LT Weekly: Jan 16, 2026
In this second week of the year, it was off to the races, especially as it related to a landslide of impactful updates and developments within the AI sector, across models, vertical applications, chips and infrastructure. It truly reached a new level.
Meanwhile, the major market indices modestly pulled back given policy/ geopolitical volatility, plus key bank earnings, though small caps bucked the trend (Russell 2000 +2%)
This week’s key updates and developments that we focused on include:
- Impactful Developments Regarding AI Models & Applications Lead Headlines This Week
- Another Forecast Points To $3 Trillion Of New Global Datacenter Spend During The Next 5 Years + Other Key Chip/Infra Developments
- Media Entertainment Data Stats Were On A Roll This Week
- Phishing-As-A Service & AI Have Propelled Scamming Volumes To New Heights
- Short Sellers Made Money In The Most Shorted TMT Stocks In Q4…
- A New Record Is In Sight For NBA Team Valuations…
- App Revenue Climbed In 2025 Despite Fewer Downloads, As Non-Gaming Apps Take The Lead
- Chart Of The Week – Is Software’s Underperformance Overdone?
- Grab Bag: Walmart & Wing Team Up For Drone Delivery / Meta Is Considering Doubling Production Of AI Glasses / Beijing Tells Chinese Firms To Stop Using US & Israeli Software
Enjoy the long weekend and rest up for the earnings storm which kicks off next week with bellweather Netflix reporting on Tuesday evening…
Best,
Leslie
Impactful Developments Regarding AI Models & Applications Lead Headlines This Week
We could have dedicated almost an entire edition to all the impactful AI related updates that emerged left and right this week across models, chips and infrastructure! To start on the AI model side of the equation, Apple kicked off on Monday with a splash announcement that it will be using Gemini and Google cloud infrastructure to power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri. On the Google side, this was certainly a boost regarding Gemini’s standing in the LLM market.
Also this week, Google’s Gemini released “Personal Intelligence” which essentially makes Gemini more personal, proactive and powerful by connecting Google apps. It is being rolled out in a limited fashion in the US next week and will expand availability over time. OpenAI’s announcement to start testing ads on ChatGPT also reflects an inflection in the sector and surely, we will be hearing more about this from other chatbots as well looking ahead.
Moving onto vertical applications, AI’s push into healthcare is accelerating. Following OpenAI’s announcement last Thursday the 8th, a string of further developments emerged this week including: OpenAI acquiring health data startup Torch, NVIDIA and Eli Lilly committing $1bn to a joint AI lab aimed at accelerating drug discovery, and Anthropic launching Claude for Healthcare with HIPAA-ready infrastructure.
Retail is another sector in full swing with AI experimentation and implementation and along these lines, Google this week unveiled an open platform Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), which was developed with partners including Wayfair, Shopify, Target, and Walmart. UCP allows for shoppers to move from “AI product discovery” to checkout with greater ease.