US President Donald Trump’s first week in office brought a flurry of activity, with executive orders and tech developments signaling a shift toward the pro-business environment promised to voters.
Among other moves, the president set his plans to establish a digital asset reserve into action
Elsewhere in the tech space, prominent CEOs came together to launch a new venture to build out artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in the US over the next four years.
Read on to learn more about the biggest technology stories this week.
1. Trump issues executive order on crypto
Trump signed an executive order related to cryptocurrencies on Thursday (January 23), establishing the President’s Working Group on Digital Assets Markets, an advisory group to be chaired by David Sacks, his AI and crypto czar.
Other top-ranking government members, including chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, will also serve; however, as the founder and CEO of Custodia Bank has pointed out, members of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have been excluded.
The new entity’s objective is to set criteria for establishing a national stockpile of digital assets, “potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts.”
While the crypto community expected that Bitcoin would be at the center of a national digital asset reserve, the order makes no mention of the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s price pulled back from US$105,000 to US$102,000 on Thursday afternoon. Its weekly high was US$108,000 ahead of the opening bell on Monday (January 20) morning.
Also on Monday, the Daily HODL reported on a US$50 million crypto investment made by the Trump family’s crypto project World Liberty Financial. The purchase reportedly consisted of US$4.7 million worth of LINK, US$4.7 million of AAVE, US$4.7 million of TRX, US$4.7 million of ENA, US$14.1 million of wrapped Bitcoin and US$18.8 million of Ethereum.
The group is to report to the president within the next six months with a regulatory framework and legislative proposals.
2. OpenAI unveils Operator AI agent
After reports earlier this month from the Information and Axios, among others, OpenAI unveiled its AI agent, Operator, on Thursday. The company’s research preview will allow users a chance to provide feedback.
According to a press release, Operator is powered by a new model called Computer-Using Agent. It combines GPT-4o’s vision with advanced reasoning and reinforcement learning capabilities.
The program is trained to interact with graphical interfaces online, essentially enabling it to see and interact with web pages. This will allow it to execute actions on behalf of human users independently.
“The ability to use the same interfaces and tools that humans interact with on a daily basis broadens the utility of AI, helping people save time on everyday tasks while opening up new engagement opportunities for businesses,” said the company. In a demonstration, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and three colleagues prompted Operator to make dinner reservations, buy tickets and order from Instacart (NASDAQ:CART).
Operator will reportedly be able to self-correct when it makes mistakes, and if it runs into challenges it is programmed to give control back to the human user. It became available in the US for ChatGPT Pro users after its launch on Thursday, with the company planning to expand access to Plus, Team and Enterprise customers in the future.
In other news, OpenAI is facing controversy regarding performance claims after a December 2024 demonstration of o3, its newest reasoning model. Frontier Math, a benchmark that uses unpublished math problems to prevent AI models from solving questions they’ve already seen, was used to demonstrate o3. While models like GPT-4 and Gemini score below 2 percent on this benchmark, o3 achieved over 25 percent, an astonishing result.
However, it was later revealed that OpenAI provided funding to FrontierMath’s development, and instructed Epoch AI, an AI research and evaluation organization, to conceal this connection until o3’s launch.
This information came to light after an Epoch AI contractor lodged a public complaint.
Epoch’s associate director apologized, explaining that a contractual agreement with OpenAI prevented earlier disclosure, but noting that a verbal agreement was in place to prevent access to a specific set of FrontierMath’s problems used for independent verification from OpenAI.
3. Project Stargate gives Oracle a boost
The Trump administration announced a US$500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) and Softbank (OTC Pink:SOBKY) on Tuesday (January 21) to build AI infrastructure in the US.
The move comes after the government overturned a 2023 order to create safety standards regarding AI.
Called Stargate, the AI project will commence with a US$100 billion initial investment allocated data center and infrastructure building in Texas; there are plans to expand over the next four years.
“It’s big money and high-quality people,” said Trump during the announcement, one of his first after Monday’s inauguration. “It’s a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential.”
AI investment firm MGX, launched by the Abu Dhabi government in 2024, is also backing the project. MGX signed a similar AI infrastructure agreement with BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), Global Infrastructure Partners and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) in September 2024. The firm also participated in OpenAI’s US$6.6 billion funding round in October 2024.
Chipmakers Arm Holdings (NASADQ:ARM) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) will be technology partners with Microsoft, Oracle and OpenAI. Oracle, NVIDIA and OpenAI will work together to develop the computing system.
Meanwhile, SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX, will provide equity funding. OpenAI and SoftBank have reportedly each committed US$19 billion to Stargate, while Oracle and MGX will contribute US$7 billion between the two.
After the news broke, shares of Oracle rose by nearly 6 percent on Monday and opened nearly 11 percent higher on Tuesday morning. The company’s share price is up over 13 percent for the week.
4. Barclays boosts NVIDIA target
NVIDIA ended the week ahead by nearly 4.5 percent, continuing its surge from the previous week.
The company’s gains came after Barclays (NYSE:BCS) analyst Thomas O’Malley reaffirmed his buy rating for the company and adjusted his price target, raising it to US$175 from US$160.
However, the new rating also came with a warning about NVIDIA’s customer base, which has been looking for cheaper alternatives to its graphic processing units (GPUs). Marvel Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL) and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO), whose price targets were adjusted to US$150 and US$260, respectively, were cited as NVIDIA’s biggest competitors.
The launch of NVIDIA’s newest GPU, the GeForce RTX 50 series, was reportedly delayed in 2024 due to design errors and manufacturing issues, and reports have already surfaced of shortages.
Overheating issues were also reported, but the company claims to have resolved the issue.
Meanwhile, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is down nearly 4 percent for the week after sliding over 2 percent on Tuesday when brokerage firm Jefferies Financial Group (NYSE:JEF) downgraded its rating to underperform and cut the iPhone maker’s price target from US$211.84 to US$200.75. Analyst Edison Lee predicts the company will miss its target revenue growth in Q1 as new data reveals falling iPhone shipments and reduced market share in China.
5. Databricks secures US$15 billion
Databricks, a cloud-based unified data analytics platform, closed a US$10 billion series J funding round on Wednesday (January 22). Participants included the Qatar Investment Authority, a longtime investor in Databricks, as well as newcomers Temasek and investment funds overseen by Macquarie Capital. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), which runs its own LLaMA models on Databricks’ platform, also joined as a strategic investor.
In addition to equity financing, Databricks received a US$5.25 billion credit facility — consisting of a US$2.5 billion unfunded revolver and a US$2.75 billion term loan — led by JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) with Barclays, Citigroup (NYSE:C), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS).
All in all, Databricks secured US$15 billion in new funds, bringing its valuation to US$62 billion. The company’s lakehouse architecture combines the strong governance of a data warehouse with the flexibility of data lakes. This allows organizations to store and analyze their data in the same location, regardless of its format. It also has superior scaling capabilities, making it a good choice for organizations working with large amounts of data.
“We received overwhelming interest in this round from both new and existing investors and strategic partners who believe in our vision and market impact. These partners are focused on the long-term success of Databricks and our rapidly growing customer base,” said Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks. “Organizations are modernizing their data and AI infrastructure because they recognize the immense potential of generative AI. Data intelligence is critical to both unlocking this potential and to helping enterprises reach their business goals.’
Ghodsi also reportedly said that he would not be surprised if his company went public within the next year.
Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.