⚡ Meta Goes Nuclear for AI

Plus A16z raises $15B + Kin AI Takeover

January 13, 2026

Reading time: 5 minutes

🗞️In this edition

  • Kin Takeover (sponsored): Your personal AI Board of Advisors for work, money, and life

  • Meta Secures 6.6 Gigawatts of Nuclear Power for AI

  • Inside Kin: the future of AI companions with founder Yngvi

  • Andreessen Horowitz Raises $15 Billion for AI and Defence

  • Google Launches AI Inbox That Decides What You Should Read

  • In other AI news –

    • ElevenLabs Adds 230 AI Jobs in Manhattan

    • China AI Chiefs Admit US Lead Widening

    • Microsoft Launches AI Agents for Retail

    • OT Tool Recommendations

Welcome to the Kin AI Edition of the OpenTools newsletter

Today, we handed the entire issue to Kin.

They’re not tweaking how AI writes or searches. They’re changing what AI is for.

Kin is building a personal Board of Advisors that can look across every part of your life. Your work. Your money. Your health. Your relationships. Your long-term plans. All in one place, with privacy and security at the core.

Instead of one generic assistant, you get a system that actually knows you and can think with you, not just answer you.

This is what it looks like when AI moves from being a tool on your screen to something that genuinely lives alongside you.

Meet KIN, Your Personal AI Advisory Board - MyKin.ai

Most founders start strong. Then the real race begins:

decision fog, strained relationships, and a brain that never clocks out.

Kin is a personal AI advisory board built for founder life.

Not for “more output.” For more clarity.

In 5 minutes, Kin can help you:

- Plan today when everything feels urgent

- Prepare for a hard conversation (co-founder, investor, team)

- Unpack what’s stuck so you can move again

What makes it different:

Kin remembers what matters (goals, people, patterns) so you don’t start from zero every time.

Try Kin for FREE on iOS or Android.

♨️News –  Meta just became the largest corporate buyer of nuclear energy in American history. The company signed deals on Friday with three nuclear providers to secure 6.6 gigawatts of power by 2035, enough electricity to power roughly 5 million homes. The power will feed Meta's massive AI data centers as the company races to keep pace with OpenAI and Google in the arms race for computing capacity.

👨‍💻Fast facts – 

  • Meta is paying $141 to $220 per megawatt-hour for nuclear versus $50 to $60 for gas, wind, or solar. That's 3 to 4 times more expensive.

  • The company gets immediate access to 2.1 gigawatts from existing nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The rest comes from new small modular reactors being built over the next decade.

  • Some reactors won't come online until 2032. Meta is betting billions on infrastructure that doesn't exist yet.

  • Electricity demand for data centers is expected to double by 2030. Every major tech company is racing to lock up power before competitors.

  • Amazon, Google, and Microsoft also signed nuclear deals recently, but Meta's 6.6 gigawatts dwarfs those commitments.

🤓Open Tools POV – The cost premium tells you everything about how desperate the situation has become. When you're willing to pay 3 to 4 times more for power, it means the traditional grid can't supply what you need fast enough. Meta sees more risk from underspending on AI infrastructure than from overspending on it. That calculation only works if AI demand stays hot for the next decade. If it doesn't, Meta just locked itself into paying premium prices for electricity it might not need.

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A conversation with Kin founder Yngvi on what AI companions are becoming

We sat down with Yngvi, co-founder of Kin, to talk about one of the fastest-moving parts of the AI world right now: companions.

Not in the “romantic chatbot” sense.
But in the sense of something that can actually stay with you through work, stress, relationships, and long-term decisions.

The conversation covers why assistants break down once life gets messy, how Kin’s advisory-board model gives people multiple perspectives instead of one generic voice, and why memory, context, and privacy are the real battlegrounds for this category.

From founders planning their day on the commute, to navigating family situations, to building long-term habits with an AI that actually remembers who’s who, it’s a rare look at what it takes to build a companion you can trust.

👉 Watch the full conversation with Yngvi and Kin

☕News –  Andreessen Horowitz raised $15 billion on Friday across five funds, the largest fundraise in the firm's history. The venture capital giant now manages $90 billion in total assets and controlled 18 percent of all US venture capital dollars deployed in 2025. The money is going toward AI infrastructure, growth-stage companies, and what the firm calls "American Dynamism" investments in defense, housing, and supply chain. Co-founder Ben Horowitz told investors the goal is simple: "America must win."

👨‍💻Fast facts – 

  • The $15 billion includes $6.75 billion for growth-stage companies and $1.7 billion specifically for AI infrastructure investments.

  • A16z deployed 18 percent of all US venture capital in 2025. That's nearly one in every five VC dollars nationwide going through one firm.

  • The firm raised $1.2 billion for its "American Dynamism" fund focused on defense contractors, housing, and supply chain companies.

  • A16z's portfolio includes OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and dozens of other AI companies. The firm has become the largest AI venture investor in the world.

  • The fundraise comes as other VC firms struggle. Total US venture funding dropped in 2025, but a16z is consolidating power and capital.

🤓Open Tools POV – The 18 percent market share number is staggering. When one firm controls nearly a fifth of all venture capital, that's not just influence, that's market-making power. A16z can determine which AI companies get funded, which trends get capital, and which competitors get starved out. The "America must win" framing is smart positioning. It ties AI investment to national security and patriotism, making it harder to criticize the firm's growing dominance. But the real story is consolidation. While other VCs pull back, a16z is doubling down and gaining pricing power over every startup that needs capital.

☕News –  Google announced it's bringing AI directly into Gmail for all 3 billion users. The company launched AI Inbox, a new view that replaces your chronological list of emails with AI-generated summaries, suggested to-dos, and prioritized topics. Instead of seeing messages, you see briefings. The feature is powered by Gemini 3 and starts rolling out to select testers now before broader launch in coming months. Google also made several previously paid AI features free for everyone, including Help Me Write and thread summaries.

👨‍💻Fast facts – 

  • AI Inbox shows "Suggested to-dos" like bills due tomorrow or appointment reminders, followed by "Topics to catch up on" with updates grouped by theme rather than sender.

  • The advanced search feature lets you ask questions like "Who was the plumber that gave me a quote last year?" but requires a $20/month Google One AI Pro subscription or $250/month Ultra plan.

  • Thread summaries that appear when you open long email conversations are now free for all users. Previously this required a paid subscription.

  • Google says personal email content is not used to train AI models and processing happens in an "engineered privacy" secure boundary that data doesn't leave.

  • The new Proofread feature analyzes drafts for clarity, structure, word choice, and sentence complexity. It's available only to paid subscribers.

🤓Open Tools POV – The shift from messages to briefings is more radical than it sounds. When AI decides what's important, you stop verifying. That's convenient until it gets something wrong or misses context. The free versus paid split is telling. Everyone gets summaries, but asking your inbox questions costs $20 per month. The bigger question is trust. Gmail holds receipts, contracts, medical records, and relationship histories. Letting AI prioritize that means trusting it won't surface the wrong thing at the wrong time.

  • ElevenLabs Adds 230 AI Jobs in Manhattan // The AI voice company is investing $33 million to expand its Manhattan office and hire 230 engineers, backed by $4.4 million in New York tax credits. 

  • China AI Chiefs Admit US Lead Widening // Alibaba, Tencent, and Zhipu leaders say China has less than 20 percent chance of catching OpenAI in the next five years, even after raising $1 billion in IPOs this week.

  • Microsoft Launches AI Agents for Retail // The company rolled out agentic AI tools that automate merchandising, inventory, and checkout across Shopify stores, as Adobe reports AI shopping traffic surged 693 percent during holidays.

  1. Kin AI — Your Personal Board of Advisors
    Your private second brain for life. Work, money, health, and relationships, all guided by an AI that actually knows you, remembers what matters, and thinks with you over time.

  2. DetangleAI - An AI-based tool that simplifies complex legal documents into easy-to-understand summaries

  3. TimeToTok - An AI-powered tool that provides insights and suggestions to help TikTok creators grow their accounts

  4. AINiro - An AI chatbot platform that offers custom ChatGPT chatbots for various purposes such as customer service, e-commerce, and lead generation

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