On January 12, 2026, Qatar is scheduled to sign the Pax Silica agreement, with the UAE set to follow on January 15, joining a U.S.-backed alliance focused on AI and semiconductor supply chains. The initiative groups nine countries in a "coalition of capabilities" to strengthen technology networks and reduce reliance on rival powers. Plans for 2026 include expanding membership, launching strategic projects and aligning policies to protect critical infrastructure and advanced technologies.

LG AI Research's K-Exaone foundational model has secured seventh place on the Intelligence Index compiled by Artificial Analysis, making it the only Korean entry in a top 10 otherwise dominated by US and Chinese systems. The model, built on a 236 billion-parameter MoE architecture and optimized for A100-class GPUs, topped 10 of 13 benchmark tests in a government-led competition and is available as an open-weight model on Hugging Face with free API access through January 28.

On Saturday, January 10, 2026, Elon Musk said X will roll out an update in seven days that exposes the code deciding which posts and ads appear in users' feeds. The platform plans to rely more heavily on its Grok AI chatbot to evaluate posts daily, even as regulators in multiple countries criticize Grok over sexually explicit image generation and consider or impose access restrictions.

On January 10 2026, leading Chinese AI researchers in Beijing said China could produce a world-leading AI company within three to five years, even though the US still dominates computing power. They warned that the main obstacle is the lack of advanced chipmaking tools, with a prototype extreme-ultraviolet lithography machine not expected to yield working chips until 2030. Investors have shown strong interest as MiniMax and Zhipu AI made notable debuts on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, while local firms experiment with running large AI models on smaller, cheaper hardware under tight budgets.

Meta secured 20-year nuclear power agreements with Vistra, Oklo and TerraPower to supply its Prometheus AI data center. On January 9, 2026, Vistra rose 10.5% to $166.38 and Oklo closed 7.9% higher, while Meta said the combined arrangements could support up to 6.6 GW of clean energy by 2035.

On January 8, Stripe announced a partnership with Microsoft to embed a Stripe-powered shopping and checkout experience directly inside Copilot for U.S. users. The integration uses the Agentic Commerce Protocol and Shared Payment Tokens so shoppers can discover products and pay within chat while merchants retain control of transaction data. Microsoft is also working with PayPal to enhance inventory surfacing and branded checkouts, and extending agent-based Brand Agents to Shopify merchants.

TSMC reported NT$1.05 trillion ($33.1 billion) in revenue for the quarter ended December, surpassing the NT$1.02 trillion forecast and marking about a 20% increase. Demand for Nvidia's AI chips and Apple processors contributed to the strength. The company will hold its earnings call on January 15, when it is expected to outline a 2026 spending budget of at least $48 billion.

Applied Digital shares climbed 6.73% in premarket trading on January 8, 2026, after the company reported fiscal Q2 2026 revenue of $126.59 million, up 98.2% year over year and well above forecasts. The AI data center operator also posted stronger-than-expected earnings and highlighted major hyperscaler lease deals in North Dakota, alongside a planned spin-off of its Cloud business into ChronoScale.