Emil Protalinski

6 Nvidia announcements you should know about from Computex 2026:

Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI’s valuation. Anthropic has raised a $65 billion Series H funding round at a $965 billion post-money valuation (www.anthropic.com/news/series-h). This is more than double Anthropic’s previous valuation in February and above OpenAI's $852 billion valuation in March.

Would you pay for Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp? Meta has globally rolled out Facebook Plus for $4 per month, Instagram Plus for $4 per month, and WhatsApp Plus for $3 per month (techcrunch.com/2026/05/27/m...).

Should Apple put Intel inside again? Apple has reportedly held exploratory talks with Intel and Samsung about producing processors for its devices in the United States (www.bloomberg.com/news/article...).

5 things you should know about OpenAI’s GPT-5.5:

Apple wants to take on Meta smart glasses by giving you options. Apple’s next major product category will be display-free AI smart glasses. Apple is reportedly testing four frame styles, three colors, and a camera system with vertically oriented oval lenses (www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...).

5 things you should know about Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview:

SpaceX has filed to go public. Forget OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s IPOs; SpaceX’s IPO is set to be even bigger and happen sooner. SpaceX has submitted its draft IPO registration to the US SEC, putting it on track for a June 2026 listing.

Do you want SpaceX’s Starlink or Amazon Leo on your flight? Pick your airline carefully. Amazon has struck a deal to provide internet access on Delta flights via its Leo satellite business (www.wsj.com/business/air...).

Would you verify your ID on Reddit? Sooner or later, you may have to. Reddit says it will start labeling automated accounts that are providing a service to users and will now require accounts suspected of being bots to verify that they are human (www.reddit.com/user/spez/co...).

RIP, Sora. OpenAI has announced it will discontinue products that use its AI video models (www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...), including its Sora consumer app, the Sora version for developers, and the Sora video feature inside ChatGPT.

Would you use a “superapp” from OpenAI? OpenAI plans to merge its ChatGPT chatbot, its Codex coding tool, and its Atlas AI browser into a one desktop superapp to simplify the user experience (www.wsj.com/tech/openai-...). The mobile ChatGPT app will remain unchanged.

6 things you should know from Nvidia GTC 2026: In sum, GTC 2026 is about making sure Nvidia dominates not just AI training, but AI inference, autonomous AI agents, data centers in space, gaming, and robotaxis. Put another way, Nvidia wants to be the first $6 trillion company.

The foldable iPhone will work like an iPad, kinda. Apple plans to update iOS so that the upcoming device can feature iPad-like layouts, a wide aspect ratio, and side-by-side apps to enable multitasking (www.bloomberg.com/news/article...).

Should Samsung double down on AI in its phones? Samsung's consumer device chief, TM Roh, says the company is “open to strategic co-operation” with more AI companies, after recently adding Perplexity to its mobile OS (www.ft.com/content/3752...).

Would you buy a MacBook powered by an iPhone chip? Apple has unveiled the MacBook Neo, which features a 13-inch Liquid Retina display, an A18 Pro chip, 8GB of RAM, a 16-hour battery life, Dolby Atmos side-firing speakers, a 1080p webcam, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and two USB-C ports.

Do you want the M5 MacBook Air or M5 MacBook Pro? They will cost you more than the M4 models.

OpenAI has announced the biggest funding deal yet, again. The AI startup has raised $110 billion at a $730 pre-money billion valuation, up from its secondary sale that let current and former employees sell shares at a $500 billion valuation in October 2025.

Should Stripe acquire PayPal? Honestly, probably not, but let’s take a look anyway. Stripe, which is privately held, has expressed preliminary interest in acquiring PayPal, which is publicly held, or buying some of its assets (www.bloomberg.com/news/article...).

Last week, Meta committed to buying millions of Nvidia Blackwell and Rubin GPUs in a multiyear deal (nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/meta-bu...). This week, Meta has agreed to acquire up to 6GW worth of AMD Instinct GPUs over the next five years (www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta...).

Amazon now makes more money than Walmart. Amazon has dethroned Walmart as the world's largest company by revenue (www.bloomberg.com/news/article...). Earlier this month, Amazon reported $716.9 billion in 2025 sales, and today, Walmart reported $713.2 billion for the 12 months ending on January 31.

Would you buy an AI wearable from Apple? Apple is reportedly ramping up work on three AI wearables featuring cameras and built around Siri, including AirPods, a pendant, and smart glasses (www.bloomberg.com/news/article...). In all three, Siri would rely on a camera system to carry out actions.

Anthropic is gaining on OpenAI where it matters most: money. Anthropic has raised a $30 billion Series G at a $380 billion post-money valuation (www.anthropic.com/news/anthrop...). While OpenAI was already valued at $500 billion in October 2025, Anthropic is clearly catching up.

Paramount has sweetened its WBD offer, hurting Netflix’s chances. Paramount Skydance has added a “ticking fee” that is equivalent to roughly $650 million in cash value each quarter for every quarter the Warner Bros. Discovery deal is not closed past December 31 (www.cnbc.com/2026/02/10/p...).

Will you keep using ChatGPT now that it has ads? OpenAI says it has started testing ads in ChatGPT in the US for logged-in adult users on the ChatGPT Free and Go subscription tiers (openai.com/index/testin...).

Big Tech is blowing up AI spending in 2026. Combined, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are forecasting about $650 billion in 2026 capital expenditures (www.bloomberg.com/news/article...). That’s an estimated 60% year-over-year increase, mainly driven by data center construction.

Google wants to keep inflating the AI bubble. I don't blame them, but investors don't like it. Everything looked great in Alphabet’s Q4 2025 earnings report yesterday (www.linkedin.com/posts/emilpr...), from Google Cloud to Gemini to YouTube, until investors saw the capex 2026 figure.

Apple is embracing Anthropic and OpenAI for coding. Apple has updated Xcode with agentic coding and has integrated Model Context Protocol support (www.apple.com/newsroom/202...) into its IDE. Starting with Xcode 26.3, developers can use Anthropic's Claude Agent and OpenAI's Codex directly in Xcode.

SpaceX acquired xAI. After rumors that SpaceX and xAI were in talks to merge and that SpaceX was also considering a potential merger with Tesla, SpaceX yesterday acquired xAI (www.spacex.com/updates#xai-...) “to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth.”

Should Elon Musk merge his biggest companies? SpaceX and xAI are reportedly in talks to merge ahead of a planned IPO later this year (www.reuters.com/world/musks-...) and SpaceX is also reportedly considering a potential merger with Tesla (www.bloomberg.com/news/article...).

Apple’s CEO is playing PR games with Minneapolis. It turns out that Tim Cook is a classic CEO coward. Cook attended a private White House screening of the Melania documentary hours after a US Border Patrol agent killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti and days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renée Good.

Should Siri be an AI chatbot? Apple reportedly plans to revamp Siri this year by turning it into the company's first AI chatbot, codenamed Campos, which will have both voice- and typing-based modes (www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...).

TikTok US is official, but who wins and who loses? ByteDance has struck a deal with a group of non-Chinese investors to create a new TikTok US entity and avoid a federal ban (www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...).

Should ChatGPT know everyone’s age? OpenAI says it is rolling out age prediction on ChatGPT consumer plans globally to identify users under 18 years old and apply automatic content protections (openai.com/index/our-ap...).

Netflix has sweetened its Warner Bros. offer, hurting Paramount's chances. Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery say Netflix has revised its offer to an all-cash deal for $27.75/share. In other words, the total is still the same at $82.7 billion, but this time there's no $59 billion in debt financing.

Do you use Threads, X, or neither? Meta’s Threads has surpassed Elon Musk’s X in daily active users on mobile. More specifically, as of January 7, Threads had 141.5 million daily active users on Android and iOS, while X had 125M daily active users, according to Similarweb.

Would you use ChatGPT if it had ads? Well, they’re coming. OpenAI says it plans to test ads below ChatGPT replies for users of the ChatGPT free and Go tiers in the US (openai.com/index/our-ap...).

Would you rather pay once or monthly forever? Elon Musk says that after February 14, Tesla will stop selling FSD, which stands for Full Self-Driving but of course isn’t actually full self-driving. Tesla will instead offer FSD only as a monthly subscription.

Apple has finally agreed to pay Google to fix Siri. Apple and Google have signed a multiyear deal under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology: blog.google/company-news...

Would you order a drone delivery from Walmart? It would be Wing, Alphabet's on-demand drone delivery service, delivering your groceries, over-the-counter medicine, or even hot lattes. Walmart plans to expand its partnership with Wing to another 150 stores, bringing the total to over 270 stores.

Do you use Gmail’s AI features? If you do, you’ll probably like Google’s updates. If you don’t, well, buckle up. Google has unveiled an AI Inbox view for Gmail that shows you to-dos and summaries of topics rather than a traditional email list: blog.google/products-and...

Do you ask ChatGPT medical questions? To capitalize on the trend, OpenAI has unveiled ChatGPT Health, a dedicated space for health conversations in ChatGPT that lets you import medical records and other data from wellness apps into the chatbot: openai.com/index/introd...

6 Nvidia announcements you should know from CES 2026:

Would you buy an audio device from OpenAI? The startup is reportedly improving its audio AI models in preparation for the launch of an AI-powered personal device, which is expected to be largely audio-based. Also, it’s common knowledge that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is obsessed with the movie Her.

Would you trust Meta to run your AI agents? Meta’s 3 billion users as well as businesses everywhere might soon have to answer that question. Meta has acquired Singapore-based AI agent startup Manus for reportedly over $2 billion: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta...

Nvidia is not acquiring its competitor, Groq. Antitrust makes AI deals complicated, so let me explain.

What do robotaxis do in a power outage? Apparently, they stop moving and cause traffic jams everywhere. Waymo had to temporarily suspend its ride-hailing service in San Francisco during a citywide blackout because traffic lights that weren’t working halted its vehicles.

No, TikTok hasn't been sold. Yes, TikTok has signed a deal to sell its US unit, according to an internal memo, but the devil is in the details: www.cnbc.com/2025/12/18/t...

Would you watch the Oscars on YouTube? If you wait a few years, that will be your only option. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has signed a multiyear deal that gives YouTube the exclusive global rights to the Oscars from 2029 through 2033: blog.youtube/news-and-eve...

Warner Bros. Discovery wants Netflix, not Paramount.

Would you use PayPal if it was a bank? Buy now, pay later firms and crypto companies are making moves to become banks, and PayPal wants to join the party. PayPal says it has filed applications with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the FDIC to establish PayPal Bank.

RIP, iRobot. Long live Roomba. iRobot has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after reaching a restructuring agreement to hand over control to its secured lender and key Chinese supplier Shenzhen Picea and Santrum Hong Kong: media.irobot.com/2025-12-14-i...

5 things you should know about OpenAI’s GPT-5.2:

Disney is betting on OpenAI over Google. If you like Sora (www.linkedin.com/posts/emilpr...) videos, you’ll love this. Disney and OpenAI have signed a three-year licensing deal to bring more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters to Sora.

SpaceX is getting ready to go public. SpaceX is reportedly planning an IPO for as soon as mid-to-late 2026, seeking to raise significantly more than $30 billion and targeting a valuation of about $1.5 trillion for the entire company, which would make it the largest IPO to date.

The US and China have an AI chip deal, or do they? President Trump says the US will let Nvidia ship its H200 chips to “approved customers” in China and elsewhere, on the condition that the US gets a 25% cut: www.cnbc.com/2025/12/08/t...

Paramount is trying to stop Netflix’s Warner Bros. deal. I said this would happen. Paramount has launched a hostile bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, offering WBD shareholders $30 per share in a $108.4 billion all-cash deal: www.cnbc.com/2025/12/08/p...

Netflix is buying Warner Bros., beating out Paramount and Comcast. Netflix has agreed to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery's studios and streaming business in an $82.7 billion cash-and-stock deal. So, Netflix would kill HBO Max by buying Warner Bros. Discovery without the Discovery.

Meta is cutting back on the metaverse. It’s a little awkward given that Facebook renamed itself to Meta as part of its bet that the metaverse will be the future.

5 announcements from AWS re:Invent 2025:

OpenAI wants 220M paying ChatGPT users by 2030. The world’s biggest startup is planning to use the same playbook that Slack and Zoom did when they were growing exponentially: hook most of your users with the free version, and then convince their employers to sign up for enterprise subscriptions.

Meta is considering ditching Nvidia for Google. Google has reportedly started pitching customers on the idea of using its TPUs in their data centers. Meta is in talks with Google about spending billions of dollars to rent chips from Google Cloud in 2026 and to use Google’s TPUs directly in 2027.

Is Nvidia going to burst the AI bubble? If that’s going to happen, it won’t be this year -- just look at its Q3 earnings report: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... Nvidia grew Q3 revenue by 62% and profit by 65%, driven by Data Center revenue up 66%.

3 things you need to know about Gemini 3:

RIP Project Kuiper. Long live Amazon Leo: www.aboutamazon.com/news/amazon-... The name “Project Kuiper” was inspired by the Kuiper Belt, a ring of asteroids in our outer solar system, while the Leo name is a nod to the “low Earth orbit” satellite constellation that powers the broadband network.

Waymo is hitting the freeway. The Alphabet subsidiary has become the first robotaxi provider to offer driverless rides on freeways: waymo.com/blog/2025/11... The service is available 24/7 in the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, rolling out gradually to more and more users.

Is Anthropic a more responsible OpenAI? Anthropic plans to spend $50 billion on a US AI infrastructure buildout in partnership with Fluidstack. Anthropic says it is “constructing data centers in Texas and New York that will create thousands of American jobs.”

Do you want your phone to work with satellites? Apple is aiming to support “natural usage,” meaning you would no longer have to physically point your device toward the sky… it would just stay connected to satellites even when it’s in your pocket, your car, or indoors.

Will Tesla really pay Elon Musk $1 trillion? Tesla shareholders have approved Elon Musk’s record-setting package, divided into 12 tranches of stock tied to company milestones, with over 75% voting in favor. The pay package is supposed to motivate the world’s richest man with additional stock.

How much should Apple pay Google to fix Siri? The two companies are reportedly finalizing a deal for Apple to pay Google about $1 billion per year for a 1.2 trillion-parameter Gemini model. The current model that powers Apple Intelligence has 150 billion parameters.

Amazon has sued Perplexity, accusing Perplexity of computer fraud by failing to disclose when its Comet browser is shopping for a real person. Amazon’s lawsuit follows its cease-and-desist letter demanding that Perplexity stop its Comet browser from making purchases on users' behalf.

Would you buy a Mac with an iPhone chip? Apple reportedly plans to launch a low-cost laptop featuring an iPhone chip and a lower-end LCD screen in H1 2026. The device is supposed to rival Chromebooks and entry-level Windows PCs, meaning it’s aimed at students, businesses, and casual users.

Amazon has won OpenAI's business. OpenAI and Amazon have signed a seven-year deal in which OpenAI will pay AWS $38 billion for AI compute, including training its models and processing ChatGPT queries using Amazon's data centers and using Amazon’s CPUs to power agentic AI.

Disney-owned channels have disappeared from YouTube TV. After Disney and Google failed to reach a new carriage deal, about 10 million YouTube TV subscribers lost access to over 20 channels overnight, including ABC, ESPN, and FX. That means no college and pro sports nor sitcoms and dramas.

AI has come for YouTube’s employees. You wouldn’t be able to tell from Alphabet’s Q3 2025 earnings report yesterday, which noted revenue up 16% YoY, Cloud revenue up 34% YoY, and net income up 33% YoY: www.linkedin.com/posts/emilpr...

5 things you need to know from Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2025:

Microsoft has survived OpenAI’s restructuring. OpenAI says it has “completed our recapitalization”, which means that the nonprofit entity continues to control and now holds equity in the for-profit corporation currently valued at approximately $130 billion: openai.com/index/built-...

Amazon’s AI layoffs have begun. Amazon plans to eliminate approximately 14,000 jobs: www.aboutamazon.com/news/company... As of June 30, Amazon employed about 1.55 million people globally, but only about 350,000 are corporate employees, meaning that the 14,000 represents 4% of that headcount.

AI is now helping fake expenses. Employees are increasingly using generative AI to create fake receipts and claim reimbursement for nonexistent expenses: www.ft.com/content/0849... It seems like some employees have taken their companies’ “AI-first” messaging a little too literally.

Anthropic is doubling down on Google Cloud. Anthropic and Google have announced an expanded cloud partnership worth tens of billions of dollars, giving Anthropic access to up to 1 million TPUs for over 1 gigawatt of AI compute capacity. Those aren't quite OpenAI-scale numbers, but they’re big.

Reddit has sued Perplexity. This is after Reddit set a trap for Perplexity, and Perplexity fell for it. Reddit created a post that could only be crawled by Google, and “within hours,” Perplexity allegedly “produced the contents” of that post.

Robots are going to steal Amazon jobs. According to internal Amazon documents, however, the company’s automation team believes Amazon can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the US it would otherwise need by 2027 and more than 600,000 people by 2033.

Would you use a browser from OpenAI? The world’s biggest startup has launched ChatGPT Atlas, its web browser available now for macOS and “coming soon” for Windows, iOS, and Android. Atlas has an opt-in browser memories feature that lets ChatGPT remember key details from webpages you browse.

Would you buy a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen? Apple is reportedly preparing to launch a slimmer MacBook Pro with an M6 chip and an OLED touch display in late 2026 or early 2027. This is the second time we're hearing about this OLED MacBook Pro with a touchscreen.

Would you listen to AI-generated music on Spotify? Well, buckle up, because it’s coming. Spotify has partnered with Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group to develop “responsible” AI products. The company is even building a state-of-the-art generative AI research lab.

Would you trust Apple with your home security? Apple wants to release at least three new types of devices, including a home security camera for the end of 2026, a home hub display with a 7-inch screen for $350 that has been delayed to spring 2026, and a tabletop robot with a 9-inch screen for 2027.

OpenAI wants to build its own chips. OpenAI and Broadcom have agreed to co-develop and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom AI chips to run OpenAI's models over four years. The AI boom has turned Broadcom into a $1 trillion company. For OpenAI, this is more than just getting access to more chips.

Should Apple kill the Vision Pro? Apple is reportedly planning on unveiling M5 versions of the iPad Pro, the MacBook Pro, and the Vision Pro this week: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet... In addition to the faster chip, the Vision Pro will get an improved strap, but that’s about it.

Would you watch Instagram on your TV? Meta is exploring building a dedicated Instagram app for TVs as part of a deeper push into video, but Instagram chief Adam Mosseri says he isn't interested in licensing live sports or Hollywood content. In other words, Instagram wants to take on YouTube.

Would you play Netflix games on your TV? Netflix is making multiplayer video games available on smart TVs and streaming devices for the first time. Gamers will use their phones as controllers, but much of the play is on the big screen, meaning that Netflix is effectively going after Jackbox Games.

Do you hate loud TV ads? I’m talking about commercials that clearly play louder than what you’re currently watching. If you're in California, you're in luck, and frankly even if you don't live in the US state, you may benefit, eventually.

As ChatGPT claims consumers, Claude conquers corporations. Just look at the past two days, when Anthropic won over Deloitte and IBM.

OpenAI is investing in AMD. OpenAI and AMD have announced a deal in which OpenAI could take up to a 10% stake in AMD and deploy up to 6 gigawatts of AMD’s Instinct GPUs over multiple years: www.cnbc.com/2025/10/06/o... That’s notable, but the real elephant in the room is Nvidia.

OpenAI is now valued at half a trillion dollars. That makes it the world's most valuable startup, ahead of SpaceX. OpenAI reportedly completed a secondary sale that let current and former employees sell around $6.6 billion of shares at a $500 billion valuation: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Do you want to deepfake your friends? OpenAI has launched Sora 2, the latest version of its text-to-video model, which can follow instructions spanning multiple shots, is better at physics, and includes synched audio. The world’s biggest startup says this may be “the GPT‑3.5 moment for video.”