Daily Tech & GNSS News Digest - January 22, 2026

The AI semiconductor wars are reshaping Silicon Valley’s competitive landscape as AMD’s technical breakout adds nearly $50 billion to its market cap, while Nvidia signals a strategic pivot toward inference by backing startup Baseten with $300 million. At Davos, European leaders grapple with a stark choice: invest heavily in homegrown AI or accept dependence on Chinese models.

Tech News

AMD’s Technical Breakout Signals New AI Chip Era

Advanced Micro Devices has ignited a firestorm of investor optimism in the opening weeks of 2026, with an 11% surge over the last five trading days propelling the stock past long-standing resistance levels. The rally has added nearly $50 billion to the company’s market capitalization, signaling that AMD is no longer just a runner-up in the AI race but a formidable co-leader.

AMD’s server capacity for the entirety of 2026 is already nearly sold out, according to industry analysts. As the company ramps up production of its 3nm and 2nm-based designs at TSMC, the foundry’s utilization rates are hitting record highs. TSMC’s massive $52 billion capital expenditure plan for 2026 is largely predicated on sustained demand from companies like AMD and Nvidia.

The broader semiconductor market continues its AI-driven expansion. Global semiconductor sales rose 22.5% to $772 billion last year, and the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics group predicts sales will grow another 26% in 2026 to hit $975 billion.

Nvidia Invests in Inference Startup Baseten

Nvidia has joined a $300 million funding round in Baseten, an AI startup focused on running AI models efficiently in production. The investment underscores the rising value of companies focused on “inference”—the process of running trained models to generate outputs—and signals a strategic shift from the era of training mega-models to the era of serving them at scale.

The move reflects a broader recognition that while training costs dominate headlines, inference will ultimately represent the majority of AI compute demand. Baseten specializes in helping enterprises deploy models with optimized performance and cost efficiency, addressing a critical bottleneck as companies move AI from experimentation to production.

Europe Faces AI Sovereignty Crossroads at Davos

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt delivered a stark warning at the World Economic Forum: Europe must invest in its own open-source AI labs and address soaring energy prices, or it will quickly find itself dependent on Chinese models. “China is largely open weight, open source in its approach,” Schmidt said. “Unless Europe is willing to spend lots of money for European models, Europe will end up using the Chinese models.”

The debate intensified when Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm pushed back against the sovereignty narrative entirely. “This whole sovereignty narrative in Europe is dangerous,” Ekholm said. “I don’t think Europe has the capability to be sovereign today.” Meanwhile, German investor DTCP is on track to raise Europe’s largest-ever defense tech venture fund, targeting €500 million ($580 million) for startups.

European tech stocks have defied broader market jitters, with technology the best-performing Stoxx Europe 600 sector in January, up 10%—a sharp contrast to the US S&P 500 Information Technology Index, which is little changed.

Additional Headlines

OpenAI secures renewable energy: The company locked in a long-term power agreement as electricity becomes the critical constraint for scaling AI data centers.
Applied Compute valued at $1.3B: The startup founded by former OpenAI researchers is raising funds for domain-specific enterprise AI customization.
Data center “supercycle” forecast: JLL predicts the sector will add 100 GW of capacity between 2026-2030, creating $1.2 trillion in global real estate asset value.

GNSS News

Anello Photonics unveiled its Aerial inertial navigation system at CES 2026, delivering high-performance navigation for demanding drone missions where GPS signals are jammed, spoofed, or simply unavailable. The compact system integrates the company’s Silicon Photonics Optical Gyroscope technology with multi-band GNSS receivers.

The key specification: heading drift of less than 0.5 degrees per hour without external assistance, maintaining over 98% navigation accuracy without cameras or fiber-optic cables. The system employs an extended Kalman filter-based sensor fusion engine with flight-profile-tuned algorithms, enabling precise navigation over water, desert corridors, and low-visibility conditions.

“We’re delivering accurate navigation solutions in a cost-effective, SWaP-friendly package for mission-critical operations,” said CEO Mario Paniccia. The Aerial INS targets beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) unmanned aircraft, maritime vertical takeoff/landing systems, ISR platforms, and heavy-lift cargo drones. Evaluation units are available immediately, with production deliveries scheduled for Q2 2026.

LEO PNT Gains Momentum as GPS Alternative

The rise of low-Earth orbit positioning, navigation, and timing (LEO PNT) continues to accelerate as location-dependent devices multiply faster than GPS can support. According to GPS World analysis, innovation in LEO satellites has seen exponential growth over the past decade, with systems like Xona Space’s Pulsar constellation partnering with Trimble to stream GNSS corrections.

The convergence of communications and PNT represents a new architectural layer for resilient navigation. As GNSS faces increasing jamming and spoofing threats in both military and civilian contexts, LEO constellations offer advantages in signal strength and geometric diversity that complement traditional GPS signals.

Key Takeaways

AI chip competition intensifies: AMD’s market cap surge and Nvidia’s inference investment signal the AI hardware race is expanding beyond training to production deployment.
Europe’s tech dilemma crystallizes: Davos debates exposed the fundamental tension between sovereignty ambitions and the massive investment required to compete with US and Chinese AI.
GPS-denied navigation matures: Anello’s new INS demonstrates that reliable navigation without satellite signals is becoming commercially viable for drones and autonomous systems.