Good morning. It's Friday, January 9, and we're covering MediaTek’s AI chip bet, AI drug discovery, Gmail’s shift to Gemini, and more. First time reading? Join a community of 600k+ people keeping up with the future of tech. Sign up here.
⚖️ Musk–OpenAI Lawsuit Heads To Jury Trial
A U.S. judge ruled there is sufficient evidence for Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI to proceed to a jury trial in March 2026. Musk claims OpenAI and its leaders abandoned promises to remain a nonprofit by shifting toward profit-driven operations. He is seeking monetary damages tied to early funding and support he provided. OpenAI has called the lawsuit baseless and denies wrongdoing.
📈 DeepSeek Expands AI Reach Globally
A Microsoft report says DeepSeek is gaining traction across developing nations. Global generative AI adoption reached 16.3% by late 2025, though growth is faster in developed economies. DeepSeek’s free, open-source models lowered barriers in price-sensitive regions. Adoption remains limited in North America and Europe amid security concerns.
💰 NVIDIA Demands Full Prepay For China Chips
NVIDIA is requiring Chinese customers to pay in full upfront for H200 AI chips amid uncertainty over Beijing’s approval. Orders cannot be canceled or refunded, shifting regulatory risk to buyers. China has reportedly asked firms to pause some orders while deciding domestic chip purchase requirements. The move reflects NVIDIA’s effort to balance strong demand with policy risk in U.S. and China.
📧 Gmail Enters The Gemini Era
Gmail is rolling out new Gemini-powered features aimed at managing inbox overload for its 3 billion users. AI Overviews summarize long threads and answer natural-language questions about your emails. Help Me Write, smarter Suggested Replies, and a new Proofread tool expand AI-assisted writing. A forthcoming AI Inbox will prioritize important messages while filtering noise, broader rollout planned.
🤔 FRIDAY FACTS
Could Your Next Computer Be Organic?
Scientists have built a functioning computer motherboard using a material that’s entirely biological.
Keep reading to find out what it’s made from. 👇
📺️ FORWARD FUTURE LIVE
Today on Forward Future Live
📽️ VIDEO
AI News: LTX-2 Open Source, NVIDIA Rubin, ChatGPT Health, and More!
LTX2 goes fully open-source with local text-to-video, plus CES AI hardware, GPU price rumors, ChatGPT Health, NVIDIA’s open AV stack, and more.
🔲 SEMICONDUCTORS
MediaTek Pivots From Smartphones to Billion-Dollar AI ASIC Push
MediaTek is redirecting engineering resources away from smartphone chips toward custom AI accelerators and automotive silicon, betting the shift will unlock faster growth. Central to the strategy is a deeper role in Google’s TPU v7 “Ironwood,” where MediaTek helped design critical I/O modules—breaking Google’s recent pattern of working almost exclusively with Broadcom.
Volume production of the next-generation TPU is expected to begin in the third quarter of 2026, with Google targeting 5 million units in 2027 and 7 million in 2028, all fabricated by TSMC on its 3-nanometer process. MediaTek expects AI ASIC revenue of about $1 billion in 2026, rising to several billion dollars the following year, even as analysts warn the pivot could strain its long-term competitiveness in smartphones. → Read the full article here.
💊 PHARMA
AI Is Starting to Fix Drug Discovery’s Worst Economics
The Recap: The Economist argues that generative AI is beginning to materially improve drug discovery, an industry where only about 10% of human-trial candidates reach the market after 10–15 years and roughly $2.8bn per approved drug. AI systems can now identify targets, design molecules, predict toxicity, and streamline clinical trials—cutting costs and raising early-stage success rates. While long-term impacts remain uncertain, the piece contends that AI could reshape competition, regulation, and patents across pharma.
Highlights:
Only ~10% of drug candidates entering human trials reach the market, typically after 10–15 years and about $2.8bn per successful drug—economics that make pharma unusually failure-prone.
AI-designed molecules now show 80–90% success in early safety trials, versus a historical 40–65%, raising the odds of downstream success even if later-stage trials do not improve.
McKinsey estimates that full AI adoption could add $60bn–110bn a year to the pharma industry, spanning drug discovery, clinical trials, and internal operations.
Big tech is moving closer to the core of drugmaking: firms like NVIDIA and Google are offering AI-driven drug design tools, potentially shifting value away from traditional pharma over time.
Forward Future Takeaways:
AI is not eliminating risk from drug development, but it is attacking the industry’s most stubborn inefficiencies—early failure rates, timelines, and costs. If discovery becomes cheaper and faster, pressure will grow to rethink regulation, data-sharing, and even patent lengths to keep incentives aligned. → Read the full article here. (Paywall)
🛰️ NEWS
What Else is Happening
🚘 Ford Brings AI In-Car: At CES 2026, Ford unveiled an AI driving assistant that will debut in a mobile app later this year and roll out natively in new vehicles starting in 2027.
🚀 Alphabet Overtakes Apple in Value: Alphabet briefly passed Apple in market cap for the first time since 2019, fueled by strong AI gains as Apple lagged on delayed Siri upgrades.
🤝 OpenAI Acqui-Hires Convogo Team: OpenAI is acqui-hiring Convogo’s founding team in an all-stock deal and will wind down Convogo’s product. The move bolsters OpenAI’s “AI cloud” efforts and brings in specialized talent.
🤓 Pet-Translating Smart Glasses Debut: CES 2026 showcased AI glasses claiming “pet translation,” but thin demos and weak science make the feature look like vaporware.
💸 Spangle Hits $100M Valuation: Former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla’s AI commerce startup raised $15M Series A, tripling valuation as retailers adopt real-time personalization.
🧰 TOOLBOX
Trending AI Tools
⚙️ Lecca: AI automates engineering workflows for faster design and simulation.
🤖 Waver: Open-source tools for building custom vision-language models.
🎓 Coursebox AI: AI platform that automates course creation and boosts learner engagement.
🗒️ FEEDBACK
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🤔 FRIDAY FACTS
A Computer Made of Mushrooms
Specifically, researchers at the Unconventional Computing Laboratory in the UK have utilized mycelium (the root network of fungi) to create living circuits.
Fungal networks send electrical signals that look almost identical to neurons firing in a brain. By plugging electrodes into these networks, scientists can use the mushroom to process data—essentially turning it into a biological motherboard.
In recent tests, they successfully used the electrical activity of colonies of fungi to pilot a small robot. While slower than a Mac or PC, these "fungal computers" are robust, self-repairing, and biodegradable, paving the way for a new era of "organic electronics."
That’s a Wrap!
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Matthew Berman & The Forward Future Team
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