You and I, Gemini

Top News

• Gemini will start powering Siri: Apple and Google announced a major new partnership, giving Cupertino a long-awaited and much-needed AI upgrade. Google’s Gemini and AI cloud infrastructure will provide the basis for a new suite of Apple AI models, including a brand-new Siri, due some time in 2026. While this is great news for anyone frustrated that the iPhone’s Maps app still doesn’t understand simple requests, not EVERYONE is pleased. In a post to X, xAI CEO Elon Musk suggested that teaming with Apple represents “an unreasonable concentration of power for Google.”

• Nvidia, Eli Lilly team on new lab: The legendary chip maker will devote $1 billion over the next five years on a new facility along with the pharma giant, though financial specifics have not been disclosed. The goal is to speed up the use of AI technology for innovating new drugs and therapies, a process that’s still time-consuming (arguably due to the number of human researchers still in the loop). Nvidia’s circular investments with other AI and tech companies — focused mainly on expanding AI infrastructure — have received a lot of scrutiny, but here’s an alternative kind of deal, dumping money into potential fields that could, one day, accelerate and expand the demand for its technology.

• OpenAI picks up Torch: Speaking of AI and health care (as we so often are), OpenAI plans to acquire the “unified medical memory” startup Torch for a reported $60 million. (At least, according to CNBC.) Torch is an attempt to unify patient medical records and data, presently stored across a variety of different platforms, often operated by different enterprises. The Torch team, along with CEO Ilya Abyzov, will apparently join OpenAI as part of the deal. This is a relatively new but major priority for the House of Altman; OpenAI introduced a suite of wellness-related products just last week, including ChatGPT Health.

TWiST 500

We’re doing a week of shows in Tokyo, Japan (!!), so we can’t be with Producer Claude in the studio to celebrate… but he and parent company Anthropic are having quite a week!

On Monday, Anthropic introduced a preview of “Claude Cowork” to its Max subscribers. It’s a chatbot/agent built on top of Claude Code, designed for automating time-consuming and complex, but not specifically coding-related, tasks. The idea is that a user can give Claude a multi-step task with some level of complexity, hand over the raw materials necessary, and let the chatbot independently go to work. (For example, “take my notes and turn them into a presentation,” or “check this spreadsheet for errors based on this data set.” You get the idea.)

While minimal human intervention is necessary, Claude will post regular updates about how things are going, to keep the user relatively informed and able to jump in if tweaks are required. It’s also possible to give Claude access to certain folders or applications, to allow it to go about its business even more efficiently.

But use caution! It’s still early in the development of the product, and Anthropic notes that Cowork remains very much in beta. Early adopters are warned to keep an eye on things and avoid “ambiguous instructions,” in order to avoid worst case scenarios (like Claude deleting your data to which it was given access). As well, Cowork remains vulnerable to “prompt injection,” a type of hack in which bad actors instruct AI agents to behave in rogue, dangerous, even illegal ways.

Blogger Simon Willison checked out Claude Cowork and notes that it’s “a really smart product”… but also essentially just Claude Code in a new wrapper. Nonetheless, Claude Code has become so dominant among developers, selling non-coders on a similar version could pay off handsomely, and further solidify Anthropic as a leader in not just AI research and models but also products. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2232: Jason is off to Tokyo for an international edition of Founder University… BUT FIRST, he and Alex are considering two blockbuster tech mega deals that are apparently in the works. Hot community app Discord and fitness app Strava are BOTH circling big-time IPOs. Hear why Jason thinks Strava proves that data is the ultimate moat for consumer apps. PLUS, Producer Oliver stops by to showcase the hottest new products and gadgets from this year’s CES in Las Vegas.

E2231: It’s time for another epic This Week in AI roundtable “Experts Only” discussion. Jason welcomes NotebookLM editorial director Steven Johnson and the CEO and co-founder of one of our favorite AI apps, Gamma, for a wide-ranging chat about how Google and Gamma both use AI to better understand their customers, how AI is changing the way companies organize and process information, whether AI enhances or kills creativity, the new relevance of Jevon’s Paradox, and much much more.

E2230: New year, new TWiSTs. We’re starting 2026 with a look at Meta’s behind-the-scenes AI drama, Nvidia’s “acquisition” of Groq and what it means for his bestie Chamath, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s new social media app Tangle, PLUS another check-in with the sharps at Polymarket.

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