Daily Tech & GNSS News Digest - January 29, 2026

Big Tech earnings dominated the headlines as Meta revealed staggering AI infrastructure plans while Microsoft stumbled despite beating revenue targets. Meanwhile, OpenAI is assembling a historic funding round that could value the company at $830 billion.

Tech News

Meta Unveils $135 Billion AI Spending Blitz

Meta delivered a standout Q4 performance, reporting $59.89 billion in revenue against expectations of $58.41 billion. But it was CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for 2026 that captivated investors: the company plans to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion in capital expenditures this year, nearly doubling the $72.22 billion spent in 2025.

Zuckerberg predicted a “major AI acceleration” in 2026, with investments geared toward building “personal super intelligence.” The company recently acquired 49% of Scale AI for $14.3 billion and hired its CEO Alexandr Wang as Meta’s chief AI officer. Meta shares jumped more than 10% in after-hours trading, with the stock rising over 7% in premarket trading the following day.

The Register noted that Meta’s infrastructure spending would roughly match Kenya’s entire GDP, which stood at $136 billion in 2025. Earlier this month, Meta unveiled “Meta Compute” to oversee its growing network of AI datacenters, with plans to build tens of gigawatts of capacity this decade.

OpenAI Eyes $60 Billion Investment Round

Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon are in discussions to invest as much as $60 billion in OpenAI as part of a potential $100 billion funding round, according to The Information. Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest up to $30 billion, while Amazon could contribute more than $20 billion as a new investor.

Combined with SoftBank’s reported $30 billion commitment, the round could push OpenAI’s valuation close to $830 billion. Amazon’s investment may hinge on expanding OpenAI’s cloud server rental deal with AWS and commercial agreements for enterprise ChatGPT subscriptions.

OpenAI has been diversifying its partnerships beyond longtime anchor investor Microsoft, recently announcing multibillion-dollar agreements with Nvidia, Broadcom, Oracle, Amazon, and Google.

Microsoft Beats Revenue but Stock Tumbles 11%

Microsoft reported Q2 fiscal 2026 revenue of $81.3 billion, up 17% year-over-year and slightly above the $80.2 billion expected. However, Azure growth barely met expectations, sending shares down 11.5% to $426.20 in after-hours trading.

The company’s capital expenditures hit $34.9 billion for the quarter, with fiscal 2026 spending expected to exceed the $88.1 billion invested last year. The disappointing Azure numbers raised questions about whether Microsoft is keeping pace in the cloud AI race.

Additional Headlines

Chinese AI Heats Up: Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K2.5 with video-generation and agentic capabilities, while MiniMax’s Hong Kong IPO raised $619 million and doubled on debut to a $13.5 billion valuation.
DeepSeek Prepares R2 Launch: The Chinese AI firm published a new “Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections” training framework that analysts called a “striking breakthrough” for efficient AI scaling.
Tesla Deliveries Slip: Tesla reported Q4 results showing automotive deliveries fell 8.6% in 2025 to 1.64 million vehicles, though its energy storage unit continued to grow.
Apple Earnings Tonight: Apple reports after the close, with investors watching for Siri AI improvements following its high-profile deal with Google to integrate Gemini models.
China Approves Nvidia H200 Chips: China reportedly approved purchases of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips by major tech companies, signaling pragmatic efforts to meet near-term AI needs.

GNSS News

GNSS Augmentation Market to Surpass $20 Billion by 2030

The satellite-based GNSS augmentation system market is experiencing robust growth, expanding from $13.29 billion in 2025 to an anticipated $14.47 billion in 2026, representing an 8.8% CAGR. Growth is driven by increased use of SBAS and GBAS for precise navigation across aviation and maritime sectors.

Meanwhile, the Assured PNT market is projected to surge from $1.35 billion in 2025 to $1.74 billion in 2026, with an impressive 28.9% CAGR. Rising incidents of GPS signal interference and advancements in inertial navigation systems are fueling demand for resilient positioning solutions.

SES Extends EGNOS Service Through 2030

SES and the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) announced an extension of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) GEO-1 satellite service agreement through 2030, with an option to extend until 2032. The agreement maintains high-precision navigation services for aviation and other critical users across Europe.

On January 13, Europe’s Copernicus Earth-observation program carried out a planned reconfiguration of the GNSS receiver aboard the Sentinel-3B satellite, illustrating how deeply Galileo-based positioning now underpins European Earth-observation services.

New Hardware: u-blox ZED-X20P All-Band Module

Mouser Electronics began shipping the new ZED-X20P all-band high precision GNSS module from u-blox on January 19. The module integrates all-band GNSS with signal modernization and innovative positioning algorithms for industrial, guidance, agricultural, UAV, robotics, and auto-steering applications.

Additionally, ANELLO Photonics launched the Aerial INS at CES 2026, a compact inertial navigation system built around Silicon Photonics Optical Gyroscope technology with integrated multi-band GNSS receivers. The system delivers <0.5 deg/hr unaided heading drift, maintaining accurate navigation through high-dynamics and GNSS jamming or spoofing scenarios.

Key Takeaways

AI Infrastructure Arms Race Intensifies: Meta’s $135 billion spending plan and OpenAI’s $100 billion funding round signal that Big Tech sees 2026 as a pivotal year for AI dominance.
Cloud Growth Under Scrutiny: Microsoft’s 11% stock drop despite solid revenue shows investors are zeroing in on AI-specific cloud metrics as the key growth indicator.
GNSS Market Resilience: With augmentation systems and assured PNT markets both showing strong growth, positioning technology continues to expand across aviation, maritime, and autonomous applications.