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Welcome to our weekly edition of AI & Finance™!
Hello, friends, it was another week in which artificial intelligence wound its way into deeper into education, the law, and financial services, and we're covering a huge chunk of the news right here in AI & Finance. To start, our headlines column asks and somewhat answers whether AI-automated asset management might kill financial markets. We have a guest contribution from Jump's Liam Hanlon that delves into why wealth managers are suddenly racing to embrace technology. A huge week of AI fundraising is wrapped up in our Top 5 VC column. AI Intelligence pays particular attention this week to the limits placed on the technology's expansion by energy, water and environmental concerns, while our AI Education column discusses one place artificial intelligence puts (and finds) all of our digital stuff: A data lake. For a nice change of pace, Al & Ivy bring us home with a critique of recent U.S. trade and tariff policy, and that's only the tip of the iceberg of what you'll read... CHECK IT ALL OUT BELOW!
Is AI going to eat up financial markets? Welcome to January 2026's last AI & Finance, where we have headlines from another active news week. First, though, let's ask a familiar question: as more asset management and asset allocation becomes automated with artificial intelligence, will financial markets become more efficient, rational and predictable? Those who have followed the academic arguments around the asset management industry over recent decades should be familiar with this chain of reasoning, because it's the same question that was asked of index funds way back in the 1970s when guys like Vanguard founder Jack Bogle were championing a new... CONTINUE HERE
For the past two years, financial advisors have done something they have never done before: adopt new technology. According to a University of Chicago study conducted in 2023 that looked across 11 professions, advisors had the lowest adoption of AI at work and at home. Fast forward to today, and according to WealthManagement.com, over two-thirds of advisors are now using AI in their daily workflows. So what happened? Well...technology started to solve a real problem. That problem was time. Advisors were spending far too much time on maintenance and administrative work, and not nearly enough time with clients. AI meeting assistants helped solve... CONTINUE HERE
If we really want to understand what today's artificial intelligence does, we need to dig down to its foundations. AI is really a combination of data and instructions. And this week we're talking about data. More specifically, topics in data organization and governance. Welcome to another AI Education, where the topic this time around is what is a data lake. Before you fall asleep on us, let's be clear-this is indeed a little bit like talking about a cake and starting out explaining where flour, sugar and butter come from. But, to us, cake is all the more delicious and marvelous for... CONTINUE HERE
While no $1 billion-plus announcements landed this week, we did see a total of 14 fundraising deals come in above the $100 million threshold, the most we've seen while tracking AI venture capital activity. The top reported deal, per FinSMEs, came from San Francisco-based Humans&, which raised $480 million in a seed round, yes, a seed round, with a nearly $4.5 billion valuation. Humans&, an AI lab, will use the funds to "expand operations and its development efforts," according to its announcement. Our second announcement is from Palo Alto, Calif.-based AI lab Ricursive Intelligence, which raised $300 million in a Series A to... CONTINUE HERE
This week's AI developments highlighted a decisive move toward scale, security, and institutional control as governments, courts, enterprises, and infrastructure providers responded to AI's growing operational footprint. Rather than debating theoretical potential, leaders focused on deployment safeguards, sovereign capability, environmental constraints, and the emerging risks of misuse. AI is now being treated as a system-level force that must be governed, secured, and sustained over the long term. Judicial systems, regulators, and policymakers accelerated efforts to define acceptable AI use in sensitive domains, signaling a deeper phase of operational oversight. Compute expansion collided with energy, water, and environmental limits, forcing regions to reassess how... CONTINUE HERE
Drawing from an analysis by the Overseas Development Institute, the episode examines the real economic outcomes of President Donald Trump's tariff experiment one year into "Trump 2.0." Rather than focusing on political messaging, the discussion breaks down who actually benefited from the tariffs, who absorbed the costs, and how trade policy ripple effects moved through consumers, corporations, and global supply chains. The tariffs were designed to protect domestic industry, reduce trade deficits, and pressure trading partners - particularly China - into more favorable terms. In theory, higher import costs would shift demand toward U.S. producers and strengthen American manufacturing.The ODI analysis highlights several outcomes that... CONTINUE HERE
Source: thefinancials.com | Updated every 30 minutes, M-F during market hours
The DWN AI Index™ is a benchmark stock index of the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. The index is comprised of a diversified group of stocks deriving a significant percentage of their revenue from AI applications. REVIEW HISTORICALS HERE
STOCKS COMPRISING DWN AI INDEX:
Amazon (AMZN) * Arista Networks (ANET) * AI (C3.ai) * CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD) * Duolingo (DUOL) * iRhythm Technologies (IRTC) * Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) * NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) * Palantir Technologies (PLTR) & * Taiwan Semiconductor * Manufacturing (TSM)
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