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AI Agenda

By Stephanie Palazzolo

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Recent Editions

Chart by Shane Burke.

What it Takes to Make Open-Source AI Cheaper Than OpenAI; Microsoft Goes Multimodal

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 2, 2023 7:15am PDT · 3 comments

When Meta Platforms’ released its open-source Llama models earlier this year, the tech giant was praised for giving developers a free alternative to the expensive, bleeding-edge large-language models offered by proprietary LLM developers such as OpenAI. Turns out it’s not so simple.In many cases, using open-source LLMs can actually be more... When Meta Platforms’ released its open-source Llama models earlier this year, the tech giant was...

David Bennett, chief customer officer at Tenstorrent. Photo courtesy of Tenstorrent.

An AI Chip Armageddon is Coming; Biden Punts on Open-Source LLMs

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 1, 2023 7:40am PDT

When I asked David Bennett, the chief customer officer of AI hardware developer Tenstorrent, about the future of startups like his, he was blunt: Most will go out of business.To survive, he recommends startups remain flexible and avoid boxing themselves into any narrow use case. Bennett isn’t referring to some niche market, but rather, a... When I asked David Bennett, the chief customer officer of AI hardware developer Tenstorrent,...

President Joe Biden signs an executive order with Vice President Kamala Harris, right, on Oct. 30, 2023. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty Images.

What Biden’s AI Executive Order Means

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 31, 2023 7:30am PDT

The AI world (and my inbox) was rocked yesterday by President Joe Biden’s long-awaited AI executive order, which covered a wide range of issues, from the use of AI in education to watermarking AI-generated content. (For a summary, check out my colleague Amir Efrati's piece here.)Now that we’ve had 24 hours to marinate on the order, here are some... The AI world (and my inbox) was rocked yesterday by President Joe Biden’s long-awaited AI...

Jaleh Rezaei, cofounder and CEO at Mutiny, and Sara Hooker, head of Cohere for AI. Photo by Erin Beach.

What You Missed From Our WTF Conference; Biden’s AI Executive Order Unveiled

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 30, 2023 7:35am PDT

Jaleh Rezaei, cofounder and CEO at Mutiny, and Sara Hooker, head of Cohere for AI. Photo by Erin Beach.

What You Missed From Our WTF Conference; Biden’s AI Executive Order Unveiled

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 30, 2023 7:35am PDT

Here’s a simple but smart idea I heard about last week: Ask all your employees to use AI for every possible task for a week and see what tasks it’s useful or not useful for.That suggestion came from Rebecca Hinds, head of Asana’s Work Innovation Lab, at our annual Women in Tech, Media and Finance conference, during a discussion on generative AI... Here’s a simple but smart idea I heard about last week: Ask all your employees to use AI for...

Photo via Shutterstock.

Don’t Laugh at Intel; Biden’s Industry-Friendly Executive Order

By Anissa Gardizy · Oct 26, 2023 7:00am PDT

Congratulations if you already knew that Intel, the American chip pioneer, had started selling artificial intelligence-related software—as opposed to just hardware—to businesses that want to build generative AI apps. I had no idea myself until I wrote a story on Wednesday about Intel expanding that effort. It’s planning to announce the move... Congratulations if you already knew that Intel, the American chip pioneer, had started selling...

Jake Cronin and Joe Jordan, cofounders of Siro. Courtesy of Siro.

IVP’s Risky Perplexity Bet; CRV Funds Salestech Startup; OpenAI’s First-Mover Hangover

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 25, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

If you’re tired of digging through piles of websites and adding “Reddit” to the end of your Google searches, you may want to take a look at this red-hot AI-powered search engine startup—which now has the backing of yet another VC.Perplexity, whose search engine product competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, is raising around $50... If you’re tired of digging through piles of websites and adding “Reddit” to the end of your...

Photo via Together.

Emergence Capital to Fund GPU Reseller Together at $500 Million Valuation

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 24, 2023 7:15am PDT

If you’ve been following our reporting on Together (here and here), which sells access to cloud-based servers running on Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips as well as software to help startups train and run AI models, you may remember the firm raising money at a lower valuation than it could have received. If you’ve been following our reporting on Together (here and here), which sells access to...

A Nvidia HGX H100 artificial intelligence supercomputing GPU. Photo by Getty.

GPUs’ Latest Magic Act: Securing Data Center Debt; Amazon’s Doubling Down on AI Chips

By Anissa Gardizy · Oct 23, 2023 7:15am PDT

A Nvidia HGX H100 artificial intelligence supercomputing GPU. Photo by Getty.

GPUs’ Latest Magic Act: Securing Data Center Debt; Amazon’s Doubling Down on AI Chips

By Anissa Gardizy · Oct 23, 2023 7:15am PDT

While Nvidia makes bank from selling artificial intelligence chips at $32,000 a pop, several upstart cloud providers—as well as the big guns like Amazon Web Services—are buying as many chips as they can so they can rent them out to AI developers. These cloud providers hope to generate revenue of at least several times that sticker price for each... While Nvidia makes bank from selling artificial intelligence chips at $32,000 a pop, several...

Photo via 1X Technologies.

SoftBank Looks to Invest $75 Million in OpenAI-Backed Humanoid Robotics Startup

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 19, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

In tech, all software roads eventually lead to hardware. Look no further than OpenAI’s Sam Altman dreaming up an artificial intelligence-powered personal device with ex-Apple designer Jony Ive and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Another topic the three men may have discussed at Ive’s San Francisco studio: existing AI hardware companies that... In tech, all software roads eventually lead to hardware. Look no further than OpenAI’s Sam Altman...

Chart by Shane Burke.

OpenAI Is Human After All; ‘Sharing Is Caring,’ Researchers Tell Model Developers

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 18, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

It seems like Silicon Valley’s golden child isn’t perfect after all. In a rare moment of weakness, large-language model developer OpenAI scrapped a new model, codenamed Arrakis, in mid-2023 that would have helped it run its popular chatbot ChatGPT more cheaply, my colleagues Jon Victor and Aaron Holmes reported on Tuesday.OpenAI researchers... It seems like Silicon Valley’s golden child isn’t perfect after all. In a rare moment of...

Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.

Google’s ‘Wartime’ Urgency to Chase ChatGPT Shakes Up Culture

By Jon Victor · Oct 17, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

When staff working on Google’s ChatGPT rival, Bard, hear from managers that they need to work at “Bard speed,” they know it means moving much faster than they were accustomed to in other parts of the company. Legal reviews of new features can start and end in a day. A feature that might have taken a quarter to prepare in the past now gets done... When staff working on Google’s ChatGPT rival, Bard, hear from managers that they need to work at...

Photo via Ideogram.

AI Agenda: Why Investors in GPU Resellers May End Up Disappointed

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 16, 2023 7:00am PDT

Photo via Ideogram.

AI Agenda: Why Investors in GPU Resellers May End Up Disappointed

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 16, 2023 7:00am PDT

In the last year, Nvidia’s AI chips—GPUs in technical parlance—have become the hottest commodity that people are desperate to get a hold of. Lately, we’ve seen the emergence of startups known as GPU resellers or serverless GPU providers. These startups rent GPU servers from cloud providers or other companies that own such servers, including... In the last year, Nvidia’s AI chips—GPUs in technical parlance—have become the hottest commodity...

Chart by Shane Burke

New Data Show OpenAI’s Viral Growth Among Startups. Can It Last?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 12, 2023 8:30am PDT · 1 comment

There’s no doubt large language model leader OpenAI and rivals like Anthropic are quickly expanding revenue, judging from reports in The Information in the past few weeks. (The latest data point from my colleague Amir today reveals that OpenAI is generating revenue at a pace of $1.3 billion a year, up 30% from the $1 billion-a-year pace we... There’s no doubt large language model leader OpenAI and rivals like Anthropic are quickly...

Photo by Midjourney

Why AMD’s Upcoming Chips Won’t Be the Savior AI Startups Are Hoping For

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 11, 2023 7:00am PDT

Two weeks ago, there was a flurry of excitement around a tweet from Sharon Zhou, cofounder and CEO of Lamini, a startup that helps AI developers create customized large language models. Zhou revealed in the tweet that, for the past year, she’s been using more than 100 chips from chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices to power her AI startup’s... Two weeks ago, there was a flurry of excitement around a tweet from Sharon Zhou, cofounder and...

Photo courtesy of Neil Serebryany.

Want to Trick an LLM? Try Asking It Nicely or Use Argentinian Spanish

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 10, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Here’s a tip: if you want ChatGPT, or any other large-language model, to tell you something that it’s trained not to give you, try paying it a compliment. For instance, telling ChatGPT that it’s the best AI-powered chatbot in the world before asking it to provide instructions to build a bomb is more likely to work than just asking... Here’s a tip: if you want ChatGPT, or any other large-language model, to tell you something that...

Photo by Midjourney.

The AI Chip Wars Rage On; The Rise of the AI Academic-Turned-Founder; Has No One Seen Black Mirror?

By Anissa Gardizy · Oct 9, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Photo by Midjourney.

The AI Chip Wars Rage On; The Rise of the AI Academic-Turned-Founder; Has No One Seen Black Mirror?

By Anissa Gardizy · Oct 9, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

When Microsoft took an early bet on OpenAI in 2019, investing $1 billion into the startup, it also placed a major bet on another project: creating a competitor to Nvidia’s graphics processing units, we reported back in April. Now, years later, Microsoft executives plan to unveil a chip designed for artificial intelligence next month at Ignite,... When Microsoft took an early bet on OpenAI in 2019, investing $1 billion into the startup, it...

Photo by Shutterstock.

Why Do We Need an OpenAI of Europe?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 5, 2023 7:00am PDT · 4 comments

As large-language model developers such as OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Google battle for global supremacy, European LLM providers are trying to carve off that region for themselves. That’s a bad idea.Let’s back up. A number of European Union members have poured resources into promising AI startups. In last Wednesday’s release of Mistral 7B, an... As large-language model developers such as OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Google battle for global...

Anthropic cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei. Photo by Getty.

Anthropic Makes OpenAI Look Cheap

By Amir Efrati · Oct 4, 2023 7:20am PDT

How much should a well-regarded artificial intelligence startup be worth on paper?That’s the question facing scores of sovereign wealth funds, mutual fund firms and other private equity investors looking at two marquee AI opportunities: OpenAI and Anthropic. OpenAI is in the middle of its second employee share sale in the last six months, and if... How much should a well-regarded artificial intelligence startup be worth on paper?That’s the...

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Photo by Drew Angerer via Getty.

Microsoft CEO Says AI ‘Vicious Cycle’ Will Boost Google; Meta and OpenAI’s Other Rivalry

By Aaron Holmes · Oct 3, 2023 7:40am PDT

CEOs often speak from both sides of their mouth, depending on who their audience is. On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella painted a scary picture of how Google could multiply its power in the age of artificial intelligence. His doom and gloom comments, made before a federal judge in Washington, contrasted with an upbeat Nadella from February... CEOs often speak from both sides of their mouth, depending on who their audience is. On Monday, ...

Dave Rogenmoser, co-founder of Jasper. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.

AI Startups Are Facing a Reckoning

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 2, 2023 7:35am PDT · 10 comments

Dave Rogenmoser, co-founder of Jasper. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.

AI Startups Are Facing a Reckoning

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 2, 2023 7:35am PDT · 10 comments

A reckoning may be coming for once-hot artificial intelligence startups. Among the most vulnerable: consumer apps (think Character.AI) and “thin wrapper” startups like CopyAI that merely provide a nice user interface on top of a third-party model from model developers like OpenAI. We got a sense of the slowdown last week, when Natasha and I... A reckoning may be coming for once-hot artificial intelligence startups. Among the most...