also supported.

Prism is based on Crixet, a LaTeX platform that OpenAI acquired. The tool aims to eliminate the need to switch between different programs like editors, PDFs, and reference managers. Prism is available now for anyone with a ChatGPT account at prism.openai.com. Availability for Business and Enterprise plans will follow later.

Comment Source: OpenAI

Jonathan Kemper

Jan 28, 2026

AI research

Moonshot AI releases Kimi K2.5, claims most powerful open-weight model with 100-agent coordination

Moonshot AI has released Kimi K2.5, which the company says is the most powerful open-weight model available. The model can independently coordinate up to 100 AI agents working in parallel on complex tasks.

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