A newly published excerpt from Walter Isaacson's biography reveals Elon Musk tried to merge OpenAI into Tesla before walking away in 2018. OpenAI rejected the proposal, prompting Sam Altman to create a for-profit arm that brought in billions from Microsoft. Sidelined from the boom, Musk eventually launched xAI to settle the score.
OpenAI is now projected to generate more than $1 billion in revenue over the next 12 months, according to The Information. That puts its current run rate at over $80 million a month, a massive leap from its $28 million projection back in 2021. With enterprise demand surging and ChatGPT Enterprise launching, businesses are clearly ready to pay for AI.
Former Meta AI researchers just secured around $40 million to launch EvolutionaryScale, a new biotech startup valued at $200 million. The founding team previously developed a biological Transformer model predicting 700 million 3D protein structures, and they are now scaling up model sizes to tackle drug discovery and industrial biology.
Hugging Face just closed a massive $235M Series D round at a $4.5B valuation, drawing checks from virtually every major tech giant including Google, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. The milestone round comes as the open-source AI hub crosses over 1 million shared models, datasets, and apps.
Nvidia just reported a massive $6.188B in quarterly net profit, up 843% year over year on $13.5B in revenue. The surge was driven by its data center business, which reached a record $10.32B as demand for generative AI chips exploded. Basically, Nvidia is dominating the hardware race while projecting an even bigger $16B next quarter.
IBM just released a study revealing that executives expect 40% of their workforce—nearly 1.4 billion people—will need to reskill over the next three years due to AI. While 87% believe generative AI will augment rather than replace jobs, businesses prioritizing AI report a 36% higher revenue growth rate. The takeaway: soft skills like communication and adaptability are rapidly overtaking raw technical expertise.
OpenAI just acquired the team behind Global Illumination, bringing the creative studio's builders directly onto core products like ChatGPT. The team brings deep product and design experience from Instagram, Pixar, and YouTube, signaling OpenAI's growing ambitions around creative interfaces and digital experiences.
A report from Analytics India Magazine claims OpenAI spends around $700,000 every day to keep ChatGPT running, raising alarms about potential bankruptcy by late 2024. Despite heavy backing from Microsoft, shrinking web traffic and rising pressure from open-source alternatives like Llama 2 are straining its path to profitability.
The Biden administration just signed an executive order restricting U.S. venture capital and private equity from investing in Chinese AI, semiconductor, and quantum tech. The restrictions specifically target key sectors like chip design software and fabrication tools. The new rules are set to take effect next year following a public comment period.
A Cointelegraph analysis warns that the generative AI hype is showing classic bubble symptoms after raising over $25B in the first half of 2023. Startups are burning funding just to stockpile scarce Nvidia GPUs rather than building product moats. With ChatGPT traffic slipping and API wrappers laying off staff, the market may face a reality check.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy just told investors that "every single one" of the company's businesses has multiple generative AI projects underway. From AWS and retail to ads and Alexa, Jassy confirmed the technology is now central to their strategy. Why it matters: Amazon is making sure every division catches up to the AI boom, with big upgrades likely coming to Alexa and search soon.
A deep-dive analysis argues that generative AI and foundation models are breaking the historical mediocrity spiral of legacy software. Unlike older systems crippled by long-tail accuracy costs and human-in-the-loop overhead, consumer hits like ChatGPT and Character.AI are unlocking unprecedented organic adoption. Why it matters: Startups finally have the growth velocity and defensibility to challenge entrenched incumbents rather than ending up as bespoke IT services.
News Corp Australia is using generative AI to produce 3,000 local news stories every week with just a four-person team. The automated copy covers routine service info like fuel prices and weather across 75 hyper-local outlets, driving 55% of the company's new subscriptions. While journalists oversee the output, readers get zero disclosure that AI helped write it.
OpenAI just partnered with the American Journalism Project, committing $5M in direct funding and up to $5M in API credits to help local newsrooms deploy AI. The initiative includes a dedicated technology studio and pilot grants for roughly ten nonprofit news organizations. Why it matters: As the news industry grapples with generative AI risks, this collaboration attempts to give grassroots journalists a direct hand in shaping the tech.
Llion Jones, the last remaining author of the groundbreaking 2017 Transformer paper 'Attention is All You Need', just confirmed he is leaving Google to start his own company. All eight researchers behind the architecture powering ChatGPT and Midjourney have departed, launching startups like Cohere and Character.ai now valued at over $4.1 billion combined.
Inflection AI just raised a staggering $1.3 billion in a new funding round led by Microsoft, Bill Gates, and Nvidia, pushing its valuation to $4 billion. The startup is partnering with CoreWeave and Nvidia to build an unprecedented 22,000 H100 GPU cluster to train models for its personal assistant, Pi.
Databricks just announced the acquisition of generative AI startup MosaicML in a massive $1.3 billion deal. Known for efficient models like MPT-7B and MPT-30B, MosaicML specializes in helping companies train and fine-tune LLMs on their own proprietary data at lower costs. Why it matters: Enterprise customers can now build secure, tailored models directly inside Databricks Lakehouse without exposing sensitive data to third parties.
AWS just launched a $100 million Generative AI Innovation Center to pair its data scientists and engineers directly with enterprise customers. The program offers free workshops, strategy planning, and model fine-tuning to help businesses take generative AI from concept to production on AWS.
Google just announced two new AI-powered ad solutions designed to boost engagement and conversions across its platforms: Demand Gen and Video View campaigns. Demand Gen combines top image and video creative across YouTube, Shorts, Discover, and Gmail with lookalike targeting, while Video View drives up to 40% more views by blending multiple video formats into one campaign. The new campaign types will open for public beta in August.
French startup Mistral AI just raised a $113 million seed round at a $260 million valuation led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, only four weeks after launching. Founded by former DeepMind and Meta researchers, the team plans to build open-source generative models using publicly available data starting in 2024. Why it matters: Mistral wants to prove open-source infrastructure can challenge proprietary giants in the enterprise market.
