Saturday, 31 January 2026
Welcome to today's roundup of the most interesting developments in AI and technology.
Top Stories
A peek inside Physical Intelligence, the startup building Silicon Valley’s buzziest robot brains
If co-founder Lachy Groom has any doubts, he doesn’t show it. He’s working with people who've been working on this problem for decades and who believe the timing is finally right, which is all he need
Read moreOpenClaw’s AI assistants are now building their own social network
The viral personal AI assistant formerly known as Clawdbot has a new shell — again. After briefly rebranding as Moltbot, it has now picked OpenClaw as its new name.
Read moreAnthropic brings agentic plug-ins to Cowork
The company says you can use plug-ins to "tell Claude how you like work done, which tools and data to pull from, how to handle critical workflows, and what slash commands to expose so your team gets m
Read moreLast 24 hours to grab your plus-one pass at 50% off to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Today is the last day to lock in a plus-one pass at 50% off to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, happening on October 13-15 in San Francisco.
Read moreGuys, I don’t think Tim Cook knows how to monetize AI
One intrepid Morgan Stanley analyst dared to ask how Apple will make money on its AI investments. The answer will not shock you.
Read moreElon Musk’s SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI in talks to merge, according to reports
This merger would bring the Grok chatbot, Starlink satellites, and SpaceX rockets together under one corporation.
Read moreAmazon is reportedly in talks to invest $50B in OpenAI
If a deal materializes, it would mean Amazon is backing competing startups in the race for AI supremacy.
Read moreSatya Nadella insists people are using Microsoft’s Copilot AI a lot
With Microsoft spending many billions on data centers, and rumors that no one is using its AI, CEO Satya Nadella shared some usage numbers.
Read moreApple buys Israeli startup Q.ai as the AI race heats up
Q.ai is an Israeli startup specializing in imaging and machine learning, particularly technologies that enable devices to interpret whispered speech and enhance audio in noisy environments.
Read moreI built marshmallow castles in Google’s new AI-world generator
Starting Thursday, Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. can play around with Project Genie, which is powered by a combination of Google’s latest world model Genie 3, its image generation model Nano
Read moreOpenAI’s Sora app is struggling after its stellar launch
New data suggests the app is seeing declines in both app downloads and consumer spending, as the early hype about the AI video social network wears off.
Read moreMusic publishers sue Anthropic for $3B over ‘flagrant piracy’ of 20,000 works
Originally, these music publishers had filed a lawsuit against Anthropic over its use of about 500 copyrighted works.
Read moreIndia is teaching Google how AI in education can scale
With the highest global usage of Gemini for learning, India is emerging as a key market shaping Google's approach to AI in education.
Read moreFlapping Airplanes and the promise of research-driven AI
A new AI lab called Flapping Airplanes launched yesterday, and a Sequoia partner has an interesting take on why they stand out.
Read moreGoogle Maps now lets you access Gemini while walking and cycling
When you're walking around and navigating with Maps, you can now ask Gemini questions like "What neighborhood am I in?" or "What are top-rated restaurants nearby?"
Read moreZuckerberg 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 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.
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