Thursday, 29 January 2026
Welcome to today's roundup of the most interesting developments in AI and technology.
Top Stories
Zuckerberg teases agentic commerce tools and major AI rollout in 2026
Mark Zuckerberg says 2026 will be "a big year for delivering personal super intelligence."
Read moreMark Zuckerberg says a future without smart glasses is ‘hard to imagine’
Take Zuckerberg's outlook with a grain of salt. After all, he thought we'd all be hanging out in the metaverse by now.
Read moreTesla to invest $2B in Elon Musk’s xAI
Elon Musk's AI company xAI disclosed earlier this month it had raised $20 billion.
Read moreElon Musk teases a new image-labeling system for X… we think?
Elon Musk says X will begin identifying "manipulated media" but doesn't share details.
Read moreServiceNow inks another AI partnership, this time with Anthropic
ServiceNow partners with Anthropic just a week after announcing a partnership with OpenAI as the company takes a multi-model approach.
Read moreWhatsApp will now charge AI chatbots to operate in Italy
WhatsApp plans to charge developers of AI chatbots per message.
Read moreAI data labeler Handshake buys Cleanlab, an acquisition target of multiple others
The deal’s purpose is primarily to acquire talent, aka an acqui-hire, adding nine key Cleanlab employees to Handshake’s research organization.
Read moreChrome takes on AI browsers with tighter Gemini integration, agentic features for autonomous tasks
Google Chrome is adding Gemini in the sidebar and is rolling out an agentic feature for AI Pro and Ultra users.
Read moreTiny startup Arcee AI built a 400B-parameter open source LLM from scratch to best Meta’s Llama
30-person startup Arcee AI has released a 400B model called Trinity, which it says is one of the biggest open source foundation models from a U.S. company.
Read moreWith Apple’s new Creator Studio Pro, AI is a tool to aid creation, not replace it
Apple’s Creator Studio Pro leverages AI to help creators with tedious tasks — like finding clips or building slides — without trying to do the work for them.
Read moreModelence raises $3M to smooth out the vibe-coding stack
How do you build tooling for the AI software stack? A company called Modelence has an interesting answer.
Read moreTechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Plus-one passes are almost gone and only 3 days remain
The TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 plus-one passes at 50% off are almost sold out, and this deal ends in 3 days. Register here before this deal ends on Friday, January 30 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
Read moreThe AI infrastructure boom shows no sign of slowing down
ASML’s record orders show chipmakers are still betting big on AI data centers.
Read moreThe conference where founders scale: TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 tickets are now live at the lowest prices
TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 unites 1,100 founders and investors in Boston on June 23 for a day focused on real-world scaling insights and networking that pushes the needle. Save up to $300 on your
Read moreAnthropic, Apple, OpenAI CEOs condemn ICE violence, praise Trump
Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman spoke out against ICE enforcement tactics following Minneapolis violence, with one addressing concerns publicly and the other in an internal message.
Read moreWaabi raises $1B and expands into robotaxis with Uber
Waabi has secured a $750 million Series C round to accelerate autonomous trucking, and another roughly $250 million commitment from Uber to deploy 25,000 robotaxis exclusively on its platform.
Read moreGoogle pitches Gemini to students studying for India’s most competitive college entrance exam
Google's launch of practice tests for JEE follows its recent move to offer full-length SAT practice tests in Gemini.
Read moreEverything you need to know about viral personal AI assistant Clawdbot (now Moltbot)
Personal AI assistant Moltbot —formerly Clawdbot — has gone viral in a matter of weeks. But there’s more you should know before jumping on the bandwagon.
Read moreAnduril has invented a wild new drone-flying contest where jobs are the prize
This is a race series for software programmers and the brainchild of founder Palmer Luckey, he tells TechCrunch.
Read moreAnthropic reportedly upped its latest raise to $20B
Anthropic looks to raise $20 billion at more than $300 billion valuation, according to reports.
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