AI News from January 30, 2026

Microsoft stock plunges 10% as Azure cloud growth decelerates while capital expenditures surge 66% to $37.5B, raising AI investment concerns.

Sora 2 video generation app expands to Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan with Character Cameos feature, reaching 1M downloads faster than ChatGPT.

UK government partners with Anthropic to deploy Claude-powered agentic AI assistant for employment services with data sovereignty and skills transfer focus.

Only 21% of organizations have stringent AI agent governance as adoption expected to surge from 23% to 74% within two years, Deloitte report reveals.

Tesla reveals $430M Megapack battery sales to xAI in 2025, powering Memphis data center, while investing $2B in xAI's $20B funding round.

AI search startup Perplexity expands beyond AWS with three-year $750M Microsoft Azure deal, gaining access to Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI models.

OpenAI announces retirement of beloved GPT-4o and legacy models on Feb 13, 2026, as only 0.1% of users still choose the warm conversational model daily.

Meta stock surges after revealing plans to spend $115-135B on AI infrastructure in 2026, nearly doubling 2025 investment amid strong revenue growth.

Amazon and OpenAI CEOs engage in direct talks for potential $50B investment, part of $100B funding round, marking major AI partnership expansion.

Chinese tech giants ByteDance and Alibaba are set to release new generative AI models, including ByteDance's Doubao 2.0 large language model, heating up the domestic and global competition in the AI sector.

A UK investment minister has suggested that a universal basic income (UBI) could be a potential solution to soften the economic impact of job displacement caused by the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence.

South Korea has become the first country to implement a comprehensive AI law, which includes a mandate for companies to add invisible watermarks to AI-generated content to combat misinformation and deepfakes.

An investigation has found that millions of users are using AI tools on Telegram to create and share non-consensual deepfake nudes, highlighting a growing global crisis of AI-driven digital abuse.

Defying the tech downturn, Meta reported a 24% revenue increase and a strong Q1 forecast, crediting its investments in AI for significantly improving ad targeting and performance.

A landmark Swedish study of 100,000 women, published in The Lancet, found that using AI to assist in mammogram analysis led to a 12% reduction in interval breast cancer diagnoses, marking a significant breakthrough in medical imaging.

Microsoft's stock saw its biggest drop since 2020, wiping out $400 billion in market value, as investors question the high cost and slow monetization of its heavy investments in artificial intelligence and its exposure to OpenAI.

Apple has acquired Israeli audio AI startup Q.ai for a reported $2 billion, its second-largest acquisition ever. The move signals a major push into AI, particularly in audio technology for its products like AirPods and Vision Pro.