🗞️In this edition

• Microsoft Launches Maia 200 to Reduce Nvidia Dependence

• Sponsored: Picsart Creative APIs: One Hub. 20+ AI Models. Better Cutouts. 30% OFF.

• OpenAI API Business Adds $1 Billion in One Month

• Davos Says AI Makes Starting Businesses Easier for Non-Coders

• In other AI news –

  • EU Investigates Grok for Creating Sexual Images of Children

  • Oracle CEO Says All AI Models Miss Private Data

  • AI Drove $262 Billion in Holiday Shopping Sales

• 4 must-try AI tools

Microsoft Launches Maia 200 to Reduce Nvidia Dependence

What's happening:

Microsoft launched its second-generation AI chip called Maia 200 on Monday. The chip is already running in data centers in Iowa, with Arizona coming next.

Built using TSMC's 3-nanometer process, Maia 200 delivers "efficient performance per dollar" according to Microsoft. The chip is designed for large-scale AI workloads and reasoning models.

Microsoft says Maia 200 offers 30% better performance than comparable chips from Amazon and Google at the same price. It can connect up to 6,144 chips together for massive computing power.

The company is already designing Maia 300, the next version. Microsoft's superintelligence team led by Mustafa Suleyman will use Maia 200, along with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure cloud services.

Why this is important:

Microsoft is following Amazon and Google by building its own chips. All three want to reduce dependence on Nvidia, which controls the AI chip market and charges premium prices.

This doesn't mean ditching Nvidia entirely. Microsoft still needs Nvidia chips for training large models. But for running AI after training, Microsoft can use cheaper in-house chips.

The timing matters. Nvidia chips are expensive and hard to get. When you're spending billions on AI infrastructure, not controlling your own hardware becomes a business risk.

Microsoft waited years while Amazon and Google built their own chips. Now they're playing catch-up with a second-generation chip while competitors are several generations ahead.

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OpenAI API Business Adds $1 Billion in One Month

What's happening:

Sam Altman said OpenAI's API business added more than $1 billion in annual recurring revenue in the last month. That's separate from ChatGPT subscriptions.

"People think of us mostly as ChatGPT, but the API team is doing amazing work!" Altman wrote on X. The API lets other companies embed OpenAI's models into their own products.

Many high-profile startups depend on OpenAI's API as core infrastructure. Perplexity uses it for AI search. Harvey, a legal tech startup, uses it to help lawyers with research and drafting.

The API business is growing faster than ChatGPT despite massive computing costs. OpenAI burned through $8 billion in 2025 and faces $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments.

Why this is important:

OpenAI is becoming infrastructure, not just a product. The API makes them more like Amazon Web Services than like a consumer app.

Adding $1 billion in one month shows enterprise adoption is outpacing consumer use. Businesses pay for reliable access to models. Consumers pay $20 monthly or use it free.

The API revenue is predictable and high-margin. ChatGPT experiments with ads and pricing tiers. The API just charges per use at scale.

This explains why Altman keeps saying OpenAI isn't primarily ChatGPT anymore. The invisible backend business is bigger than the consumer-facing product everyone knows.

Comments from the editor:

Altman announced this days after saying OpenAI will test ads in ChatGPT. That timing isn't random. He's saying "don't worry about ChatGPT monetization, look at the API."

The API burns money too. OpenAI burned $8 billion last year. $1 billion in monthly additions doesn't solve $1.4 trillion in commitments. It just makes the story sound better.

"People think of us mostly as ChatGPT" is Altman managing perception. Most people do think of ChatGPT. That's the product consumers use. The API is invisible unless you're a developer.

Perplexity and Harvey building on OpenAI's models means OpenAI controls their infrastructure. If OpenAI raises prices or restricts access, those companies are stuck. That's the real business model.

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Davos Says AI Makes Starting Businesses Easier for Non-Coders

What's happening:

World Economic Forum experts at Davos said AI is making entrepreneurship easier for people without technical skills. Tools like Jasper for writing, Canva's AI for design, and no-code builders like Bubble let anyone create businesses without coding.

This matters most for underrepresented groups. Women and minority entrepreneurs who traditional venture capital ignores are using AI to start companies without outside funding.

LinkedIn shows a 20% jump in users calling themselves "entrepreneur" or "founder" over the past year, linked to AI adoption. Young professionals facing uncertain job markets see startups as safer than employment.

Over 200,000 tech and finance jobs were cut in 2023. Many laid-off workers from Google and Meta are using AI to launch businesses in areas like personalized education and sustainable fashion.

Why this is important:

"Democratizing" entrepreneurship sounds good until you realize everyone is using the same AI tools pulling from the same data. That creates thousands of similar businesses, not diverse ones.

The New York Times warned that AI-generated content is flooding markets and devaluing human creativity. When algorithms decide what businesses to build, they copy what already exists.

This isn't empowerment if the AI does the creating. People become managers of machines, not entrepreneurs with original ideas. That's a different kind of business owner.

The 20% LinkedIn increase could mean real entrepreneurship or people calling themselves founders while AI does their work. There's a difference between building something and supervising an algorithm.

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📢 What else is happening?

• EU Investigates Grok for Creating Sexual Images of Children – The European Commission opened a formal probe after users generated 3 million sexualized images in days using prompts like "put her in a bikini," potentially including child abuse material that Malaysia and Indonesia already banned.

• Oracle CEO Says All AI Models Miss Private Data – Larry Ellison argues ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Llama are trained only on public internet data and don't know your company's accounts, customers, or contracts—making them commodities without real business value.

• AI Drove $262 Billion in Holiday Shopping Sales – Salesforce says AI influenced 20% of all retail sales as traffic from ChatGPT and Perplexity jumped 693%, but most impact came from customer service chatbots, not shopping assistants.

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