AI: Weekly Summary. RTZ #659

1. OpenAI & Google on AI in DC: Both Google and OpenAI laid out their AI policy frameworks for the White House, with a focus on copyright-proof AI model building, and easier export rules. OpenAI also framed the need to ‘keep growing and beat China’ in the AI race. The context for the efforts is the White House collecting comments on how “its national AI strategy should be”, while resetting policy from the Biden administration. The industry is also asking for federal pre-emption of state AI laws, and infrastructure investments for AI growth. And of course further government adoption of AI. More here.

   

2. Microsoft & OpenAI backup options: The week saw more actions by both Microsoft and OpenAI building up its capabilities vs the other as part of their core ongoing partnership. Microsoft announced further progress on MAI, their in-house LLM AI efforts to diversify their reliance on OpenAI’s GPT products. And OpenAi announced its Ai infrastructure buildout with CoreWeave, as part of its Stargate initiative with Softbank. The moves by both companies further expand their ‘backup’ options to diversify their AI options, while buttressing in-house capabilities on core AI capabilities. More here.

   

3. Manus AI in the China DeepSeek spotlight: Manus AI, another AI startup from China, showed off some impressive AI Agentic chops, drawing comparisons to DeepSeek’s global debut in LLM AI and AI Reasoning technologies. Built with innovative tech around existing LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic and others, the still in private beta service showed impressive AI Agent capabilities across the internet. Praise was widespread, including from the head of product at Hugging Face, calling it “the most impressive AI tool I’ve ever tried”. Users for Manus AI on its official discord server grew to almost 140,000 in just a few days. With ‘invite codes’ for the service changing hands for thousands of dollars on reseller sites. More here.

   

4. Nvidia propels CoreWeave: New details on how Nvidia developed its own backup strategy in the AI data center space, with its early investment and support of CoreWeave, the leader amongst the ‘neoclouds’. This on the eve of CoreWeave’s upcoming IPO, and after its inking of an AI infrastructure deal with OpenAI, helping in the buildout of its Stargate infrastructure in partnership with Softbank. The deal highlights the circular deals popular to date in the AI capex race, like the Google and Amazon investments and partnerships with Anthropic to date. Expect more deals like this as the AI data center buildup continues around the world. More here.

   

5. Apple’s ‘live translator’ Airpods: Apple is planning a live-translation feature via a software upgrade for its Airpods later this year, bringing a long desired AI driven feature to the masses. Google, Amazon and others have long aspired to bring similar features to the market. The upgrades would be part of iOS 19 planned by Apple later this year, including delayed AI upgrades to Siri, which would likely bring more Apple Intelligence Features to Apple’s platform of hardware and software ecosystems, all driven by a unified Apple Silicon strategy. The company continues to execute on its own unique strategy of bringing private and trusted AI services to the mainstream market, from the device up. This is in contrast to competitors’ approach of bringing AI services from the top, cloud services down to individual users. With privacy, memory and other capabilities to be added over time. Highlights Apple’s differentiated strategy on AI vs its peers. More here.

   

Other AI Readings for weekend:

1. AI’s can do creative things too. More here.

   

2. Oracle closing in on TikTok deal. More here.

   

Up next, the Sunday ‘The Bigger Picture’ tomorrow. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)