Apple made its second-largest acquisition ever, purchasing AI audio startup Q.ai for $2 billion, according to a report by the Financial Times on January 29, 2026. The four-year-old company specializes in using facial expressions to understand users without spoken words.
Richard Lawler of The Verge reported that Apple's largest acquisition remains the $3 billion purchase of Beats in 2014. Apple did not disclose the terms of the Q.ai acquisition.
In other tech news, Google's Project Genie, an AI world model that creates interactive worlds from a photo or prompt, became more widely available. Ars Technica reported that the updated version of Google's AI world model, Genie 3, was previously only available to a small group of trusted testers. Now, it is accessible to those paying for Google's most expensive AI subscription. According to Ars Technica, world models generate a dynamic environment on the fly, creating a video that responds to control inputs, allowing users to explore the simulation.
Meanwhile, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency overseeing the U.S. government's fleet of spy satellites, declassified a decades-old program used to eavesdrop on the Soviet Union's military communication signals. Ars Technica reported that the program, codenamed Jumpseat, was already public knowledge through leaks and media reports. The NRO released a description of the program's purpose, development, and pictures of the satellites themselves. The NRO stated that Jumpseat was the United States' first-generation, highly elliptical orbit (HEO) signals-collection satellite. Eight Jumpseat satellites launched from 1971 through 1983.
In health news, a study published in JAMA Network Open found that individuals with high-deductible health plans who were diagnosed with cancer had worse overall survival and cancer-specific survival compared to those with more standard health plans. Ars Technica noted that the findings highlight the difficult decisions Americans face as healthcare costs continue to rise, leading more people to accept insurance plans with higher out-of-pocket costs.
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