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Hardware is slimming down, funding is bulking up, and everyone’s quietly repositioning. AI slips into earbuds and glasses, satellites crowd low-Earth orbit, fusion pulls real checks, and Meta trims the metaverse fat to feed AR.
Meanwhile, SoftBank writes a $1.4B check on the belief that robots will finally stop breaking when reality shows up.
Less sci-fi, more balance-sheet consequences.
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Six bullets of updates
🎧 Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s team aims to reinvent wearable audio tech with a screenless AI gadget to rival AirPods.
🛰️ China aims to launch 200,000 satellites as it races SpaceX’s push for 50,000 Starlink units in the global satellite internet race.
🚗 Tesla shifts to subscription-only for FSD Supervised, impacting annual revenue and Musk’s massive pay deal.
🚀 Early-stage founders get a boost as a16z launches a new $600M fund focused on pre-seed and seed startups.
⚡ Investors bet $160M+ on next-gen fusion as Type One Energy refines its stellarator tech for clean power.
🕶️ Meta looks to double Ray-Ban smart glasses production after a reported surge in demand last quarter.
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Skild AI Reaches $14B Valuation With Major SoftBank Funding
Credit: skild.ai
Skild AI just closed a $1.4B Series C at a $14B+ valuation, led by SoftBank with Nvidia, Macquarie, and others in.
The pitch: foundation models for robots that learn from human demos, replacing brittle per‑task scripting with on‑the‑fly adaptation; so warehouse bots stop rage‑quitting at edge cases.
Implications: compute and data flywheels will pick winners; a dominant software layer could commoditize hardware; enterprises get faster deployments, while rivals face an arms‑race in fundraising or M&A.
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Investigating OpenAI's $25B (fake?) Data Center
OpenAI announced a $25B data center in Argentina, but nobody seems to know where it’s actually being built. In this video, we travel to Patagonia to investigate why OpenAI would place one of the world’s largest AI data centers in a region facing power shortages, droughts, and political volatility.
What we found was a trail of vague announcements, phantom companies, energy bottlenecks, and unanswered questions about water, power, and who really benefits from this deal. This is the real cost of scaling AI, and why where data centers are built matters more than anyone wants to admit.
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Payroll errors cost more than you think
While many businesses are solving problems at lightspeed, their payroll systems seem to stay stuck in the past. Deel's free Payroll Toolkit shows you what's actually changing in payroll this year, which problems hit first, and how to fix them before they cost you. Because new compliance rules, AI automation, and multi-country remote teams are all colliding at once.
Check out the free Deel Payroll Toolkit today and get a step-by-step roadmap to modernize operations, reduce manual work, and build a payroll strategy that scales with confidence.
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🔀 Multichannel boosts revenue and reduces risk; if operations stay systemized—in as little as 60 days .
🛠️ Keep it flat: one leader can handle 15; add managers ~20–25, use the "node & postgres" of management over shiny org charts.
🎬 YouTube tops 2.5B monthly users; pick the right help: consultant, channel manager, or growth expert , before you hire.
AI Pitch Deck Reviewer
Slidebean has been helping startups craft pitch decks for over 10 years.
We recently built an AI Pitch Deck Review tool, that processes the text and visuals on your presentation, and provides actionable feedback on the story, potential missing items, and recommendations on how to improve each slide.
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Meta Implements Significant Layoffs in Reality Labs Metaverse Division
Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash
Meta’s Reality Labs will cut 10% of staff (~1,000+ roles) and shutter VR studios; savings shift to AR teams, per a January 14 report.
Call it a metaverse crash diet: fewer in-house game bets, more protein shakes for AR, and the AI gym stays open late.
Short term: leaner first‑party content pipeline and a softer market for VR dev shops tied to platform funding. Medium term: AR components, CV, and input tech vendors could see tailwinds as budgets consolidate around glasses/controllers, with talent spillover into adjacent startups.