Daily AI Recap: Jan 15, 2026

Welcome to today's curated briefing of the most important AI developments.

• The AI lab revolving door spins ever faster: AI labs just can't get their employees to stay put....
• Taiwan to invest $250B in US semiconductor manufacturing: The U.S. struck a trade deal with Taiwan as the country looks to help boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing....
• AI video startup, Higgsfield, founded by ex-Snap exec, lands $1.3B valuation: Higgsfield says its on a $200 million annual revenue run rate. So it opened its previous Series A round back up and sold another $80 million in shares....
• The US imposes 25% tariff on Nvidia’s H200 AI chips headed to China: The Trump administration formalized its 25% cut of H200 chip sales in China with a tariff that applies to certain semiconductors....
• Generative AI in the Real World: Aurimas Griciūnas on AI Teams and Reliable AI Systems: SwirlAI founder Aurimas Griciūnas helps tech professionals transition into AI roles and works with organizations to create AI strategy and develop AI systems. Aurimas joins Ben to discuss the changes ...
• OpenAI invests in Sam Altman’s brain computer interface startup Merge Labs: OpenAI is participating in a $250 million seed round into Merge Labs, Sam Altman's brain computer interface startup. The startup is valued at $850 million....
• When Shapley Values Break: A Guide to Robust Model Explainability: Shapley Values are one of the most common methods for explainability, yet they can be misleading. Discover how to overcome these limitations to achieve better insights. The post When Shapley Values Br...
• How Nano Banana got its name: A Nano Banana-generated image showing yellow bananas spelling out 'Nano Banana' on a bed of additional yellow bananas...
• Wikimedia Foundation announces new AI partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity and others: The AI partnerships allow companies to access the org's content, like Wikipedia, at scale....
• How to Run Coding Agents in Parallel: Get the most out of Claude Code The post How to Run Coding Agents in Parallel appeared first on Towards Data Science....
• Parloa triples its valuation in 8 months to $3B with $350M raise: The massive round was led by existing investor General Catalyst, with participation from other returning backers....
• Do You Smell That? Hidden Technical Debt in AI Development: Why speed without standards creates fragile AI products The post Do You Smell That? Hidden Technical Debt in AI Development appeared first on Towards Data Science....
• The Beginner’s Guide to Computer Vision with Python: Computer vision is an area of artificial intelligence that gives computer systems the ability to analyze, interpret, and understand visual data, namely images and videos....
• Learners and educators are AI’s new “super users”: Teacher using a computer with students...
• The digital medicine for pharmacies: How AI is powering Kenya’s chemists: The post The digital medicine for pharmacies: How AI is powering Kenya’s chemists appeared first on Source....
• Investing in Merge Labs: OpenAI is investing in Merge Labs to support new brain computer interfaces that bridge biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency, and experience....
• Attention Consistency Regularization for Interpretable Early-Exit Neural Networks: arXiv:2601.08891v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Early-exit neural networks enable adaptive inference by allowing predictions at intermediate layers, reducing computational cost. However, early exits ...
• Mira Murati’s startup, Thinking Machines Lab, is losing two of its co-founders to OpenAI: The abrupt change in personnel was in the works for several weeks, according to an OpenAI executive....
• India’s Emversity doubles valuation as it scales workers AI can’t replace: Emversity has raised $30 million in a new round as it scales job-ready training in India....
• Strengthening the U.S. AI supply chain through domestic manufacturing: OpenAI launches a new RFP to strengthen the U.S. AI supply chain by accelerating domestic manufacturing, creating jobs, and scaling AI infrastructure....
• Jan 15, 2026Economic ResearchAnthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives: Jan 15, 2026Economic ResearchAnthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives...
• Open Responses: What we need to know: ...

• Spectral Generative Flow Models: A Physics-Inspired Replacement for Vectorized Large Language Models: arXiv:2601.08893v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We introduce Spectral Generative Flow Models (SGFMs), a physics-inspired alternative to transformer-b...
• XGBoost Forecasting of NEPSE Index Log Returns with Walk Forward Validation: arXiv:2601.08896v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This study develops a robust machine learning framework for one-step-ahead forecasting of daily log-r...
• DriftGuard: A Hierarchical Framework for Concept Drift Detection and Remediation in Supply Chain Forecasting: arXiv:2601.08928v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Supply chain forecasting models degrade over time as real-world conditions change. Promotions shift, ...
• Breaking the Bottlenecks: Scalable Diffusion Models for 3D Molecular Generation: arXiv:2601.08963v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Diffusion models have emerged as a powerful class of generative models for molecular design, capable ...
• ConvoLearn: A Dataset of Constructivist Tutor-Student Dialogue: arXiv:2601.08950v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In educational applications, LLMs exhibit several fundamental pedagogical limitations, such as their ...
• ART: Action-based Reasoning Task Benchmarking for Medical AI Agents: arXiv:2601.08988v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reliable clinical decision support requires medical AI agents capable of safe, multi-step reasoning o...
• The Hierarchy of Agentic Capabilities: Evaluating Frontier Models on Realistic RL Environments: arXiv:2601.09032v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The advancement of large language model (LLM) based agents has shifted AI evaluation from single-turn...

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