Gmail’s Gemini glow-up

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Google’s taken a slower, measured approach to weaving Gemini into its flagship products, however the pace is now picking up.

Gmail just landed a wave of recent features, including AI Mode for search, a proactive AI inbox, and more — a signal that the deeper integrations into Google’s massive product ecosystem may finally be accelerating.

Reminder: Our first live workshop of 2026 is today at 4 PM EST! Join part 1 of our AI Foundations Bootcamp and learn the best way to diagnose common failure patterns with AI usage and gain practical frameworks to improve outputs. RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Gmail gets Gemini-powered AI features

• Microsoft turns Copilot right into a checkout counter

• Use Gemini 3 to construct powerful simulations

• Major Chinese AI lab goes public

• 4 latest AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

📧 Gmail gets Gemini-powered AI features

The Rundown: Google just introduced a wave of recent Gemini AI upgrades to Gmail, enabling users to ask natural language questions on their inbox, get automatic summaries, and take more proactive actions across the platform.

The main points:

• An integrated AI Overviews feature lets users search the inbox through natural language as an alternative of hunting through keywords or opening dozens of emails.

• A brand new ‘AI Inbox’ acts as a private assistant, surfacing an important messages and crafting to-do lists and reminders.

• Other additions include a Grammarly-style proofreader (Pro / Ultra only), expanded Help Me Write access, and Suggested Replies for quick responses.

Why it matters: Google has been sprinkling AI into Gmail for years, but that is essentially the most aggressive push yet. It’s been relatively slow in intertwining Gemini with its highly used products and platforms, but 2026 (like Rowan predicted in our Monday Roundtable) may very well be the yr the integrations ramp up and really turn into a significant advantage.

TOGETHER WITH NORTON NEO

💪 Trust-first AI, built into your browser

The Rundown Agentic workflows are in every single place, but real trust continues to be rare. Norton Neo is the world’s first AI-native browser designed from the bottom up for safety, speed, and clarity – bringing AI directly into the way you browse, search, and work without forcing you to prompt, manage, or babysit it.

Key Features:

• Privacy and security are built into its DNA.

• Tabs organize themselves intelligently.

• A private memory adapts to how you’re employed over time.

Try Norton Neo and experience the long run of browsing.

MICROSOFT

🛒 Microsoft turns Copilot right into a checkout counter

The Rundown: Microsoft just launched Copilot Checkout, a brand new feature that lets U.S. shoppers complete purchases directly contained in the AI assistant without ever leaving the chat window — with major sellers and retailers already integrated into the platform.

The main points:

• Users can navigate the complete shopping experience, from search to payment, throughout the chat, with retailers maintaining full control over transactions.

• Payment is integrated with PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe, with retailers like Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Etsy, and Shopify stores live at launch.

• Microsoft said users were 2x more more likely to purchase via Copilot over normal search, with sessions seeing 53% more purchases inside half-hour.

• Microsoft also released latest retail AI agents for tasks like operations, product management, branding, and creating personalized shopping experiences.

Why it matters: AI commerce is exploding and completely reshaping how people buy things online. With a 7x surge in AI-driven retail traffic this holiday season alone, the checkout experience is migrating from browsers and apps directly into AI chats — and each major assistant will likely follow as conversational shopping becomes the default.

AI TRAINING

🎉 Use Gemini 3 to construct powerful simulations

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn the best way to use Gemini 3 to create interactive simulations, educational visualizations, and functional tools in a single shot, leveraging its benchmark-shattering capabilities for visual learning and rapid prototyping.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to the Gemini homepage and choose “Gemini 3 Pro” for reasoning, or “DeepThink” for advanced performance (confirm availability in your region)

2. Enter your prompt within the chat box — example: “Construct a 3D simulation of a quantum computer”

3. Review the immersive simulation output and click on “Explain” to activate the AI tutor for summarized learning, then view or share the code

4. Experiment with different projects like games, content schedulers, or data dashboards; try again if the sim isn’t functional and visually appealing

Pro tip: Try comparing solutions across scenarios to know the underlying reasoning patterns. This helps construct higher problem-solving skills for future challenges.

PRESENTED BY FIDDLER

🧠 5 Critical Lessons for Production-Ready AI Agents

The Rundown: Fiddler AI breaks down 5 critical lessons to maneuver AI Agents from demo to dependable production. Discover the testing strategies, architectural frameworks, and approaches for constructing agents that handle complex judgment calls.

Within the guide, you’ll learn:

• A Latest Testing Playbook using “checkpoint verification” for unpredictable AI systems

• When to make use of a single vs. multi-agent design based on domain, governance, or model requirements

• Find out how to construct agents that deliver real value through judgment, quite than rule-based tasks

Download the free guide to get the 5 field-tested lessons for constructing production-ready AI agents.

ZHIPU AI

🔔 Major Chinese AI lab goes public

The Rundown: Zhipu AI just debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after raising $558M, becoming the primary major Chinese AI company to go public — and firing a shot at U.S. rivals with prices a fraction of what labs like OpenAI and Anthropic charge.

The main points:

• Share prices on day one valued the corporate at between $6-8B, a fraction of Anthropic’s recent $350B or xAI’s reported $230B valuations.

• Zhipu’s AI assistant runs about $3/month, with its leadership saying that gap will force U.S. competitors into the identical price competition playing out in China.

• The IPO comes weeks after Zhipu’s GLM-4.7 coding model release topped open rivals on benchmarks and surpassed closed systems like Sonnet 4.5.

• Chinese rival MiniMax also goes public Friday after its own $619M raise, with analysts calling 2026 a breakout yr for Chinese AI listings in Hong Kong.

Why it matters: DeepSeek rattled markets last yr by nearing U.S. performance at a sliver of the fee, and now a wave of Chinese AI startups goes public with the same playbook. Zhipu’s chairman is not shy concerning the strategy — flood the market with low cost, capable models until Western labs haven’t any alternative but to compete on price.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 Speechmatics – Construct voice-powered products with Speechmatics’ Startup Program and get $50K to take your project to production*

• 📫 Gmail – Google’s email inbox, now infused with Gemini 3

• 🤖 Copilot – Microsoft’s AI assistant, with latest agentic commerce capabilities

• 🩺 ChatGPT Health – OpenAI’s latest experience for personal health convos

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Every thing else in AI today

OpenAI is reportedly acqui-hiring the team of Convogo, an AI platform for executive coaches and leadership, marking the corporate’s ninth acquisition previously yr.

Artificial Evaluation revamped its AI Intelligence Index, swapping out saturated benchmarks for tests focused on whether models can perform skilled tasks.

Elon Musk posted that Grok Code will receive a “major upgrade” in February, which shall be able to ‘one-shotting’ many complex coding tasks.

Google and Character AI reached a settlement with the family of a Florida teen whose suicide followed months of conversations with a companion chatbot.

A federal judge denied OpenAI’s motion to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit alleging the corporate misled him about its nonprofit mission, sending the case to trial in March.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader TheAverageGuyAI in Texas:

“I used AI to automate my holiday shopping logistics. When my son circled 47 toys in a physical catalog, I didn’t waste time looking through the web site to fill his cart.

I filmed a video of me turning the pages and uploaded it to AI with the prompt: “Discover every toy circled in red and make a table with prices and links.” It recognized the visual cues (the red circles) throughout the video and generated a totally shoppable list with links and battery requirements in seconds, saving me hours of information entry.”

How do you employ AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: ChatGPT levels up with Health

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Lego’s iconic brick just got a brain

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Hyundai mass-producing Atlas robots

• Today’s AI tool guide: Use Gemini 3 to construct powerful simulations

• RSVP to next workshop @ 4PM EST today: AI Foundations Bootcamp pt. 1

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown