AI: Weekly Summary. RTZ #786

1. OpenAI releases ‘ChatGPT Agent’: OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent combines AI research, reasoning and a fuller web agency into AI Agents that do more things for mainstream users. The software leverages a number of underlying OpenAI models and tools to provide iterative task completion capabilities. As demoed by the senior OpenAI team, ChatGPT Agent, while taking its time, does complex tasks on the internet with the objective of saving total time and complexity for end users. The service is being rolled out to ChatGPT users at various pricing tiers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stressed that the bleeding edge Agentic service does increase ‘the surface area’ for malicious attack vectors, and that users should keep that in mind while using the new service. Other competitors both in the US and China are also accelerating similar product releases . More here.

   

2. Meta’s Zuck defines ‘Personal Superintelligence’: After weeks of accelerated AI Talent and Infrastructure acquisition moves, Meta founder/CEO explained his rationale in a new interview. There was a sharp differentiation drawn vs peers in their focus on Superintelligence for societal and enterprise needs. This was contrasted with Meta’s focus on ‘personal’ Superintelligence for its billions of users, with a focus on providing useful services that do things for users, while also providing entertainment and creative communication capabilities with the broader Meta user community. He also underlined that the timeframe to AGI and ‘Superintelligence could be from two to seven plus years. But emphasized that it was imperative for Meta to invest ‘hundreds of billions’ in AI infrastructure and talent, to be well positioned for the broader opportunity vs peers. More here.

   

3. Nvidia gets a toehold back in China: Nvidia founder/CEO Jensen Huang managed to execute a reversal by the Trump White House on China AI Chip curbs on Nvidia’s H20 GPUs. This multi-billion dollar market opportunity in the world’s second largest AI market provides Nvidia the opportunity to resume sales in China, worth ten plus billion dollars annually to the company. Jensen also traveled to China to convey the resumption opportunity, and make sure that Nvidia’s position in China remains relatively intact. Jensen reiterated that China represents over half the world’s AI Talent, and it’s important to have the US AI Tech Stack of hardware and software remain the foundational building block for companies and developers in China. AMD and other US tech companies also got similar opportunities in China for their offerings as well. More here.

   

4. Google Cloud laps Amazon AWS with AI startups: Google Cloud is making more headway with AI Startups for its services relative to the largest player, Amazon AWS. The company also competes with Microsoft Azure and other cloud providers, as well as OpenAI of course that is increasingly building its own AI Cloud infrastructure via partners CoreWeave, Oracle, Softbank and others. A critical area of improvement has been its APIs to its Gemini and other services, as well as a more proactive approach to meeting the needs of AI startups large and small. This improves the flywheel of services to developers, then helping to move forward the Google Cloud cluster of AI offerings relative to peers. More here.

   

5. Elon’s xAI taps SpaceX & Tesla for cash: WIth the withering acceleration of AI Infrastructure investments from Meta and other Mag 7s, Elon Musk’s xAI is raising additional $2 billion in funding from his other companies like SpaceX. This represents two-thirds of that private company’s cash on hand. Also potentially in the works is similar funding participation from Elon’s public company Tesla, which has over $16 billion of cash on hand. These investments of course raises fiduciary questions at each company, public and private. The moves highlight the accelerating needs for capital to scale up AI data centers and research talent with competitors like Meta, Google, Microsoft/OpenAI, Anthropic/Amazon/Google and others. Additionally, these investments also require billions in Power investments concurrent with the build outs of these massive, multi-gigawatt facilities. This is the new race for these companies in the near term.. More here.

   

Other AI Readings for weekend:

1. Meta hires more Apple AI research talent. More here.

   

2. Anthropic valuation approaches $100 billion on AI Data Center Funding Frenzy. Now OpenAI at $300 billion, xAI/Grok approaching $200 billion, and Perplexity at $18 billion. More here.

   

(Special Note: Doing a new podcast series on AI from a Gen Z and later perspective called AI Ramblings. Now 12 weekly Episodes and counting. More with the latest AI Ramblings Episode 12 here, on AI issues of the day, as well as our latest ‘Reads’ and ‘Obsessions’ of the Week). Co-hosted with my nephew Neal Makwana. His latest ‘AI and the Augmentation of Entertainment’ piece 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)