Race to AGI Daily Digest - Saturday, January 17, 2026

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TLDR

Merge Labs’ $252M raise, led by OpenAI and Bain Capital, cements brain–computer interfaces as a serious frontier in the AGI race.

Merge Labs lands $252M for noninvasive brain–AI interfaces ->

Google’s Gemini “Personal Intelligence” pulls more of your private data into one assistant, advancing the shift from chatbots to deeply embedded agents.

Google Gemini ‘Personal Intelligence’ taps your private data ->

Japan’s probe and a New York lawsuit against Grok show AI-generated sexualised imagery has become a live legal and policy battlefield for xAI.

Japan opens probe into Grok AI over sexualised image abuse ->

Stock drops in C3.ai, Palantir, Alibaba, Intel, and Salesforce hint that investors are starting to price in privacy, policy, and monetization friction, not just model quality.

Explore key AI-exposed companies ->

The Full Story

Following Monday’s chip optimism, Tuesday’s Alibaba surge, Wednesday’s Intel rally, and two days of agents and model benchmarks, today pulls the camera back to a blunt question: who gets to sit between your brain, your data, and the ads that follow you? Let’s start with the wildest boundary. Merge Labs just landed $252M for noninvasive brain–AI interfaces, led again by OpenAI and joined by Bain Capital. That turns yesterday’s early-stage BCI bet into a fully funded push to make “agents in your head” a serious research program. The round details are here: Merge Labs lands $252M for noninvasive brain–AI interfaces ->. If you want to see who’s now squarely in the mind–machine race, check the Merge Labs profile -> and OpenAI’s broader footprint ->. Building on Thursday’s theme of agents as a security surface, Google is rolling out Gemini “Personal Intelligence” that explicitly taps your private data to act on your behalf. That’s our “From Chatbots to Agents” storyline made concrete: one assistant that can read mail, calendars, files, and then do things for you. The launch is covered here: Google Gemini ‘Personal Intelligence’ taps your private data ->. Pair that with Reddit’s debates over targeted ads in ChatGPT and the quote about ads as a “last resort” business model, and you see the monetization angle colliding with privacy. Meanwhile, our “AI Safety, Censorship, and Speech” storyline just went global. After blocks in Southeast Asia earlier in the week, Grok is now under probe in Japan for sexualised image abuse and facing a lawsuit in New York over deepfake bikini images. Those cases are laid out here: Japan opens probe into Grok AI over sexualised image abuse -> and xAI sued in New York over Grok deepfake bikini images ->. If you’re tracking how this hits the company, the xAI profile -> is a good anchor. So, following Monday’s focus on fabs like ASML and TSM and Friday’s ERNIE 5 leaderboard moment, Saturday is about the new chokepoints: who owns the interface to your mind, who gets to read your personal data, and where regulators draw the line when those agents cross into abuse.

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Race to AGI Daily Digest - Saturday, January 17, 2026

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