Here are the latest technology news, breaking AI updates, and business developments this week in January 2026:
This Week’s Technology News
- Meta signed agreements with Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo to secure up to 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear energy to power the U.S. AI data centers.
- TikTok introduced the “For You” Calendar, a physical weekly planner created in collaboration with Linda Tong Planners, to help families organize their time and discuss digital habits.
- OpenAI and SoftBank Group invested $1 billion in SB Energy and signed a lease for a 1.2 GW data center to expand U.S. AI infrastructure.
- Google introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol and new AI shopping tools to help retailers sell through agent-based search and checkout experiences.
- Meta named Dina Powell McCormick as President and Vice Chairman, adding a former Goldman Sachs partner and White House adviser to its leadership team.
- Anthropic expanded Claude with HIPAA-ready healthcare tools and new life sciences connectors for clinical trials, research, and regulatory work.
- Google updated Veo 3.1 Ingredients to Video with native 9:16 output, stronger visual consistency from reference images, and 1080p/4K upscaling.
- Kaggle introduced Community Benchmarks, letting developers create, run, and share custom tests to evaluate AI model performance.
- TikTok has released its 2026 TikTok Next forecast, detailing how discovery, emotion, and real-time culture will shape user engagement with brands.
- Anthropic announced Labs, a new product incubator led by Mike Krieger to develop and scale experimental Claude-based AI products.
- Perplexity marked Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary by giving 2,500 Perplexity Enterprise licenses to Wikipedia editors to support research and verification work.
- Microsoft Advertising announced new customer acquisition options for the Performance Max campaign on January 15, 2026.
- Salesforce said Agentforce Commerce would support Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, enabling product discovery and checkout through Gemini and Search.
You may also want to check out some of our other tech news updates.
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