Elon Might Just Merge All His Companies Into One

Welcome to the tech brewery ride home for Friday, 01/30/2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Apple does a big acquisition. OpenAI is racing the IPO. Elon might just merge all his companies into one. Google's Project Genie is the latest thing that will make you say, gee, AI can do that. And of course, the weekend long range suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Everybody seems to be deploying AI agents right now, but the thing is sometimes AI agents mess up. They go off script or make changes you didn't authorize, forcing you to diagnose the problem and then fix it. The good news is Rubrik Agent Cloud helps prevent that extra work. It's the only platform that allows you to monitor, govern, and rewind AI agent actions. It's like an undo button for AI. It runs in the background the whole time and makes sure things stay on track. On a singular platform, Rubrik helps you unleash more agents faster while mitigating risk. So if you're running AI agents and wanna rest a little easier at night, check it out. Right now, my listeners get exclusive early access to Rubrik Agent Cloud. Head to rubrik.com. That's rubrik.com. Man, a bunch of news came in yesterday afternoon. It was one thing after another where I was like, oh, I'll lead the show with that. I'll lead the show with that. Let's start with Apple who had earnings, which were fine. They said they expect q two revenue to grow 13 to 16% year on year versus the 10% that was estimated. They also said that they are currently constrained by iPhone processor supply issues, and they expect memory costs to rise after q two. But maybe the more interesting news came just before the earnings report. Apple has acquired QAI, whose tech can analyze facial expressions and could enable nonverbal discussions with AI assistants. Sources say the deal values QAI at around $2,000,000,000. This acquisition could be Apple's second largest ever and marks founder Avaid Meisel's second exit to Apple, which bought his startup, PrimeSense, in 2013. So what is this? Quoting the Feet. The deal is designed to help the iPhone maker narrow its gap with Meta, Google, and OpenAI in the growing race to create new kinds of wearable devices to speak to devices to speak to AI. Patents filed by QAI show its technology being used in headphones or glasses using facial skin micro movements to communicate without talking. Such a system could allow Apple customers wearing headphones and smart glasses to have private nonverbal discussions with an AI assistant. Johnny Shruji, Apple's senior vice president of hardware technology, said of QAI, they're a remarkable company that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning. Silicon Valley companies are also rushing to develop rival AI powered wearable devices. Meta has had success with its Ray Ban branded smart glasses, which let wearers talk to its AI, while Google …