Highlights for this morning: Ford and autopilot, ChatGPT will talk about health, Alphabet above Apple

US car manufacturer Ford is preparing to enter the market for autonomous driving systems. OpenAI launched a version of ChatGPT Health to handle personal health data. Google-owned Alphabet has surpassed Apple in terms of capitalization for the first time since 2019, and China's Zhipu has become China's first public "AI tiger". About these and other topics - in a review of key events by the morning of January 8.

Ford Motor said it intends to bring Level 3 driver assistance systems to market in 2028, Reuters reports. They will allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel and look away from the road on selected highways. The technology will first appear on the company's new electric platform being developed in California.

The first model will be a mid-size electric pickup truck, set to launch in 2027 with a target price of about $30,000. The Level 3 system will not be included in the base package and will be offered at an additional cost. According to Ford senior executive Doug Field, the company is still choosing a monetization model - one-time payment or subscription. Ford is developing the system largely in-house to keep costs down and speed up updates. Lidar is planned for Level 3, unlike Tesla's approach, which relies on cameras and so far only offers Level 2, Reuters notes.

OpenAI has announced the launch of ChatGPT Health, a new mode that will allow users to securely connect their health records and health apps to a chatbot, CNBC reports. The service is not intended to diagnose or treat and does not replace medical care, but is meant to help with everyday questions and make ChatGPT's answers more relevant by utilizing personal health data, the company points out.

ChatGPT Health will run in a separate space within the chatbot and this data will not be used for model training. OpenAI is partnering with b.well to connect health data and will allow integration with Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, Weight Watchers, Function and other services. A limited number of users will have access in the first phase, after which OpenAI plans to expand the launch in the coming weeks.

Google's parent company Alphabet has surpassed Apple in market capitalization for the first time since 2019, CNBC reports. At the end of trading on Wednesday, Alphabet's capitalization reached $3.88 trillion after the stock rose more than 2%, while Apple ended the day with a valuation of $3.84 trillion and its securities have fallen in price by more than 4% over the past five days.

The change of leader reflects the divergence of the companies' artificial intelligence strategies, the channel notes. Alphabet has emerged as one of Wall Street's top performers in 2025 with its own AI chip Ironwood and the highly rated Gemini 3. The company's stock is up 65% year-to-date. Apple, on the other hand, is notably lagging behind in the AI race, having delayed the launch of its next-generation Siri until 2026, causing analysts to already downgrade their outlook on the company's stock.

Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC (Zhipu) shares rose about 10% on the first day of trading in Hong Kong following its $558 million IPO, becoming the first of China's so-called "AI tigers" to go public, CNBC reports. The offering valued the company at around HK$4.3 billion, making it one of the largest IPOs in the AI sector in recent years. Founded in 2019, Zhipu is the first major Chinese company in the field of large language models to go public.

Zhipu is considered one of OpenAI and Anthropic's key competitors in China and has previously been cited by OpenAI as a notable rival, the channel recalls. The company operates in Asia, Europe and the Middle East despite being on the US Commerce Department's sanctions list and restrictions on access to advanced chips. According to the prospectus, 70% of the IPO proceeds will be used for R&D, with Zhipu's 2024 revenue totaling 312.4 million yuan.

Samsung Electronics' quarterly operating profit more than tripled to a record 20 trillion won ($13.8 billion) thanks to a surge in demand for artificial intelligence servers that pushed up prices of memory chips, Bloomberg reports. Revenue rose 23% to a record 93 trillion won and the company's shares rose 2.5% in Seoul, extending gains that have reached 20% since the start of the year.

Memory chip manufacturers are reallocating production capacity in favor of more expensive and complex chips for artificial intelligence servers and data centers, the agency notes. As a result, there is a shortage of "ordinary" memory used in notebooks, smartphones and servers, which led to a sharp rise in prices for two key types of chips - DRAM, responsible for RAM devices, and NAND, used for data storage in flash drives and SSDs. Analysts estimate that average DRAM prices rose by more than 30% during the quarter, NAND by about 20%, and the high environment may continue until 2026-first half of 2027.

- Japan's broad Topix index was down 0.45%, while the Nikkei 225 was down 1.24% in Jan. 8 trading.

- Hong Kong's Hang Seng index declined by 1.5%. CSI 300 index of mainland China - by 0.75%.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index was up 0.78 percent, while the Kosdaq was down 0.22 percent.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.29%.

- S&P 500 futures were down 0.23%, Nasdaq Composite futures were down 0.37% and Dow Jones Industrial Average exchange-traded contracts slipped 0.26%.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor