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1.	OpenAI Fine-Tunes Pitch to Businesses as Anthropic Rivalry Heats Up By Kevin McLaughlin and Sri Muppidi Source: The Information

OpenAI is getting ready to unveil a new offering that aims to help large business customers incorporate AI into a variety of operations, from customer service to rewriting older application code,  The Information reported Saturday.

The new product is part of the ChatGPT maker’s broader push to get customers to sign multi-year contracts worth more than $100 million. OpenAI leaders recently teased upcoming upgrades to the startup’s AI coding tool, Codex, which they said would soon surpass Claude Code’s performance and features.

OpenAI is aiming to counter the inroads rival Anthropic has made with large companies due to the surging popularity of its AI coding product, Claude Code. One question is whether OpenAI can gain the trust of large companies that see Anthropic as a safer path to adopting AI because it is primarily targeting business customers.

2.	DOJ Opens Criminal Probe Into Deel-Rippling Spy Claims By Michael Roddan Source: The Wall Street Journal

The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into allegations payroll startup Deel recruited and paid a spy inside a Rippling office in Ireland, according to The The Wall Street Journal. In recent weeks, prosecutors have distributed subpoenas for a grand jury, the Journal reported.

Detectives from the Anti-Bribery and Corruption Unit of Ireland’s Garda National Economic Crime Bureau recently searched the home of Keith O’Brien, the alleged spy, according to a report by The Irish Independent on Friday. Garda Headquarters said the search was “part of an ongoing criminal investigation into alleged corruption and money laundering involving an international software company,” according to the report.

A spokesperson for Deel said the company was not aware of any investigation. “We will always cooperate with the relevant authorities and provide any necessary information in response to valid inquiries,” Deel said.

Court filings that were unsealed in November, in a civil lawsuit Rippling launched against Deel, showed Deel labeled as an expense a $6,000 payment it made to the wife of the company’s chief operating officer. That cash was immediately sent to O’Brien. Deel has denied Rippling’s civil suit allegations and launched a separate defamation case against its rival. A Deel spokesperson said its lawsuit shows Rippling made misleading claims about Deel, including in a separate civil case in Florida that was recently dismissed. That lawsuit, backed by a Rippling investor and lawyer, alleged lapses in Deel’s compliance controls.

In November, Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz added Morrison Foerster partner William Frentzen, a former DOJ lawyer, to his legal team. Bouaziz also recently credited Andreessen Horowitz, which holds a multi-billion dollar stake in Deel, for helping to manage the fallout from Rippling’s allegations. Bouaziz told substack publication Not Boring, that the venture firm was “figuring things out, helping me figure out how to manage it, getting the best people to help, getting their own hands dirty. When a lot of this bullshit came out, I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.” Andreessen Horowitz did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

This story has been updated to include comments from Deel.

3.	Nvidia CEO Tours China Amid Uncertainty Over Chip Sales By Qianer Liu Source: The Information

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrived in Beijing on Sunday after spending two days in Shanghai over the weekend, according to various Chinese media reports. He is expected to attend the company’s Lunar New Year celebrations and meet Chinese clients, according to China Daily. It’s unclear if Huang will be meeting senior Chinese officials during his trip.

Huang’s visit began in Shanghai on Jan. 23, where he drew crowds at the company’s Saturday festivities. The trip comes as Beijing approved some purchases of Nvidia’s H200 AI chip—the most powerful chip the company is permitted to sell to China, according to Bloomberg. But whether China will officially approve imports of the H200 remains uncertain.

Huang is also planning to visit Shenzhen and then Taiwan, according to Reuters.

4.	Exclusive: Google Acquires 3D Image Generator Startup By Erin Woo and Valida Pau Source: The Information

Google has acquired Common Sense Machines, a Cambridge, Mass.,-based startup developing generative artificial intelligence models to create three-dimensional assets from two-dimensional images, a Google spokesperson confirmed.

The deal closed this week, according to the spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to provide a price. The company had around a dozen employees, according to its LinkedIn page, and was last valued at $15 million after raising $10 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, according to PitchBook. One of Common Sense Machines’ co-CEOs, Tejas Kulkarni, worked as a research scientist at Google DeepMind before cofounding the company in 2020.

The deal suggests that Google is continuing to lean further into image generation and multimodal AI after the success of its Nano Banana model, which creates images from text prompts. DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis has also talked about the importance of “world models,” which simulate the physical world. Common Sense Machines’ former employees will work at Google DeepMind, the spokesperson said.

5.	Amazon Plans Thousands of Corporate Layoffs Next Week By Catherine Perloff Source: Reuters

Amazon will begin a round of layoffs next week, which could affect thousands of corporate employees, Reuters reported. In October, Amazon announced it was laying off 14,000 employees to help reduce management layers and bureaucracy.

The upcoming layoffs will affect roughly the same number of employees as those in October, bringing the total number of laid off employees to as many as 30,000, Reuters reported. Affected units include Amazon Web Services, Prime Video, retail and human resources, the report said.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told The Information in an interview at Davos earlier this week that layoffs at Amazon aren’t about AI replacing human workers, but about improving the company’s culture after adding lots of employees in recent years. “Where we see layers stripping ownership, we’re going to try and take those layers away and we’re going to try and flatten it,” he said.

6.	Anthropic Sought Billions for Apple Deal, Report Says By Laura Mandaro Source: The Information

Anthropic had been in discussions with Apple to supply models to rebuild its Siri AI assistant and was seeking several billion dollars annually over multiple years, Bloomberg reported on Sunday. But negotiations with the AI startup stalled over the summer over the terms of a potential arrangement.

Apple was also talking to OpenAI about the arrangement, which would have extended an earlier partnership with the ChatGPT maker. Apple ultimately chose Google’s Gemini after it found the software had improved significantly and Google agreed to a financial structure Apple found reasonable, the report said. OpenAI will still provide answers to more complex queries that users ask Siri.