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1.	Apple Partners with Google for Upcoming Siri Overhaul By Aaron Tilley Source: The Information

Apple has struck a multi-year partnership with Alphabet-owned Google to help the iPhone maker get its artificial intelligence products back on track. Google’s Gemini will power the company’s Apple Intelligence features, including the delayed overhaul of Apple’s lagging Siri voice assistant.

“After careful evaluation, Apple determined that Google’s Al technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users,” an Apple spokesperson sent in a statement.

Apple said that the Google partnership won’t violate the company’s existing privacy commitments. The AI will run either on device or through Apple-owned servers it calls Private Cloud Compute.

Apple was evaluating its internal models and external versions from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic as part of its plan to bolster its AI strategy. Google has improved Gemini a considerable amount since the AI model’s initial release in late 2023, but the longstanding relationship between Apple and Google also likely helped. Google has been Apple’s default search engine provider since the early 2000s.

2.	Meta Appoints Dina Powell McCormick as President and Vice Chair By Martin Peers Source: The Information

Meta Platforms appointed former Goldman Sachs banker and White House official Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chairman, bringing in an executive with long experience in both government and global finance to help the social media company as it spends heavily on AI development.

In a statement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said McCormick’s experience “makes her uniquely suited to help Meta manage this next phase of growth.” McCormick had joined the board of Meta last year but resigned just before Christmas. The company said in the statement that McCormick “will partner with the compute and infrastructure teams to ensure our multi-billion dollar investments executive against our goals.”

McCormick was deputy national security advisor to President Trump in his first term and also worked in the administration of President George W. Bush. In a Truth Social post, Trump lauded McCormick as “fantastic and very talented,” making clear she will help Meta’s relations with the White House. McCormick also spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs and most recently was vice chair and president of BDT & MSD Partners.

3.	TSMC to Significantly Expand Chipmaking Investments in the U.S. By Jing Yang Source: The New York Times

The Trump administration is close to reaching a trade deal with Taiwan that involves significantly more investments from the island’s largest company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, according to The New York Times, citing people familiar with the matter.

The potential deal will cut U.S. tariffs on Taiwanese imports to 15% and require TSMC to build at least five more chip fabrication facilities in Arizona, doubling the number of plants the company has previously committed to in the state.

TSMC, which produces 90% of the world’s advanced chips, announced in March that it would invest $100 billion to build three new chip-making plants, in addition to three facilities planned previously. President Donald Trump hailed the deal as the largest foreign direct investment in U.S. history.

4.	CoreWeave Hits First Data Center Milestone in Texas, Internal Message Shows By Anissa Gardizy Source: The Information

CoreWeave hit its first chip delivery milestone at a data center in Denton, Texas, that it’s building for OpenAI, according to an internal Slack message from executives. Late last year, it warned investors that its fourth quarter revenue would take a hit because of delays with one of its data center providers.

The delay in Denton became a high profile example of the growing “blame game” among data center builders, as construction and deployment delays become more common across the AI infrastructure industry.

“We’ve hit this milestone under an intense spotlight,” CoreWeave executives wrote in the Slack message. “The last several months tested us in ways few companies ever experience. There were setbacks from partners and factors outside our control.”

CoreWeave told employees that it went from a “few racks delivered in mid-November” to more than 16,000 GPUs by the end of December. Leaders noted that there was a single day when it brought more than 2,000 GPUs online. The Slack message was from Chief Operating Officer Sachin Jain, Chief Technology Officer Peter Salanki and Senior Vice President of Engineering Chen Goldberg.

5.	Trump Signals White House Working With Microsoft, Others on Electricity Costs By Anissa Gardizy Source: The Information

President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday that his administration is working with technology companies, including Microsoft, to prevent data centers from driving up household electricity bills.

Trump blamed rising utility costs on former President Joe Biden and said Americans should not “pay higher Electricity bills because of data centers.”

“First up is Microsoft, who my team has been working with, and which will make major changes beginning this week to ensure that Americans don’t ‘pick up the tab’ for their power consumption, in the form of paying higher utility bills,” he wrote. He added that there will be more announcements in the coming weeks.

Microsoft is expected to make an announcement on Tuesday related to Trump’s comments.

6.	Meta Plans to Cut 10% of Reality Labs Employees, Report Says By Martin Peers Source: New York Times

Meta Platforms plans to cut about 10% of its Reality Labs employees, the New York Times reported, with the cuts coming as soon as Tuesday. The report follows a Business Insider report late last week that said Reality Labs chief Andrew Bosworth had called an all-hands meeting for Tuesday, and stressed everyone should attend.

Reality Labs has about 15,000 people, so a 10% cut would only amount to 1,500 people. Still, it would signal that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is curtailing Reality Labs’ spending after years of steadily mounting losses. Reality Labs has lost $70 billion since 2021. The cuts come as Meta is massively ramping up its spending on AI.