Welcome to today’s Midas Report. Your one stop shop for everything important happening within AI.
Here is what is unfolding in AI today, January 27th, 2026….
Our top story of the day kicks off the big race for “physical ai”.
Microsoft just pulled back the curton on Rho-alpha, a new model that doesn’t just talk but rather a vision language action (VLA) model designed for robots operating in the physical world.
This isn't another chatbot tweak.
VLA models translate natural language commands into actual robotic control signals. Tell a robot to stack boxes or sort components, and it perceives the environment, reasons through the task, and executes.
Microsoft is already testing Rho-alpha on dual arm systems and humanoid robots, with early access rolling out soon and broader availability through Microsoft Foundry on the horizon.
The strategic angle here is sharp.
While competitors race to refine digital assistants, Microsoft is planting a flag in embodied AI. That means warehouses, fulfillment centers, manufacturing floors, and lab environments where tasks are messy, unstructured, and very much physical.
Ashley Llorens, who leads Microsoft's Research Accelerator, said VLA models are enabling systems to "perceive, reason, and act with increasing autonomy alongside humans." That's not aspirational fluff. That's a product roadmap.
For Microsoft, Rho-alpha opens a wedge to extend Copilot beyond your inbox and spreadsheets into your supply chain and operations. If they nail this, the same company managing your documents could soon be managing your robots.
What makes this more than vaporware is the infrastructure behind it. Microsoft trained Rho-alpha using Nvidia's Isaac Sim and their own BusyBox benchmark, a testing ground for physical interaction tasks. Future versions will add force sensing and other modalities, making robots more responsive to real world chaos.
If you're building in B2B SaaS, infrastructure, or IoT, start positioning for VLA integrations now.
And if you're an early stage founder, stop thinking apps only. The next wave of MVPs won't just run in the cloud. They'll move boxes, sort inventory, and operate in three dimensions.
Physical AI is no longer theoretical. It's shipping.
🧠 The Download
Anthropic CEO warns AI risks are real, near term, and potentially catastrophic… The frontier lab’s leader is no longer just pitching products. Amodei’s escalation resets the safety conversation in boardrooms and policy circles, signaling that diligence on red teaming and deployment governance is table stakes.
CGI joins forces with OpenAI to scale enterprise AI adoption… Another consultancy just stepped into the ring, armed with a GPT powered delivery playbook. This partnership doubles down on AI as a services game, where trust, internal adoption, and packaged transformation beat generic slide decks and demo only deals.
Nvidia just poured another $2 billion into CoreWeave, signaling an aggressive bet on controlling the full AI compute stack. This vertical integration play is a clear move to dominate the AI infrastructure layer as demand shifts from excitement to measurable output. With core earnings approaching, watch for hard utilization metrics, not hype.
Synthesia’s $200 million Series E, doubling its valuation to $4 billion with backing from Nvidia and Google, marks a power move in enterprise video AI. This isn’t just a flashy unicorn… it’s a strategic node sitting at the intersection of distribution, GPU demand, and application layer dominance.
The AI token bubble took another hit as the fake ClawdBot coin spiked to $16 million before crashing 90%, exposing crypto’s Achilles’ heel… hype with no product. In contrast, Mesh’s $75 million raise at a $1 billion valuation shows where real blockchain AI convergence has legs… building the payment infrastructure agents will actually need to transact autonomously. Utility is the gatekeeper in this next cycle.
Thanks for reading today! See you tomorrow.
MIDAS AI
