We’re only a couple of weeks into 2026, and a pattern is clear. AI is moving out of the “chat” phase and into real environments. More responsibility. More trust. More real work getting done.
In Today’s AI Simplified:
Founder’s Insight: 2026 is shaping up to be the year of execution — scaling teams, products, and customer impact without starting from zero.
AI News: ChatGPT Health brings privacy-first AI to healthcare, Claude becomes a “coworker”, and Google bets big on AI shopping agents.
AI Spotlights: Napkin.ai for instant visual thinking, the Google–Apple buzz, and AI DevWorld 2026 for builders who want to stay hands-on.
My friends have a term for my current state: an advanced form of over-excitement.
2025 was a year of hard work and deep product + technology innovation across the projects I’m involved in. Lots of building, iterating, and pushing the edge of what’s possible.
2026 is a different game.
It’s about:
Scaling (not just growth — systems, channels, execution)
Continuous innovation (shipping faster and building world class tech)
Winning with customers — thousands of business customers, new levels of adoption, and a much bigger footprint
The fun part: we’re not starting from zero.
We have world-class team, the resources, and leading products and technology to make this real.
Health is a dedicated space inside ChatGPT for wellness conversations. It’s a structured and secure way to make sense of your own data, without replacing your doctor.
Extra encryption and isolation — health chats don’t leak into your normal chats, and they’re not used to train models.
Connect your data, such as medical records + health apps.
Understand lab results, prepare for doctor visits, track trends, compare insurance options.
Physician-designed guardrails built with feedback from 260+ doctors across 60 countries.
Health has an early access opening to a small group of users on Free, Plus, Go, and Pro plans. Broader availability is coming as they refine the experience.
Anthropic launched Cowork, a new way to work with Claude that goes beyond chat. Claude can now operate inside a folder on your computer, reading, editing, and creating files with far more autonomy.
Cowork can work directly with your files (organizing folders, renaming files, creating docs and spreadsheets), turn messy inputs into structured outputs (screenshots → expense sheets, notes → report drafts), plan and execute tasks step by step, and queue multiple tasks in parallel. It also supports external tools, browser access, and document-creation skills for more advanced workflows.
This is agent-style AI: Claude plans, acts, and iterates like a human coworker. Access is permission-based with confirmations for major actions, and Anthropic positions Cowork as an early research preview with known risks.
Google is making its first serious move into agent-based commerce, launching AI tools under Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience that let retailers build their own shopping agents instead of relying on third-party chatbots. Major brands like Kroger, Lowe’s, and Papa Johns are already testing them.
These agents help shoppers discover products, compare options, get support, and complete purchases — all inside retailers’ own apps and sites.
Kroger’s agent understands context like meal plans and time constraints, Lowe’s reports more than doubling conversion rates, and Papa Johns is testing photo-based ordering to estimate pizza quantities.
AI shopping is shifting from “buy inside a chatbot” to retailers owning their own AI agents — and the race is officially on.
Tool of the week
Napkin.ai— Visualize ideas with zero design work
Napkin AI turns plain text into clean, structured visuals in seconds. You paste your idea, and it sketches the thinking for you.
Key features:
Paste notes or rough ideas and get structured visuals instantly.
No manual dragging, resizing, or formatting, the structure is handled for you.
Works well for systems, processes, and abstract thinking.
Easy to drop into docs, slides, and strategy decks.
Apple’s official partnership with Google to integrate Gemini models into next-gen Siri and future Apple Intelligence features has sparked major buzz on X. The deal positions Gemini as the core foundation for Apple’s AI push, promising a smarter, more personalized Siri later this year.
Many see it as a win-win: Apple speeds up its AI catch-up, while Google gains massive distribution across Apple’s ecosystem, briefly lifting Alphabet toward the $4 trillion market-cap mark.
Reactions range from excitement to skepticism. Fans call it a historic team-up that could finally give Siri a “Google brain,” while critics — including Elon Musk — warn of centralized AI power and raise privacy and antitrust concerns. Still, sentiment leans toward this being the Siri upgrade users have been waiting for.
AI Event Pick
AI DevWorld 2026
🗓️ February 18–20, 2026
AI DevWorld brings together thousands of software engineers and data scientists focused on building, deploying, and scaling AI systems.
Deep technical sessions on AI agents, LLMs, ML infrastructure, and production AI
A PRO Workshop Day for hands-on learning
Large expo floor with AI tooling, platforms, and infra vendors
In-person and live virtual access for distributed teams
If you’re building AI products (or planning to), this is a good learning chance.
New to 10Web? Join the community to learn hands-on practices, see how others build, and swap ideas in real time. Introduce yourself in #intros and mention AI Simplified to unlock free credits.
