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AI Agenda

By Stephanie Palazzolo

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Recent Editions

A still from a Sora-generated video. Photo via OpenAI.

OpenAI is Revamping Sora AI Video

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Sep 25, 2024 7:20am PDT

Between OpenAI’s long-awaited Strawberry launch and its monster ongoing fundraising, it might be easy to forget about Sora, a video-generating model it teased in February to global fanfare. A number of investors told me at the time that the impressive Sora demos cast a worrying shadow over the gaggle of competing AI video startups that had... Between OpenAI’s long-awaited Strawberry launch and its monster ongoing fundraising, it might be...

Photo via Getty

Microsoft AI Chief Suleyman Shuffles Unit Leadership, Pointing to Shift in Strategy

By Aaron Holmes · Sep 24, 2024 7:00am PDT

In case you missed it, my colleagues broke news yesterday about Anthropic’s attempt to draft off OpenAI’s pending fundraising, by looking to do its own funding round. Like OpenAI, Anthropic wants to double its valuation. Whether it can do so despite weaker financials remains to be seen! On to today’s issue… It’s been a while since... In case you missed it, my colleagues broke news yesterday about Anthropic’s attempt to draft off...

Sam Altman. Photo by Getty

Altman's Master Stroke?; Why Google Should Start Worrying About ChatGPT

By Amir Efrati · Sep 23, 2024 7:00am PDT

A lot happened toward the end of last week. For starters, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman showed once again that he's a master of fundraising. Despite what seemed like a lack of investor enthusiasm just a few weeks ago, Altman appears to have gotten enough demand to raise more than $6 billion for the ChatGPT creator, at a roughly $150 billion... A lot happened toward the end of last week. For starters, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman showed once again...

Image via Grok

OpenAI's Miniature Reasoning Model is Mighty—and Affordable

By Amir Efrati · Sep 19, 2024 7:00am PDT

Image via Grok

OpenAI's Miniature Reasoning Model is Mighty—and Affordable

By Amir Efrati · Sep 19, 2024 7:00am PDT

OpenAI’s week of good news keeps getting better.After releasing an initial version of its o1 reasoning model, o1-preview, last week, new details are emerging about a smaller but faster version, o1-mini. OpenAI’s week of good news keeps getting better.After releasing an initial version of its o1...

Evan Spiegel using Spectacles. Photo by Snap

Snap Shows AI Wearables Are Far Off; Salesforce CEO Says Microsoft Sells ‘Science Projects’

By Erin Woo and Jon Victor · Sep 18, 2024 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Before we get to the main part of today’s column, we wanted to share a juicy tidbit about Nvidia’s $165 million offer to buy artificial intelligence software startup OctoAI, which Anissa broke Tuesday.Most OctoAI shareholders aren’t expected to get much of a payout, but merger documents show the startup’s senior management team would do quite... Before we get to the main part of today’s column, we wanted to share a juicy tidbit about Nvidia’...

Art by Mike Sullivan via Midjourney

Why OpenAI is Hiding its Reasoning Model’s ‘Thoughts’

By Amir Efrati and Anissa Gardizy · Sep 17, 2024 7:00am PDT

In the artificial intelligence race, competition is fierce. Every big AI developer is watching rivals like a hawk and trying to reverse-engineer or copy their best work, as we’ve reported.What can a leader like OpenAI do to keep its edge? The company’s newly released reasoning model, o1-preview, aka Strawberry, shows one way: by hiding the ball... In the artificial intelligence race, competition is fierce. Every big AI developer is watching...

image via Grok

Why OpenAI’s Reasoning Model Is Special

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Amir Efrati · Sep 16, 2024 7:00am PDT

OpenAI finally released its Strawberry reasoning artificial intelligence last week—or rather, an initial, less-complete version known as o1-preview. We first reported about the breakthrough behind Strawberry 10 months ago when it was still called Q*, and more recently told you what was coming, though we expected a more inspiring name than... OpenAI finally released its Strawberry reasoning artificial intelligence last week—or rather, an...

Screenshot via Legally Blonde/MGM; Art by Clark Miller.

Legal AI Startup EvenUp In Talks to Raise at $1 Billion Valuation

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Sep 14, 2024 6:00am PDT

Screenshot via Legally Blonde/MGM; Art by Clark Miller.

Legal AI Startup EvenUp In Talks to Raise at $1 Billion Valuation

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Sep 14, 2024 6:00am PDT

Startups that can cut down on costly paperwork for lawyers using generative artificial intelligence continue to draw investor dollars, despite the high costs of developing that software and the difficulties the startups face in acquiring exclusive legal data to train their models.The latest: San Francisco-based EvenUp, which develops AI software... Startups that can cut down on costly paperwork for lawyers using generative artificial...

Klarna CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski. Photo by Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty.

Can AI Really Replace Salesforce and Workday?

By Ann Gehan and Amir Efrati · Sep 12, 2024 7:15am PDT · 1 comment

Before you get your hands on OpenAI’s Strawberry reasoning model—which we’re told is due out before the end of this week, including a version that will be in the free tier of ChatGPT—noodle on this:Can artificial intelligence kill the enterprise software app industry that’s led by companies such as Salesforce and Workday?That’s the... Before you get your hands on OpenAI’s Strawberry reasoning model—which we’re told is due out...

Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg at a conference on computer graphics earlier this year. Photo by AP/David Zalubowski.

Meta Will Soon Get a 100,000 GPU Cluster Too; What’s Life At Character Like Now?

By Amir Efrati and Kalley Huang · Sep 11, 2024 8:10am PDT

If an artificial intelligence developer doesn't have a cluster of 100,000 Nvidia H100 server chips for training large language models, do they even exist?All kidding aside, the AI data center race is in full swing as the six or so richest developers and cloud providers seemingly try to one-up each other on a weekly basis in terms of the size of... If an artificial intelligence developer doesn't have a cluster of 100,000 Nvidia H100 server...

Photo generated by OpenAI's DALL-E.

New Details on OpenAI’s Strawberry; Apple’s Siri Makeover; Larry Ellison Doubles Down on Data Centers

By Stephanie Palazzolo, Erin Woo and Amir Efrati · Sep 10, 2024 7:00am PDT · 3 comments

Strawberry, OpenAI’s reasoning-focused artificial intelligence, is coming sooner than we thought.OpenAI plans to release Strawberry as part of its ChatGPT service in the next two weeks, earlier than the original fall timeline we had recently reported, said two people who have tested out the model. Release timelines are always subject to change,... Strawberry, OpenAI’s reasoning-focused artificial intelligence, is coming sooner than we thought....

Photo by I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg via Getty.

Power and Memory Bottlenecks, Blackwell Delays, AI Returns: Takeaways from Semicon Taiwan

By Qianer Liu · Sep 9, 2024 7:00am PDT

Photo by I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg via Getty.

Power and Memory Bottlenecks, Blackwell Delays, AI Returns: Takeaways from Semicon Taiwan

By Qianer Liu · Sep 9, 2024 7:00am PDT

The frenzy around AI may be abating, but in a good way. That’s my takeaway from last week's Semicon Taiwan, the chip industry’s big annual convention. Instead of just gushing about the raw power of AI, the conversations on and off stage revolved more around the technical challenges of developing semiconductor technology capable of supporting... The frenzy around AI may be abating, but in a good way. That’s my takeaway from last week's ...

Photo by Erin Beach

Musk’s Rivals Take Jabs at His GPU Cluster, Nvidia’s Cuda Weakness, Enterprise AI Use Cases: Summit Highlights

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Sep 6, 2024 7:00am PDT · 4 comments

I’m still buzzing from getting to meet so many of you yesterday at our first-ever AI Summit. We got to talk all things LLMs, chips and AI applications with leaders such as Reid Hoffman, one of the earliest investors in OpenAI and a Microsoft board director; Chris Lattner, who helped Google launch their tensor processing units and TensorFlow... I’m still buzzing from getting to meet so many of you yesterday at our first-ever AI Summit. We...

Photo via Getty.

OpenAI Considers Higher Priced Subscriptions to its Chatbot AI; Preview of The Information’s AI Summit

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Erin Woo · Sep 5, 2024 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

How much would you be willing to pay for ChatGPT every month? $50? $75? How about $200 or $2,000?That’s the question facing OpenAI, whose executives we hear have discussed high-priced subscriptions for upcoming large language models, such as OpenAI’s reasoning-focused Strawberry and a new flagship LLM, dubbed Orion. (More on those models here... How much would you be willing to pay for ChatGPT every month? $50? $75? How about $200 or $2,000?...

Photo by Marc Piasecki/Getty.

Why Musk’s AI Rivals Are Alarmed by His New GPU Cluster

By Anissa Gardizy and Amir Efrati · Sep 4, 2024 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

The biggest artificial intelligence developers are abuzz over Elon Musk’s claim on Monday that he completed a cluster of 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips in four months, to be used to train the next models of his startup, xAI.If true, the cluster would be the most powerful cluster of graphics processing units in the world, but its rapid buildout would... The biggest artificial intelligence developers are abuzz over Elon Musk’s claim on Monday that he...

Photo via Adobe Stock

Two AI Developers Are Plotting $125 Billion Supercomputers

By Anissa Gardizy · Sep 3, 2024 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Photo via Adobe Stock

Two AI Developers Are Plotting $125 Billion Supercomputers

By Anissa Gardizy · Sep 3, 2024 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Developers of artificial intelligence say they need bigger and bigger data centers to concentrate processing power so that it produces better versions of the technology.The companies are notoriously secretive about the details of those plans, though, which is why we just published an AI Data Center Database that lists some of the biggest... Developers of artificial intelligence say they need bigger and bigger data centers to concentrate...

Photo via Adobe

Jensen Goes on the Defensive

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 29, 2024 7:10am PDT

Another quarter, another (almost) blowout earnings report from chip giant Nvidia. But this time, Wall Street isn’t too appreciative.Nvidia stock opened Thursday morning down a few percentage points, following a slightly bigger sell-off in after-hours trading Wednesday night during Nvidia’s call. What gives? After all, revenue in the last quarter... Another quarter, another (almost) blowout earnings report from chip giant Nvidia. But this time,...

Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang, in June. Photo by AP.

Nvidia Blows Competitors Out of the Water in New Test

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 28, 2024 8:00am PDT · 1 comment

All eyes are on Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report today (there’s apparently even a watch party for it at a New York City bar if you want to partake in some nonsense), so it’s a good time to share a new example of the company’s technological dominance.This morning, MLCommons, a nonprofit that evaluates artificial intelligence software and... All eyes are on Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report today (there’s apparently even a watch party...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photos via Getty/Shutterstock.

OpenAI Shows ‘Strawberry’ AI to the Feds and Uses It to Develop ‘Orion’

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 27, 2024 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

In case you were wondering why Sam Altman cryptically posted a picture of strawberries earlier this month, the answer almost certainly has to do with Strawberry, a mysterious technical breakthrough that could help OpenAI’s models complete complex tasks such as math problems that conversational AI has traditionally struggled with. (If this sounds... In case you were wondering why Sam Altman cryptically posted a picture of strawberries earlier...

Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.

Ex-Googlers Discover That Startups Are Hard

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Rocket Drew · Aug 26, 2024 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.

Ex-Googlers Discover That Startups Are Hard

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Rocket Drew · Aug 26, 2024 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Dozens of former artificial intelligence researchers from Google who struck out on their own are learning that startups are tricky.The latest example is French AI agent developer H, which lost three of its five cofounders (four of whom are ex-Googlers) just months after announcing they had raised $220 million from investors in a “seed” round, as... Dozens of former artificial intelligence researchers from Google who struck out on their own are...