Place your bets for 2026’s big AI winners: Nvidia, OpenAI or Google? – News

It was a light holiday week, but AI never sleeps.

I’m going to leave it short and sweet, since you all have better things to do today, just a few bullet points on the big enterprise and emerging tech news:

* As AI reshapes the web, search engine optimization’s heyday for advertisers is starting to fade: Get ready for AI Engine Optimization.

* Dave Vellante and David Floyer contend that Nvidia will only gain strength in the coming year — just look at its $20 billion deal to siphon off talent from chipmaker Groq — while Google’s recent wins with Gemini not only won’t stop OpenAI but will expose its strategic challenges.

* Initial public offerings are heating up, as AI chipmaker Cerebras and fleet management software firm Motive filed for IPOs.

* TikTok owner ByteDance will spend $23 billion on AI infrastructure.

* Waymo’s self-driving cars froze up when the power went out in San Francisco.

* ServiceNow dived into cybersecurity with the $7.75 billion acquisition of Armis.

And here’s all the rest of the news this week:

AI and data: Nvidia vs. Google vs. OpenAI

Analysis and food for thought

Breaking Analysis: Why Nvidia maintains its moat and Gemini won’t kill OpenAI I’m not so sure I’d sell short Google’s ability to adjust its business model — especially when OpenAI’s appeal to enterprises and advertisers is so nascent.

Beyond SEO: How AI engine optimization is changing the equation in online visibility

Money matters

Nvidia to license technology from inference chip startup Groq in reported $20B deal

Snowflake reportedly seeking to acquire observability startup Observe for $1B

HCLSoftware to acquire Jaspersoft for reported $240M

Report: OpenAI explores ways to make money from ChatGPT with conversational ads Honestly all this sounds a lot like what Google has always said about its ads. Only potentially worse for the user. We’ll see!

DP Technology raises $114M to accelerate China’s AI for science industry

Report: SoftBank scrambles to find $22.5B for OpenAI before the end of the year

Incident remediation startup Resolve AI reportedly valued at $1B in new funding round

Kargo closes on $42M funding round to automate loading dock and warehouse operations

Lemon Slice launches with $10.5M seed round to scale real-time interactive AI avatars

Dazzle, a new AI startup led by Marissa Mayer, raises $8M

New models and services

Anthropic announces Bloom, an open-source tool for researchers evaluating AI behavior

Sigma launches privacy-focused AI-native browser with local LLM

MiniMax releases M2.1 AI model for multi-language programming versatility

Instacart shuts down dynamic AI pricing experiments following scrutiny of its tests

Around the enterprise: Enterprise IPOs ahead

Money matters

TiKTok parent ByteDance to beef up AI infrastructure spending to $23B next year

Google acquires renewable energy company Intersect for $4.75B

Report: AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems rekindles IPO plans, targeting early 2026 listing

Motive, an Alphabet-backed fleet management software company, files for IPO

Investing analytics software maker Clearwater agrees to be taken private in $8.4B deal

New services

Texas developer pitches recycled Navy nuclear reactors as power source for AI infrastructure

Policy

Nvidia hopes to ship first H200 GPUs to China by February, report claims

Apple fined $116M in Italy over ATT privacy feature in iOS

Cyber beat: ServiceNow swallows up Armis

Money matters

ServiceNow to acquire connected device security startup Armis for $7.75B

Attack & response

Critical ‘LangGrinch’ vulnerability in langchain-core puts AI agent secrets at risk

Aflac breach exposes personal and health data of more than 22M people

Forcepoint X-Labs warns of holiday phishing campaign combining Docusign scams and fake loan offers

Researchers say Eurostar accused them of blackmail over AI chatbot flaw disclosure

Nearly 3.5M affected in University of Phoenix breach tied to Clop-linked Oracle EBS exploit

Ontinue warns attackers are abusing Nezha monitoring tool as stealthy remote access trojan

Shai Hulud malware turns developers into unwitting distributors in NPM supply chain attacks

DDoS attack knocks France’s postal service La Poste offline during holiday peak

Elsewhere in tech: SF power outage grounds Waymos

Waymo’s robotaxis lose their way as San Francisco traffic lights go blank … so: Waymo updates its fleet of driverless robotaxis to prevent future power outage chaos

FCC bans sale of foreign-made drones over national security concerns

Samsung’s Harman to acquire ZF’s advanced driver-assistance systems business for $1.76B

Comings and goings

Amr Awadallah, founding CEO of enterprise AI platform Vectara, announced on LinkedIn that he’s leaving, and co-founder and Chief Architect Tallat M. Shafaat will take over as CEO.

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