Daily Robot News

January 15, 2026

Summary

AI & Tech Giants

Google rolls out Personal Intelligence for Gemini across Gmail and Photos, Apple unveils Manzano multimodal model combining vision and image generation, Meta creates top-level Compute initiative promising tens of gigawatts for AI infrastructure

Autonomous Transport

New York Governor Hochul plans robotaxi legislation for entire state except NYC, Tesla CEO Musk announces Full Self-Driving becomes subscription-only soon, Caterpillar partners with NVIDIA for autonomous heavy machinery operations

Energy Transition

UK offshore wind auction delivers capacity 40% cheaper than gas prices, China and India see coal power generation fall for first time since 1970s, Type One Energy raises $87M from Bill Gates backers for stellarator fusion technology

In Other News

Scientists sequence 14,400-year-old woolly rhino genome from wolf stomach, researchers discover new diabetes type in newborns from single gene mutations, Verizon recovers from 10-hour nationwide outage

Google's AI reads YOUR emails
New York governor says robot taxis can drive everywhere in the state except New York City
Fusion startup scores $87M boost
Brain procrastination decoded
Fitbit's computer coach costs too much for what works
Apple's new computer brain can look at pictures AND create them - pretty WILD stuff
Caterpillar building self-driving construction machines
Robot Face Learns to TALK Like Humans
Meta building massive power plants to feed their hungry computer brains
Scientists found a 14,400-year-old woolly rhino's DNA inside a wolf pup's stomach and mapped its entire genetic code
Best e-reader
Britain's wind farms just beat natural gas prices by 40% in huge energy auction
Doctors find new kind of diabetes that hits babies right after birth
Scientists figured out how to make those quantum computers work better by arranging atoms in special patterns
Verizon's back up
Tesla's robot driving feature going subscription-only soon
Lucid fired its software team after buggy cars
BMW's electric M3 gets wild
Doctors might have found a real test for anxiety and depression
Coal DROPS
Gravity's broken
Tech companies build massive computer warehouses that nobody wants in their neighborhood
Your gut bugs can make you drunk
New chip runs 3.5x faster than current ones
Crypto bill LOSES key support
Bendy screens just got better
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