Alphabet Hits $4T on Apple Deal & Universal Commerce Protocol

Alphabet Hits $4T on Apple Deal & Universal Commerce Protocol | Newsletters | The Tech Buzz

the tech buzz

$4T Valuation, Apple Gemini x Siri, & Universal Commerce Protocol + More

The Tech Buzz
January 13, 2026

In partnership with

WHAT’S INSIDE:

Tech News: Trump vs Powell/Fed, markets hit highs, dollar slips, gold/oil jump, credit-card APR cap.

Company Watch: Meta nuclear power, xAI raises $20B at $200B+, Eli Lilly x Nvidia, Protege, Harmattan AI

Buzzy Tools: Claude Cowork, Databricks Agent Bricks, creator tools push one-click workflows.

Buzzy Tech: “Perfect conductor” rubidium, humanoid robots, Travel at extreme speeds.

Crypto: BTC > $92K, ETH $7.5K by 2026 call, BitGo IPO; Rain raises $250M.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH DEEL

Hiring in 8 countries shouldn't require 8 different processes

This guide from Deel breaks down how to build one global hiring system. You’ll learn about assessment frameworks that scale, how to do headcount planning across regions, and even intake processes that work everywhere. As HR pros know, hiring in one country is hard enough. So let this free global hiring guide give you the tools you need to avoid global hiring headaches.

Download the free guide today

Top Technology News

Fed Under Fire — Trump 's criminal probe into Fed Chair Powell draws criticism from key GOP senators for influencing Fed policy, affirming Fed independence as essential for economic stability. Trump plans to interview Rick Rieder, BlackRock's chief bond manager, as one of four replacement candidates.

Market Surge Amid Tensions — Wall Street hit record highs despite the Powell probe. The dollar fell, gold hit $4,600 an oz. Oil prices rose on Iran tensions, affecting inflation data, earnings forecasts.

Credit Cap Proposal — Pres. Trump suggests a 10% cap on credit card interest rates, potentially saving consumers billions, but lenders warn of reduced credit availability, potential higher fees, and reduced rewards.

Debt Interest Soars — The U.S. Treasury reported $276B spent on national debt interest last quarter, up 13% from 2024. Fiscal year 2025's total was $1.22 trillion.

Tariffs on Iran — President Trump imposes a 25% tariff on countries trading with Iran, aiming to economically isolate Tehran amid ongoing protests.

Pollution Policy Shift — The government plans to overlook the health impacts of air pollution in regulating ozone and fine particulate matter, supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Tech Buzz Editorial

Alphabet crossed a $4T valuation this week, on the market’s reaction to Apple confirming it will integrate Gemini into Siri and future Apple Intelligence features starting with iOS 26.4, and the launch of its Universal Commerce Protocol.

The unifying theme here is Google positioning AI assistants closer to transactions across ecosystems. Google signals that its 2026 plan is to continue building the infrastructure for how money moves through AI systems.\

Apple Gains Intelligence Without Giving Up Control

Apple’s decision to work with Google reflects a familiar strategy too. Apple wants best in class intelligence without surrendering its privacy stance or platform control. Gemini brings stronger reasoning and contextual understanding, while Apple keeps user data processing tightly governed and on device where possible.

For users, this shows up as a more capable Siri that understands intent better across apps, messages, and tasks. For developers and merchants, it signals something larger. If Siri understands what a user wants, the next question becomes where the transaction happens.

Apple has historically avoided owning the checkout layer. Payments exist through Apple Pay, but commerce logic has stayed fragmented across apps and websites. That restraint is now paired with Google’s push to standardize how AI agents buy things.

Google Builds the Commerce Rails

While the Apple partnership grabbed attention, Google’s biggest move this week is really the Universal Commerce Protocol or UCP. It is an open source standard designed to let AI agents discover products, check inventory, apply discounts, and complete purchases in a consistent way.

UCP reduces the mess of custom integrations that slow commerce today. Instead of building separate systems for search, apps, assistants, and marketplaces, businesses integrate once. AI systems then speak a shared language to move from discovery to checkout.

The protocol supports tokenized payments, cryptographic proof of consent, and compatibility with existing systems like Shopify and major payment networks. Merchants remain the Merchant of Record. That detail matters. Google is building pipes, not trying to own every sale.

Why $4T Changes the Stakes

Alphabet reaching $4T reframes how investors view this strategy. Ads remain stable. Cloud revenue continues to grow. AI chip rentals are expanding. The valuation jump reflects confidence that Google’s AI investments are turning into durable infrastructure rather than short term hype.

Commerce infrastructure fits that thesis. If AI agents become the front door to shopping, the platforms that define transaction standards capture long term value. UCP positions Google to sit beneath many surfaces without forcing exclusivity.

This approach also lowers regulatory risk. Open standards invite partners instead of triggering platform dominance accusations. The list of UCP collaborators already includes Shopify, Walmart, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and more than 20 global partners.

Retail Follows the Agents

Retailers are moving quickly. Walmart announced its own Gemini powered shopping assistant, designed to improve product discovery and purchasing across its platform. Walmart’s CEO framed it as a way to meet customers where they already are, inside conversational interfaces.

That framing is the big story here. Shopping behavior is shifting from browsing pages to asking questions. AI agents handle comparison, availability, and timing in real time. Standards like UCP allow retailers to plug into that flow without rebuilding their entire stack.

For consumers, the benefit is speed and clarity. For merchants, it means visibility across more AI surfaces without losing brand or pricing control.

The Competition For Your Eyeballs

The arms race is now visible. OpenAI has its own commerce ambitions, launching a rival commerce protocol last year, aiming to give its agents transactional capability. OpenAI’s commerce platform takes a more vertical path than Google’s UCP. Instead of starting with an open, merchant first protocol, OpenAI is building commerce directly into ChatGPT as an end to end assistant experience. The goal is to let users research, decide, and transact without leaving the conversation, with OpenAI controlling more of the flow from intent to action. That model leans heavily on deep context, user history, and agent autonomy rather than standardized merchant schemas. Early integrations have focused on bookings, subscriptions, and service driven purchases, with reported partnerships and experiments involving platforms like Stripe for payments, Shopify for merchant access, and select travel and local service providers rather than mass retail catalogs.

It also acquired health records startup Torch this week for around $100M, signaling broader plans to unify data and context inside ChatGPT under the ChatGPT Health tool. This new system shows where OpenAI is trying to win the next platform battle: owning the “personal context layer” that makes an AI assistant genuinely useful for high stakes decisions, including purchases.

OpenAI says ChatGPT Health lets users securely connect medical records and wellness apps like Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal so responses can be grounded in your real data and patterns, not generic advice. The Torch acquisition plugs into that goal by helping unify messy health records and outputs into a cleaner, usable context stream inside ChatGPT, according to reporting that the deal was around $100M and the team is joining OpenAI.

Why The Commerce Battle Matters

If assistants become trusted “do it for me” systems, the assistant that holds the richest verified context can also recommend products, services, and plans with fewer steps. Google is pushing open transaction rails with UCP, while OpenAI is building a vertically integrated assistant that can use deep personal context as its advantage.

Google is positioning UCP as a neutral open-source infrastructure that any assistant or retailer can adopt, keeping merchants as the Merchant of Record and spreading adoption across the ecosystem. On the other hand OpenAI is betting that users will trust a single assistant enough to let it handle decisions and transactions inside one interface, it prioritizes control, context, and speed to execution.

Both aim at the same prize: becoming the place where AI driven intent turns into spending. Apple sits between them, selectively partnering while protecting its ecosystem.

What This Means for 2026

AI assistants are becoming gateways. The value shifts to whoever defines how intent turns into action. Alphabet’s $4T milestone reflects confidence that Google understands this shift and is building accordingly.

For developers, UCP lowers friction. For merchants, it opens new surfaces. For users, it reduces steps between wanting something and buying it. Both UCP and the Apple deal are just another pair of signals that the future of commerce will be conversational, agent driven, and quietly standardized beneath the surface. The companies that control those standards will shape how trillions of dollars move in the AI era, so the battle for dominance is set to get even more fierce.

Companies To Watch

Latest deals and trending companies

[Open Deal] Lambda provides AI cloud infrastructure and plans to raise at least $350M in a pre-IPO round, with Nvidia as a key partner. Despite a $175M loss, its $520M revenue shows strong growth.

OpenAI acquired health records startup Torch for ~$100M. The technology consolidates medical records into a unified context engine for AI to support the ChatGPT Health service.

Meta announced a significant nuclear power initiative to support its AI data centers, partnering with TerraPower and Oklo. The plan includes backing new reactor projects, aiming for operational reactors by 2030-2032.

xAI raised a $20B Series E Round at $200B+ valuation from Valor, Fidelity, QIA, Nvidia, & Cisco to expand data centers. It has been burning cash on self-sufficient AI for humanoid robots, reporting $1.46B in losses for Q3. Revenue ~2x to $107M.

Eli Lilly and Nvidia are launching a co-innovation AI lab with a $1B five-year commitment to enhance drug discovery using Nvidia's computing power to accelerate clinical development.

Protege, a real-world data platform for AI, secured a $30M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, boosting total funding to $65M to enhance AI training with high-quality, non-public data.

Harmattan AI, a French defense tech company raised a $200M in a Series B round led by Dassault Aviation, at a $1.4B valuation to build in autonomy and mission-system software for aircraft and expand internationally.

Buzzy Tools & Tech

The Latest Trending Tools & Cutting Edge Technology Developments

Tools

Anthropic — Claude Cowork AI simplifies file organization, document creation.

Databricks Agent Bricks — AI framework for building, testing, deploying agents.

TurboSite — AI tool for creating landing pages in 2 mins with no design, code.

Chopcast — NLP tech identifies and transforms audio and videos into short clips.

CES 2026 — Advanced home robots like LG's CLOiD and Boston Dynamics' Atlas.

Technology Trending Today

Perfect Conductor — Rubidium atoms redefine low-temp transport concepts.

Hall–Petch Law — Finds grain size reduction softens metals at supersonic speeds.

Tech Breakthroughs — redirecting asteroids, cancer therapy, & neural tech

Adam-U Ultra — Humanoid robot learns complex skills, preloaded model, data.

China Megaconstellation — Chinese firms plan 200K satellites to rival Starlink.

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion — MIT may 2x rocket efficiency, cut time to Mars.

Plasma Fireballs at CERN — Stable plasma jets suggest ancient magnetic fields.

Cryptocurrency News

The Latest News in Crypto & Blockchain

Bitcoin Surge — Bitcoin climbed past $92,000 amid macroeconomic factors and a clash between Fed Chair Jerome Powell and President Trump. Privacy coins like Monero and Zcash also gained.

Ethereum's Future — Standard Chartered predicts Ethereum will surpass Bitcoin by 2026 to hit $7,500 by 2026, with its dominance in stablecoins, tokenized assets, and DeFi.

Crypto Bill Urgency — Bernstein analysts stress the urgent need for a U.S. crypto market structure bill, with disputes over stablecoin rewards posing risks. The bill seeks to clarify SEC and CFTC oversight.

Billion-Dollar IPO — BitGo is targeting a $1.96B valuation in its US IPO, seeking to raise $201M by offering 11.8M shares at $15-$17 each.

Rain — The stablecoin firm raised $250M at $1.95B. The investment aims to expand its market presence and enhance its payments platform, reflecting strong growth.