Apple’s AI Wearable Pin, OpenAI’s Massive Ad Push & General Fusion’s $1B IPO | Jan 22, 2026

0:13Welcome, everyone, to the Information's TI TV. My name is Akash Basricha. It is Thursday, January 22nd. The information published exclusive reporting that Apple is developing an AI wearable pin. We will talk to the reporter behind that scoop. We'll also have a wider conversation about the company's AI strategy, despite the department's lead, Craig Federici, plotting a more cautious course around AI. We'll then turn to another big story this morning, the legendary TikTok deal that will see the company sell Its data security business to a U.S. company is expected to close. We'll also talk about the latest in OpenAI and Thinking Machines Labs talent war.

0:55We're also going to talk about OpenAI's advertising play with someone who has an inside look at how brands feel about all this. And we will wrap the show with the CEO of General Fusion, the company today agreeing to a merger that will see the firm go public with a SPAC, a$1 billion valuation. We have got a lot to cover, so let's get right on into it. The Information Publish exclusive reporting that Apple is developing an AI wearable pin the size of an AirTag. I talked with Wayne Ma, one of the reporters on the piece, about the details. Here is that conversation. Wayne, welcome back to the show.

1:32It's great to have you here. Hey, Akash. How are you doing? So what do we know about this pin so far? uh it's still very early in development but uh i was struck by how small it is um it has two cameras on the front um a button on the side speakers microphones uh and wireless charging on the back and um i guess you're supposed to like wear it similar to an air tag you need to attach it either to your clothes or to a bag now this resembles something like the humane pin that we heard so much about i mean we know what happened with that company right yeah i mean And conceptually, they're both, I guess, pins, but the main pin was a bit different.

2:11It had like a projector. It was like, you know, it was very bulky. It wasn't meant to work, you know, with a phone. And I think this new Apple pin will likely work with an iPhone. It's smaller, it's sleeker, more lightweight. And so what do we know about what this pin is supposed to be able to do? Well, presumably, it'll do things that most AI assistants do. You can talk to it, ask it questions. Maybe with the cameras, you can take photos or videos, send messages to people. But I think at this stage, it's not clear, but probably it'll just help you understand your surroundings better. And is this a direct rival product to what OpenAI is rumored to be building as well?

2:59I think it is. I think that Apple's seeing the writing on the wall that consumers really want to use AI constantly, have something that's always on, something that's recording, or being able to show what you want to be able to show AI what you're doing. And so they're rushing this product to market, I think, partially because OpenAI is going to be doing the same in the next year or two. So we've talked on the show about the challenges that Apple intelligence has had in terms of really impressing customers and users of the iPhone. How do you square that with then the idea that they're rushing to market, like you said, to deliver this pin?

3:37I mean, you know, there's got to be some tension there, right? Yeah, so I think one of the big reasons for some of the delays in some of these Apple AI products is that the software is just not ready, right? Siri is just not ready. In fact, Apple delayed Siri, upgrades to Siri last year, and they hopefully plan to roll them out this year. And so I think that Apple's recent partnership or announcement that they were going to use Google's Gemini to kind of power their underlying AI models might have emboldened them or given them the competence at least to try these sort of new AI products, knowing that they can likely deliver them on schedule this time.

4:12So they're leaning pretty heavily on Gemini to sort of carry them through this next phase, even potentially for their wearables and hardware. Yeah, I think so. I think that's the difference now. And then if you think about the scale of this bet, you know, I think on one end, you know, I'm struck by how much work it took to deliver a product like the Vision Pro and how intricate that was. On the other end, you have AirPods, right, which seem to be sort of less of a departure from what Apple knows how to do. So if we take that spectrum of AirPods to Vision Pro, where do you think this wearable pin falls on that spectrum?

4:48Yeah, they're very different. The Vision Pro took more than seven years to develop. and obviously AirPods, you know, were a shorter time, but also like the Vision Pro cost$3 ,500 and I don't think the spend will be anywhere near that. And so I would say it's closer to maybe like somewhere between like AirPods and Apple Watch than it is to like a Vision Pro or some of these other products that Apple has in the pipeline. And I mean, do you think they'll pull it off? I mean, like just, you know, give me your, you're an avid consumer of Apple products. I mean, what do you think that will happen with this?

5:22I think it really depends on what the capabilities are. You know, what are people's expectations in one year or two years about what AI can do? You know, is everybody going to be wearing smart glasses or are they going to have AI pins or pendants or things like that? I think this is kind of like a bet on the future that Apple doesn't want to be left behind if people start to, you know, find other ways to interact with the world and, you know, with AI other than their smartphone. I want to ask you about a Bloomberg story that also was making headlines this week. So there was reporting that Apple is also looking to revamp Siri, which we've reported on as well.

5:57But now it might resemble more of a literal AI chatbot assistant. My read on it was maybe something like what Microsoft has with Copilot. I was trying to figure out what direction they were going in. What was your reaction to that story? Yeah, I think Apple's long-headed version to chatbots. They didn't think they were that useful. And of course, ChatGPT kind of changed that, right? People really like ChatGPT. They want to talk to it. They want to get advice from it. And so I think it was inevitable that Apple kind of caved to this idea that you do want this companion or somebody you can talk to back and forth and have back and forth conversations.

6:33People have definitely proposed that within Apple for years for Siri, but were shot down. And I think this actually does pair well with this new AI wearable pin. Because if you wear this pin, maybe it is your companion and something that you can talk to regularly. hmm and last question for you what does this tell you about apple's strategy at large here i mean we've talked about the legacy iphone business it's not going away we talked about the big bets the vision pro i mean you know what does it tell you about the company's overall strategy yeah i mean i think that they are trying to prepare for a post iphone future and so they're making lots of hedges and exploring lots of different products that could possibly be that post-Dyfield world.

7:15And so this AI wearable pin is kind of one of those bets. Great. Well, Wayne, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Wayne Ma, our reporter here at The Information. I want to thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Okay. As big tech pours colossal sums into AI, one major player is moving more cautiously. Apple, the company's AI lead, Craig Federighi, is known for his frugality and for initially being hesitant to dive into AI. Now he is at a pivotal moment as Apple tries to keep pace with rivals while sticking to a more measured strategy. The Information published an in-depth story looking at this strategy.

7:55I want to bring on our Apple reporter, Aaron Tilley, who was one of the reporters behind that piece. Aaron, welcome to the show. It's great to have you back. Hey, good to be back. So what made you want to write this story in the first place? yeah i mean craig has always had a fascination for me i i think he's been this like pivotal person inside the company but not i mean people know of him because he's always doing the big part of the announcements but i don't think he's like i haven't really been a chance to dig into him as much as i wanted to over the years covering apple he's always been this hugely important person side the company so i think just just he's become more important ai he's taken over increasingly more of ai and he's just this crucial person kind of figuring out apple's future right now and how has his role evolved now as apple has started toying with ai to now going head first into AI?

8:54Yeah, so he's first, it all started last year, early last year when he took over Siri. The Siri team had been delaying the launch of this big re-overhaul of the voice assistant, and he took over the entire endeavor. And then this past, over two months ago, he took over the rest of the AI team. So that includes all their sort of research and development and in all their efforts to sort of internally develop the AI models themselves. Now, despite all this, according to your reporting, he was initially a bit of a skeptic about AI, right? Yeah, for sure. I mean, like over the years, like he has just shot down over and over efforts to build AI features inside Apple products.

9:42He is a big skeptic of just the reliability of AI inside Apple products And also just the privacy and security components are a huge issue for him because those are really big issues for him. And he's just like he just needs predictability in his software, the software he likes. So he's always pushed back on integrating AI in his products. And has he come around to it now or is he still adopting that mentality? He definitely has gotten on board. I mean, I think just the chat GPT moment, like the rest of the tech industry, has really kind of forced a lot of these people, the skeptics' hands on these issues.

10:23You just can't ignore it now, just the success of AI and these LLMs, these chatbots. So he's had to get on board, both, I mean, for a political reason internally for Apple. I think from the board level down, there's this need. They know they need to get on board. And so he needs to play that game. But I think, you know, he has seen, I think, the significant progress that AI has made. But you talked a little bit about his approach towards investment. And AI, we know well, is a very expensive endeavor. And so it strikes me as a bit of a tension here. If you have an executive that is known to be a little bit more hesitant to spend heavily on investment that may not pay off, and then you have this trend that takes a lot of money, How has he come around to that?

11:15Has he kept that sort of frugal mindset with AI? And I mean, you know, we'll get to the Google deal in a second, but how has that changed? um yeah i don't think there's anything's gonna change craig's mentality on spending he is uh you know his frugality is in his core dna uh both in his personal and professional life he'll scrutinize a team's budget down to the snacks they can buy um i don't think anything changing that for him so he's gonna be really i think consistent on that and look for ways Apple can efficiently kind of move in the AI era. Okay. So now we have this Google deal that Apple has signed.

11:58It's the licensing deal for Gemini. It's going to power many of the new features behind Siri, if I'm not mistaken, as it comes out. What do we know now about Apple's own internal efforts to develop their own models? And how does Craig feel about those efforts? Yeah, that's been a big point of tension between him and this internal AI effort. The team building that is under a lot of pressure. There's a lot of frustration that team having to work so hard on developing this in-house and then for Apple just to move to an external model like they've done. but they are still working on internal models, but much smaller models that will work on device with the goal to eventually, you know, do it all in-house.

12:52That's Apple's sort of strategy very consistently over the years. If they need to do something, work with an external supplier of some critical piece of technology, they'll do it, but eventually they're always in-house it. This is obviously different than their whole chip endeavor, which has been very successful on that front. But that's the eventual goal here. And you talked about the tension between Craig and these teams. So what is his tension with them exactly? He just doesn't think they're moving fast enough. Their quality of models aren't good enough for Apple. And he just doesn't think it's ready for prime time.

13:31And they think he's not, on their end, from their perspective, he's not doing a good enough job shrinking down the models they're offering to work on Apple devices. So there's a bit of pointing fingers at each other for who's to blame on this front. But, you know, they're trying their hardest with what the resources they have inside Apple. And how do you think this story inevitably plays out in the long term? In the short term, they have the Google deal. So there doesn't seem to be a huge rush. But how do you think it goes? I think they're going to be dependent on Apple. or sorry, I think Apple will be dependent on Google and pretty much the, not the long term, but the medium term.

14:17I mean, it all depends. First of all, does AI really commoditize? Like, are these LLMs going to get cheaper and cheaper? If that's the case, I mean, they're going to be able to insource it eventually. But certainly in the medium term, Google is going to be a critical partner in Apple's AI work going forward. Great. Well, Aaron, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Aaron Tilly, our Apple reporter here at The Information. Okay. TikTok is expected to close the sale of its data security arm in the US today, bringing an end to the years-long saga surrounding a potential TikTok ban. This story has been going on so long that it really begs the question, how popular is TikTok right now anyway, and where does it fit within the creator economy ecosystem in 2026?

15:08For more on that, I want to bring on Josh Kaplan, the co-founder and CEO of Smooth Media, a company that connects creators and brands to set up long-term brand campaigns. Josh, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Hey, gosh, how's it going? Thanks for bringing me on. I'm doing well. So we are here. It's 2026. Okay. TikTok is not banned. It is still very much a platform that people use and creators are still using it heavily. What I want to talk to you about is, look, we have this restructuring deal. It's set to close. I mean, where is TikTok right now in the creator economy? I mean, and we'll start with the creators and the audiences separately, but do creators, are they still loving TikTok the way they used to three, four years ago?

15:54Yeah. I mean, to your point in the opening, it took way too long for this deal to actually close. From the beginning of the conversations until now, I think a lot of creators were in a bit of limbo where they weren't really sure. They had the hot start out of the gate with COVID and the explosion of creators that were coming on during the pandemic. The creator fund was a really great first step that TikTok was able to incentivize creators to say, hey, you can come on and make money. And since then, and since all the different negotiations, I think TikTok has really lost a lot of ground and a lot of favor with creators.

16:24It's a really hard place to have a consistent audience. There aren't that many revenue streams that are sustainable comparatively to Instagram or YouTube. And you can't hold your audience. It's easy to go viral. It's easy to get that one shot of

16:41amazing exposure to the algorithm. But after that, how do you continue to build on that? That's the big question that is still yet to be answered. And I hope that this deal is the start of a new era and that they look back at their creator program and they really start to prioritize it. I've got a couple of concerns. I don't know how much the platform is built for really creating professional creators right now, as opposed to getting just a ton of people to make a ton of content and feed TikTok shop. But that's a further question that we'll see as time plays out. So I want to get to TikTok shop here in a second.

17:13but you talked about the short form content being a little tougher for creators to actually build lasting audiences. So my question for you is, is this a TikTok specific issue or is this an issue with short form content broadly? And do we have the same issue on Instagram with Reels? It's a good question. I think Instagram has a more robust ecosystem. YouTube with their shorts program has a more robust ecosystem where you can bring people into your long form. You have memberships, you have all sorts of other things that are able to monetize. TikTok is really just not conducive to building that community.

17:50Instagram, you can still have different DM channels. You're able to see that difference in the comments. And the creators that we talk to, anybody who's really spent a couple of years on TikTok wants to start long form. They want to get into podcasts. They want to move off of it. And so just anecdotally, we're seeing that TikTok just doesn't have that staying power in order to be truly the only place i think any big tick tock star that we've seen over the past couple years has grown beyond the platform and doesn't say hey i'm a tick tocker anymore the same way that you maintain the identity of a youtuber so but relatively speaking no i i think that it is a tick tock specific problem that they need to fix and what about viewers are our viewers still flocking to tick tock the way that they used to it's it's digital opium this is what they've been selling for years now like this is so addictive and i think that if you talk to to the audiences and we see what people are saying this is the first one that gets deleted when you say i need a social media break tiktok is the one that goes i gotta take a step back i gotta i gotta get off the drug for a little bit and that to me says says a lot about it that i i imagine that we all know that you know the addiction feels good in the beginning but after a while you go i need something else and there's something healthier about having a relationship with the creators that you subscribe to, being able to name them, being able to tell people who your favorite creators are.

19:10A lot of people, when you ask, who's your favorite TikTok? You go, I've got no idea. I just know that I like watching it. And I think that says a lot about the health of the platform. Now, you mentioned TikTok Shop, and we've done some reporting here at The Information about just how heavily TikTok plans to lean into e-commerce. And that is certainly a way to diversify the offering beyond just the short-form content on its own. How is TikTok Shop right now as a product from your perspective? Is it from brands as well who you work with? I mean, do they view TikTok Shop as a viable way to actually get the word out?

19:46Most of our clients are not using TikTok Shop, but that's because of the nature of the smooth media business. We're working with a lot more enterprise-level businesses selling B2B services. But from what I hear from other peers, TikTok shop is fantastic for consumer products. This is an incredible version of QVC. And that is amazing if you're a marketer to be able to get that type of conversion. You got to be able to do that. That's your duty as a marketer to go and find the best way to distribute your product. But if you're a creator making content, I wouldn't in good faith suggest that TikTok shop becomes a meaningful part of your business.

20:19I think that you're better off finding other areas as a creator to be sustainable. And so that relationship between the platform and those building the videos on top of it. If I were a TikTok, I'd start to do a lot of work to make sure that I can make this a stable place to continue feeding that TikTok shop content. And you mentioned QVC. Is the traction that TikTok shop is seeing, does that at all connect to the emphasis that they have put on live content as well? I seem to, when I think of live content, I mean, you know, I certainly think of X and the shows that pop up. YouTube Live is obviously there.

20:54And we'll put twitch and stuff like it in a different box for the moment here but like if we talk about the the big social platforms tick tock seems to be prioritizing live a lot right these are all just so big it's so hard to fathom and the amount of companies that are doing live shopping or just not are on demand and you can just scroll and find it that's not where we spend a lot of our time so i can't speak too specifically to it but from what i see this is just such a behemoth of a way of moving product and being able to market product that you got to take it seriously. If you're a marketer, you can't ignore it.

21:28But that's not where we play as a company. So I'd refer to a future guest to be able to tell you more about that one in particular. So last question for you now, let's get back to the deal here. I mean, the deal we've talked about on the show, how a deal is really for a specific backend part of TikTok's business. It's to do with data security. It may not have been the overhaul that I think people thought it might be with respect to the TikTok platform. And so prediction-wise, looking ahead, I mean, how do you think this deal might change the future of the platform? Where do you think the platform will go overall?

22:02How do you see it changing? It seems incredibly unclear. I'm very let down as somebody who has a business within the social media world, as somebody who is an American, that it took so long and that this is where we landed. I have much higher expectations for our systems to be able to get TikTok into a healthier place. I hope the data has a better safety situation. I hope TikTok changes dramatically. I hope that the Oracle ownership and the other big money coming in is able to really say, hey, we now need to go change the product in many, many more ways. When this first became a big issue on the public stage from a legislation perspective, a lot of career TikTokers came out and said, this is how I make a living as an American.

22:46I need you to help me. I need you to protect me. we're not done helping those creators and us as a business world us as the as the political world we need to be able to force even more change this if this is where it ends and all we say is great the data is stored in in different data centers on american soil i would be very very upset i don't know if i should be optimistic about it but i i hope that things look a lot different a year from now two years from now great well josh i want to thank you for coming on that is josh kaplan the co-founder and CEO of Smooth Media here on TI TV. Okay, OpenAI is restructuring its org as Barrett Zoff, the Thinking Machines Lab co-founder who left that company, has returned to OpenAI.

23:31Our AI reporter Stephanie Palazzolo has the scoop on where Zoff will sit at OpenAI and other inside details about OpenAI's new org structure overall. I want to bring on Stephanie to tell us more about what she has learned. Stephanie, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you. Thanks. Great to be here. So where is Barrett going to be sitting in OpenAI now? Yeah. So as my colleague Aaron and I reported yesterday, Barrett is going to be leading OpenAI's push to sell AI products to enterprises, which is something that so far Anthropic has really dominated in, but has clearly become a much bigger priority for OpenAI in recent weeks and months.

24:12And we see a lot of execs like Sarah Fryer, you know, talking very publicly about their desire to want to sell more to businesses. It does feel a little bit random just because, you know, Barrett is most well known for being a researcher. But, you know, it's clear that enterprise is very important for them. And putting maybe a high profile person in the charge of it could be a strategy there. Well, and enterprises is clearly how they need to focus on enterprise a little bit here to compete with the likes of Anthropic, right? Yes, definitely. So, you know, I think right now the way that it's set up is OpenAI is obviously most well-known for its consumer product, ChatGPT, and Anthropic is more well-known for selling to enterprises.

24:55But, you know, OpenAI has obviously done incredibly well with ChatGVT, but it seems like over time growth has kind of slowed a bit there just in terms of, you know, just even reaching the kind of limits of like reaching all the consumers that could be users of that sort of product. So I think at this point, you know, OpenAI is definitely pushing more into enterprise as just a way to continue growing very quickly and as a new source of sales. Now, one of the most interesting parts of your reporting is you got some details on how the overall org structure at OpenAI is changing as Barrett Zoff comes in.

25:33Hard to tell which came first in terms of chicken and the egg. You know, was it Barrett coming back? Was this happening all in the first place? What do we know about this new structure that OpenAI is going to be on? Yeah. So as we wrote yesterday, so Fiji Simo, who is currently the CEO of applications at OpenAI, basically sent out a memo to staff saying that the company is moving to this new structure known as kind of a general manager structure where basically you have one leader who's in charge of each of the product groups. So these are things like ChatGPT, Enterprise, as I just mentioned, Codex, which is OpenAI's coding tool and ads.

26:13Some of these things are not that surprising because it's basically just a continuation of what they previously had, so specifically with chat, GBC, and Codex, the people leading those are basically who have already been in charge even prior to these changes. But there were some interesting details, so specifically Barrett leading Enterprise, as we just talked about. Also, Vijay Raji, who joined OpenAI after his startup, Statsig, was acquired last fall. And he's a longtime meta-bet. He will actually be running ads at OpenAI, which we found to be pretty interesting. Another interesting detail is Brad Leitkapp, the COO of OpenAI, will be kind of stepping back from running product and engineering for enterprise as Bear takes over.

27:00and he'll be focusing more on, you know, quote unquote, commercial functions. So lots of changes, but kind of the point of all this, as Fiji wrote about in her memo, is to basically tighten this relationship between product and research at OpenAI so they can influence each other more. And this is something that we've written about a lot, especially in kind of recent weeks, like this natural tension that exists between product and research at OpenAI and sometimes the conflicting incentives that both sides have. So it seems like Fiji and the Reorg is trying to combat those kind of conflicting incentives in some way.