Good day and welcome to the Midas Report!
Here is what is unfolding in AI today, January 23, 2026….
South Korea just did what most governments have been circling for years and actually shipped a full set of AI laws.
That matters because it turns AI regulation from a vague future risk into a real operating constraint, with a timeline and consequences that teams will have to design around.
For founders, the bigger signal is not just Korea. It is the direction of travel. Once one major economy sets a comprehensive framework, everyone else gets a template, and the global market starts to fragment into rule sets that look similar in spirit but different in the details.
If you are building for global scale, you cannot treat compliance like a late stage checkbox. You are effectively choosing whether your product will be easy to sell across borders or constantly stuck in the custom build penalty box.
There is also a quiet sales upside hiding in the paperwork.
In APAC, especially in fintech, health, and government adjacent sectors, enterprise buyers do not just ask if your model works. They ask if it is defensible, auditable, and safe to deploy without making them the headline.
Early compliance is how you turn trust into a feature. It shortens security reviews, reduces procurement friction, and helps a buyer say yes without betting their career on your roadmap.
So what do you do this week, not this quarter.
Audit where your AI stack touches user data, where it makes or influences automated decisions, and where you would struggle to explain why a model produced an output.
Those are no longer just product questions. They are legal risk zones now, and Korea will not be the recent jurisdiction to spell them out.
Treat this like you would treat payments compliance. Build the muscle early, document the choices, and make transparency and controls part of the product… not a scramble after your first big customer asks hard questions.
Investors should read the same signal. Startups that are fluent in global compliance are becoming more fundable assets, because in regulated markets, speed without trust is just churn with better branding.
🧠 The Download
Accenture bets $1 billion that industrial AI needs less strategy and more shipping… With this acquisition, Accenture is moving from advisory to execution, aiming to own the repeatable patterns that drive real enterprise adoption. For founders, it’s a wake up call that go to market is shifting toward integration first delivery.
EY positions itself to own the end to end playbook for enterprise deployment… The move signals that procurement decisions will increasingly favor tools that fit into a managed, risk audited narrative over those that simply promise raw innovation.
Lightning AI merges with Voltage Park to sell a vertically integrated AI cloud… This tie up creates an alternative to incumbents by bundling software, GPUs, and deployment flow into a unified infrastructure play.
TSMC tightened its grip as the market’s ultimate AI toll booth, with investors rewarding its unmatched position in the chipmaking chain. While Intel faltered on soft guidance, Nvidia, AMD, and Apple rely on its cutting edge fab capacity to scale next-gen silicon.
AI infrastructure startups are commanding sky high checks, with nine figure rounds clustering around platform and tooling firms with clear enterprise ROI. Investors are playing to win, backing teams that accelerate deployment and adoption.
Upbit’s listing of ELSA vaulted the AI token into the spotlight, as traders pounced on the exchange fueled momentum trade. While presale hype machines like DeepSnitch AI circled headlines, the market’s smarter money is watching which projects evolve into real infrastructure.
Thats us for the day. Thanks for reading.
MIDAS AI
