DeepSeek

Chinese AI startup that trained competitive models for under $6 million, challenging the Western approach of massive capital deployment. - Disrupting assumptions about AI infrastructure costs

The four largest cloud providers—Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon—guided to over $650 billion in combined AI infrastructure spending for 2026 during their February earnings reports, up sharply from $350 billion in 2025, and have begun tapping debt markets to fund the buildout. Microsoft and Meta reported on January 28-29 with divergent market reactions: Microsoft shares plunged 12% on $37.5 billion quarterly capex, while Meta surged on $115-135 billion 2026 guidance. Alphabet stunned investors February 4 with $175-185 billion capex plans—doubling last year's spend—while Amazon topped all on February 5 with a $200 billion pledge, 50% above 2025 and $50 billion over expectations, prompting a share selloff despite strong revenue beats.

Updated Feb 10

Chinese AI startup whose large language models are being integrated into TCM diagnostic and recommendation systems. - Leading Chinese AI model integrated into TCM platforms

For over 2,000 years, traditional Chinese medicine practitioners have diagnosed patients by reading pulses and examining tongues—subjective skills that take decades to master. Now AI systems are doing it in under two minutes. Robots perform acupuncture, machine learning models classify patients by constitutional type, and chatbots trained on classical medical texts dispense herbal recommendations. China has poured 22 billion yuan ($3 billion) into TCM research platforms and aims to deploy AI-assisted diagnosis across village clinics nationwide by 2030.

Updated Feb 1

The Hangzhou startup that proved China could match US AI performance at 1% of the cost, triggering market panic. - Disrupted US AI infrastructure thesis

The White House mobilized America's 17 national laboratories and tech's biggest players—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA—for what officials call the AI equivalent of the Manhattan Project. The Genesis Mission aims to double US research productivity in a decade by connecting supercomputers, quantum systems, and AI into one discovery platform. Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced 24 corporate partners at a January 11 summit, each signing up to cement American technological dominance. Days later, OpenAI and SoftBank committed $1 billion to a 1.2-gigawatt Texas data center, while NVIDIA's Jensen Huang unveiled hardware promising AI tokens at one-tenth the cost.

Updated Jan 13