Good morning. It’s Wednesday, January 14. Today we’re covering OpenAI’s cash crunch, Meta’s AI infrastructure push, robots learning in the real world, and more. First time here? Join a community of 600k+ people keeping up with the future of tech. Sign up here.
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🤖 Neo Robots Learn World With AI
Robotics startup 1X announced a physics-based “1X World Model” to help its NEO humanoid robots learn new skills from internet videos and text prompts. It feeds visual data into a shared model, improving robots’ understanding of real-world dynamics. 1X says this could enable bots to adapt to new tasks without explicit training. The release comes as the company prepares to ship Neo humanoids this year.
🚀 Salesforce Supercharges Slackbot With AI
Salesforce has launched a completely rebuilt Slackbot that operates as an AI agent rather than just a notifier. The new bot can search enterprise data, generate draft documents, and even perform tasks directly within Slack. The tool is included for Business+ and Enterprise+ customers. The move positions Slack against Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini in workplace AI.
🚪 Meta Cuts Metaverse Jobs, Bets On AI
Meta is cutting more than 1,000 jobs in its Reality Labs division as it shifts resources from virtual reality toward AI wearables and mobile features. The layoffs affect about 10% of the group and include closing several in-house VR game studios. Meta will continue developing the metaverse, but with a stronger focus on mobile experiences and less aggressive VR spending.
📜 Senate Moves To Fast-Track Deepfake AI Bill
Sen. Dick Durbin plans to fast-track the bipartisan DEFIANCE Act in the Senate. The bill would let victims sue over nonconsensual intimate deepfakes and AI-generated sexual abuse. The push follows backlash over chatbots producing explicit imagery. It builds on the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which soon mandates rapid platform takedowns.
🎭 REAL OR AI?
Quick test. One image. Two possibilities. Let’s see if you can still tell what’s real. Is this image real or fake? Answer at the bottom! 👇
🪧 POWERED BY ADOBE
Adobe Brought Popular Apps Into ChatGPT for Free
Adobe is bringing three of its industry-leading apps — Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Express, and Adobe Acrobat — directly into ChatGPT.
With Adobe apps for ChatGPT, anyone can edit photos, create designs, and transform PDFs in the most intuitive way possible: using their words inside the chat.
Adobe apps for ChatGPT expands Adobe’s reach to one of the world’s most popular conversational AI platforms with over 800 million weekly users, introducing Adobe’s category-defining tools to people who may not have used Adobe’s apps before — through a surface they already use every day.
📽️ VIDEO
AI Just Solved One of the Hardest Math Problems...
AI solved a legendary Erdős problem in minutes, marking a leap in frontier math and hinting at a self-improving intelligence explosion.
💸 CAPITAL
Why a Booming AI Market May Still Bankrupt OpenAI
Sebastian Mallaby, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that despite AI’s rapid progress and soaring adoption, OpenAI could run out of cash within the next 18 months. In an opinion essay, he makes the case that generative AI is fundamentally different from past software revolutions: it is extraordinarily capital-intensive. While more than a billion people now use generative AI tools each month, most do so for free, slowing revenue growth and pushing profitability further into the future.
That financial imbalance, Mallaby warns, is the real risk facing the industry. According to disclosures reported by The Information, OpenAI expects to burn more than $8 billion in 2025 and over $40 billion by 2028, with profits not projected until around 2030. His conclusion is stark: the danger isn’t an AI bubble bursting, but investors losing patience before returns materialize. If that happens, only cash-rich incumbents like Microsoft, Google, or Meta may be able to sustain the trillion-dollar infrastructure buildout AI appears to require, forcing independent labs into consolidation long before the technology itself hits a ceiling. → Read the full article here. (Paywall)
🏗️ INFRASTRUCTURE
Meta Launches “Meta Compute” to Massively Scale AI Infrastructure
Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is launching a new AI infrastructure initiative called Meta Compute, aimed at dramatically expanding the company’s computing and energy capacity. Zuckerberg said Meta plans to build “tens of gigawatts” of power capacity this decade and potentially “hundreds of gigawatts or more” over time to support its AI ambitions.
The move follows earlier capital expenditure guidance signaling that AI infrastructure would be a long-term competitive advantage for Meta. Leadership of the effort spans engineering, long-term capacity planning, and government partnerships—highlighting how central infrastructure has become in the generative AI race. → Read the full article here.
🗺️ GEOPOLITICS
Trump Administration Pushes “Pax Silica” to Secure AI Supply Chains
The Donald Trump administration detailed a new economic security framework—called Pax Silica—aimed at reshaping global AI and technology supply chains. The initiative brings together the U.S., Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and the United Kingdom to reduce reliance on China for critical inputs spanning minerals, semiconductors, energy, and AI infrastructure.
Officials say the strategy responds directly to China’s dominance over rare earths and its use of supply leverage in recent trade disputes. The administration frames Pax Silica as both a geopolitical counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and a tool to reindustrialize the U.S. and stabilize key regions through economic cooperation. → Read the full article here.
🛰️ NEWS
What Else is Happening
🔆 Walmart Taps Google Gemini: Walmart teams with Google to let shoppers find and buy items via Gemini, betting AI assistants will reshape retail discovery, checkout, and customer journeys.
🤓 Amazon Bets on Smarter Alexa Memory: Amazon is upgrading Alexa+ to remember user context across devices, aiming to outmaneuver ChatGPT by making its assistant more personal.
🔲 KeyBanc Upgrades Intel, AMD: The bank lifted both chipmakers to overweight as AI-driven server demand sells out CPUs, boosts pricing power, and fuels higher targets amid hyperscaler spending.
📈 AI Jobs Dominate Growth Rankings: LinkedIn’s 2026 list shows AI engineers leading U.S. job growth, while human-centric roles like consultants, data annotators, and healthcare specialists also surge.
🛡️ Pentagon Adopts Musk’s Grok AI: The Defense Department will deploy Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot across Pentagon networks, despite global backlash over safety, privacy, and content concerns.
🎭 REAL OR AI
This Image Was AI. Tune in next week for another Real or AI test.
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Matthew Berman & The Forward Future Team
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