Hello.
The main topics this week were:
- OpenAI and Anthropic's full-scale entry into the healthcare sector
- xAI's record-breaking $20 billion funding round and Grok 5 development
- Nvidia's "Physical AI" declaration at CES 2026
- Google Gemini's integration into daily infrastructure (Gmail, TV)
- Cloud infrastructure enhancements from major providers (Azure ARM, AWS .NET 10 support)
This week was notable for the full-scale entry of major players into the "AI and Healthcare" space, an area that has been handled cautiously until now. OpenAI announced both the consumer-facing ChatGPT Health and the healthcare-institution-focused OpenAI for Healthcare simultaneously, while Anthropic also expressed its commitment to the healthcare and life sciences sectors at almost the same time. While competition is clearly intense, considering the magnitude of impact that technological breakthroughs in this domain could have on society as a whole, the emergence of diverse options may be a welcome development.
Also impressive was the "Physical AI" vision unveiled by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at CES 2026. While previous AI efforts focused primarily on dialogue and generation in digital spaces, we're now seeing a clear shift toward reasoning and action in the physical world through robotics and autonomous driving. The release of open-source models like Alpamayo will likely accelerate development in this field.
Meanwhile, the massive funding news from xAI and Anthropic suggests that AI development is becoming even more capital-intensive. Looking at Grok's growth curve reaching 600 million monthly users and the strong performance of Claude Code, it's clear we've entered an era where a robust developer API ecosystem directly correlates with company valuation.
Notes:
- This content focuses on recently collected AI and web development news
- Dates may vary slightly
New AI Models, Services, and Updates
OpenAI: Announces ChatGPT Health, Connecting Personal Health Data with AI
OpenAI announced "ChatGPT Health," a new product that securely integrates with wearable devices and electronic health records to provide personalized health advice. The company explicitly stated that it will not train models on personal medical data, emphasizing its privacy-conscious design.
This represents a new option for AI-powered healthcare support and serves as a valuable use case for healthtech integration for developers. The architecture design that considers the sensitivity of medical data can be applied to other domains as well.
xAI: Announces $20 Billion Series E Funding Round, Accelerating Grok 5 Development
Elon Musk's xAI raised $20 billion from strategic investors including Nvidia and Cisco. Exceeding the initial target of $15 billion, the funds will be allocated to Grok 5 training and GPU cluster expansion. Grok currently reaches 600 million monthly users.
This is one of the largest funding rounds in AI history, and competition with OpenAI and Anthropic is expected to intensify further. For developers leveraging the Grok API, this is positive news in terms of model performance improvements and infrastructure stability.
Anthropic: $10B Funding at $350B Valuation, Claude Code Performing Strongly
Anthropic is reportedly negotiating a $10 billion funding round led by Coatue and GIC. The valuation has reached $350 billion, approximately double the previous round, driven by Claude Code's growth. An IPO this year is also on the horizon.
The valuation doubling in three months is encouraging news for developers using Claude API and Claude Code, suggesting service stability and continuous feature improvements. The company's strong competitiveness in the coding assistance domain appears to be highly valued.
Anthropic: Strengthening Claude Applications in Healthcare and Life Sciences
Anthropic announced initiatives to promote Claude applications in the healthcare and life sciences sectors. With the announcement coming in the same week as OpenAI's healthcare entry, competition among AI companies in the medical field has become clear.
Claude's full-scale expansion into the medical and life sciences sectors expands the potential applications of the Claude API for healthcare application developers. As a use case for AI adoption in the heavily regulated medical field, future developments are worth watching.
Other AI Topics
OpenAI: Announces OpenAI for Healthcare, Launching AI Solutions for Medical Institutions
OpenAI announced "OpenAI for Healthcare," a dedicated solution for medical institutions. Working in conjunction with ChatGPT Health, it provides comprehensive support for AI adoption in healthcare settings.
The launch of this B2B healthcare AI solution serves as a use case for enterprise OpenAI API applications, offering insights for application to other industries. How it addresses compliance requirements specific to medical institutions could provide hints for expansion into other regulated industries.
GitHub: Copilot Supports Gemini 3 Flash, Available Across All Major IDEs
Google Gemini 3 Flash is now available in GitHub Copilot. With support for Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, and Eclipse, developers now have broader model selection options.
The expanded multi-model support in Copilot enables developers to choose between GPT-5.2 and Gemini 3 Flash depending on their needs. The flexibility to optimize costs and select models strong in specific tasks is an important factor for large development teams.
Google: Integrates Gemini AI Features into Google TV, Announced at CES 2026
Google announced Gemini features for Google TV at CES 2026. Natural language program search, plot summaries, recommendations, photo search, and voice-controlled settings adjustment will be available. The rollout will begin with TCL TVs.
The full-scale LLM integration into television demonstrates concrete examples of AI's multimodal and multi-device deployment. For smart home developers, this serves as a reference case for integrating voice interfaces with visual content.
Google: Introduces AI Inbox Feature in Gmail with Gemini-Powered Auto-Summarization and Priority Detection
Google introduced the "AI Inbox" feature to Gmail. It adds priority email summarization with action suggestions, natural language email search (AI Overviews), and Grammarly-like proofreading functionality.
The addition of productivity features through LLM integration in Gmail directly impacts email processing efficiency in developers' daily work. It serves as inspiration for implementing similar features and has high potential for application to enterprise SaaS products.
Nvidia: Announces Vera Rubin AI Platform and Alpamayo Autonomous Driving Model at CES 2026
Nvidia announced the next-generation AI platform "Vera Rubin" and the open-source autonomous driving model "Alpamayo" at CES 2026. The company declared the dawn of the Physical AI era, with CEO Jensen Huang's two-hour keynote becoming a hot topic.
The arrival of the Physical AI era and the release of open autonomous driving models will accelerate AI applications in the real world. This represents an important resource for robotics and autonomous driving developers. Alpamayo is a 10B parameter vision-language-action model, released with simulation environments included.
Google: Announces Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for AI Agents
Google announced the "Universal Commerce Protocol" to standardize e-commerce transactions by AI agents. With participation from Shopify, Walmart, Target, and others, direct checkout via Gemini will be possible.
The standardization of commerce APIs for AI agents is essential for AI agent developers as a standard specification for e-commerce integration. With various companies providing their own APIs, the emergence of a common protocol could significantly reduce the burden of agent development.
Other General Tech Topics
Microsoft: Acquires Osmos, Strengthening AI Data Engineering in Fabric
Microsoft acquired Osmos, an AI data transformation startup. This enables autonomous data engineering through agentic AI in Microsoft Fabric, promoting automation of complex data workflows.
The integration of agentic AI data capabilities into Fabric is expected to advance data engineering automation and reduce developers' data pipeline construction burden. Automation of repetitive tasks such as data transformation and cleaning is particularly anticipated.
Azure: Begins Global Rollout of Cobalt 100 ARM-Based Machines
Microsoft began offering VMs with Azure's custom-designed ARM64 processor "Cobalt 100" across all regions. Performance and cost efficiency improve for workloads including data analytics, web apps, and Kubernetes.
The general availability of Azure's proprietary ARM processor expands cloud options for ARM64-compatible app developers. For organizations considering migration from x86 to ARM, this offers a new avenue for cost optimization.
AWS: Lambda Begins Supporting .NET 10
AWS Lambda officially supports .NET 10 as a managed runtime. With Powertools for AWS Lambda also supporting it, the serverless development experience for .NET developers has improved.
The addition of official .NET 10 runtime support enables .NET developers to use the latest LTS on Lambda. Serverless migration of existing .NET apps becomes easier, with improvements expected in performance and developer experience.
AWS: Adds Spot Instance Interruption Metrics to EC2 Capacity Manager
AWS added Spot instance interruption metrics to EC2 Capacity Manager. Interruption counts and rates can be tracked at the region, AZ, and account levels, making workload reliability planning easier.
The addition of Spot interruption visualization capabilities enables quantitative risk assessment in cost optimization leveraging Spot instances. This is useful as decision-making material for fault-tolerant architecture design.
AWS: Amazon EMR Serverless Supports Job-Level Cost Allocation
Amazon EMR Serverless now supports cost allocation tagging at the individual job execution level. Detailed cost visualization in Cost Explorer and CUR becomes possible, refining data processing cost management.
The addition of job-level cost tracking capabilities makes it easier to identify and improve bottlenecks in data engineering cost optimization. For organizations running multiple data pipelines, improved transparency in cost allocation is a crucial element.
Amazon: Alexa+ Becomes Available on Web, Launching on Alexa.com
Amazon launched the AI assistant "Alexa+" on Alexa.com to coincide with CES 2026. It's now available without Echo devices, with strengthened integration with services like Expedia and Yelp.
Alexa's web platform expansion serves as a reference case for multi-platform deployment of voice AI in developers' service design. The provision model of AI assistants independent of devices may become a future trend.