South Korea dropped Naver's and NCSoft's teams from its competition to develop its first sovereign AI model, as LG's, SK Telecom's, and Upstage's teams advanced (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg)
Bloomberg.com
Korea Cuts Naver and NCSoft Units From Intense Sovereign AI Race
South Korea dropped teams led by units of Naver Corp. and NCSoft Corp. from its closely watched competition to develop the nation’s first soverei...
Techmeme
South Korea drops Naver
By Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
AWS launches European Sovereign Cloud, creating a new parent company for its sovereign cloud that will be locally controlled in the EU and run by EU citizens (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC)
CNBC
Amazon's European sovereign cloud launch is a 'big bet,' AWS CEO Garman tells CNBC
The Amazon Web Services European Sovereign Cloud will be "physically and logically separate" from other AWS regions, the company said.
Techmeme
AWS launches European Sovereign Cloud, creating a new parent company for its sovereign cloud that will be locally controlled in the EU and run by EU citizens
By Arjun Kharpal / CNBC. View the full context on Techmeme.
TSMC projects capital spending in 2026 at between $52B and $56B, up 25%+ from 2025, and forecasts ~30% YoY revenue growth in 2026, both above analyst estimates (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg.com
TSMC’s Strong Outlook Fires Up Hopes of Sustained AI Boom
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is earmarking as much as $56 billion in capital spending for 2026, a stronger-than-anticipated projection th...
Techmeme
TSMC projects $52B to $56B in 2026 capital spending, up 25%+ from 2025, and forecasts close to 30% YoY revenue growth in 2026, both above analyst estimates
From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Scientists say that AI has become a powerful and rapidly improving research tool, and that whether it is generating ideas on its own is, for now, a moot point (Cade Metz/New York Times)
Can A.I. Generate New Ideas?
Systems like OpenAI’s GPT-5 are accelerating research in math, biology and chemistry. But there is a debate over whether it can do that work on i...
Techmeme
Scientists say that AI has become a powerful and rapidly improving research tool, and that whether it is generating ideas on its own is, for now, a moot point
By Cade Metz / New York Times. View the full context on Techmeme.
Chinese chipmaker SpacemiT, whose RISC-V-based K1 chip is used in industrial systems, robotics, edge computing, and AI devices, raised an ~$86M Series B (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg.com
Chinese Chipmaker SpacemiT Gets $86 Million in Fresh Funding
Chinese chip company SpacemiT raised more than 600 million yuan ($86 million) in a fresh funding round to speed up commercialization of its product...
Techmeme
Chinese chipmaker SpacemiT, whose RISC-V-based K1 chip is used in industrial systems, robotics, edge computing, and AI devices, raised an ~$86M Series B
From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Appfigures: global consumer spending in mobile apps on the App Store and Google Play rose 21.6% YoY to $155.8B in 2025, but app downloads dropped 2.7% to 106.9B (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
TechCrunch
App downloads declined again in 2025, but consumer spending soared to nearly $156B | TechCrunch
Global app downloads were down, but consumer spending was up to nearly $156B in 2025.
Techmeme
Appfigures: global consumer mobile app spending on Apple
By Sarah Perez / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
Microsoft agrees to buy a record 2.85M soil carbon credits from Indigo Carbon linked to regenerative US agriculture; a source values the deal at $171M-$228M (Reuters) https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/microsoft-record-deal-soil-carbon-credits-data-centres-surge-2026-01-15/
Techmeme
Microsoft agrees to buy a record 2.85M soil carbon credits from Indigo Carbon linked to regenerative US agriculture; a source values the deal at $171M to $228M
From Reuters. View the full context on Techmeme.
Hong Kong-based WeLab, which operates two digital banks in Hong Kong and Indonesia, raised $220M in equity and debt from HSBC, Prudential Hong Kong, and others (Denise Wee/Bloomberg)
Bloomberg.com
HSBC, Prudential in $220 Million Funding for Hong Kong’s WeLab
Hong Kong-based fintech firm WeLab Ltd. has secured $220 million from investors including HSBC Holdings Plc and Prudential Hong Kong Ltd. in its la...
Techmeme
Hong Kong-based WeLab, which runs digital banks WeLab in Hong Kong and Saqu in Indonesia, raised $220M in equity and debt from HSBC, Prudential HK, and others
By Denise Wee / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Blockchain-based lender Figure unveils the On-Chain Public Equity Network to issue, trade, and lend stocks natively on a blockchain, not as tokenized replicas (Kyle Baird/The Block) https://www.theblock.co/post/385595/figure-onchain-equity-network-aimed-remaking-stock-trading-lending
Techmeme
Blockchain-based lender Figure unveils the On-Chain Public Equity Network to issue, trade, and lend stocks natively on a blockchain, not as tokenized replicas
By Kyle Baird / The Block. View the full context on Techmeme.
Source: Apple's Google Gemini deal will be a cloud contract where Apple pays Google; another source says OpenAI declined to be Apple's custom model provider (Financial Times)
Client Challenge
Techmeme
Source: Apple
From Financial Times. View the full context on Techmeme.