AI: Weekly Summary. RTZ #500

1. OpenAI’s record funding & Dev Day 2024: OpenAI closed its $6.6 billion in new funding at a $157 billion valuation, along with a $5 billion credit line, to continue rolling out its pipeline of new AI products and services. The terms provide its investors a two year period for the company to transition from its non-profit to a Public Benefit Corp (PBC) structure. If that is not achieved, then OpenAI will pay its investors 9% to its investors in this round. Concurrently, OpenAI, at its 2nd annual Dev Day, continues to focus on upgrading its AI products, with meaningful API accessible upgraded services for its millions of Developers worldwide. Also the company continued to roll out lower pricing for a range of its product lines (see below). More on OpenAI’s broader set of opportunities here.

   

2. Microsoft & Google upgrade AI PCs: The ‘AI PC’ started by Microsoft this year continues with new upgrades from Microsoft and OEM PC partners, and Google doing the same with its Chromebook ecosystem. Specifically, Microsoft is jump-starting its Copilot AI PC push again with new models by its partners, this time using low-power chips from Intel and AMD, supplementing the Qualcomm AI PCs earlier this summer. Not to be outdone, Google launched new AI features for its upgraded Chromebook PCs, in partnership with Samsung and Lenovo. All these PC upgrades from the above companies, plus Apple, with new AI hardware and software, represent new ‘local AI driven PCs and Smartphones that could be a driver to new AI services delivered to mainstream users via their devices. More here.

   

3. Salesforce & Microsoft rollout Enterprise AI Agents. Salesforce’s ‘Agentforce’ presentation at its Dreamforce conference this year throws down a gauntlet against Microsoft’s Copilot Wave 2 products targeted at Enterprise customers. These two announcements augment the broader movement by the SaaS (Software as a Service industry) to productize LLM AI models as Agents that can help with a wide and deep range of enterprise tasks. And to do it both reliably and safely. Also part of these efforts include testing new pricing options for these AI Services. Unlike traditional software, AI software has a variable compute cost that must be covered in the pricing for these products, consumer and enterprise. OpenAI and others are also in this AI Agent race for the Enterprise. More here.

   

4. Meta, Google show path to Synthetic Content:. Meta is planning to generate ‘Synthetic Content’ personalized to its 3 billion plus daily users. The idea is to ‘proactively surface AI-generated posts based on Users’ interests’. It would add to the substantial Creator Economy generated content already underway. This trend follows on the separate AI trend generating ‘Synthetic Data’ for current and future LLM AI Models. These two new categories add to the two other core categories, AI Training and Inference, that are already driving the multi-hundred billion dollar ramp in global AI GPU and Data center Compute infrastructure and Power builds. Meanwhile, Google has a viral hit with NotebookLM AI podcast generator, that converts any text document into a podcast with two AI Agent Voices. These two efforts by Meta and Google, show the path to examples to come, generating user relevant and personalized synthetic AI content. More on this trend here.

   

5. Google’s response to Meta AR glasses. Google is also focused on AI ‘Smart Glasses’ (again), as Meta made a splash on Smart, VR, AND AR glasses last week as its Connect Conference. The company apparently is discussing ‘high-tech’ glasses with Samsung, in a possible new collaboration. The other company in the race of course is Apple, which is also thinking through its Vision Pro strategy given the latest announcements by Meta. The three companies, Snap, and others recognize the opportunity for putting AI hardware and software in wearables to provide the next generation of AI data collection. And of course, useful AI products and services to mainstream users in the billions. It’s early days, but this looks like an area where billions in ‘Science Project’ dollars will be invested beyond AI ‘Smart Glasses’. More here.

   

Other AI Readings for weekend:

1. Google is chasing OpenAI’s ‘AI Reasoning Efforts’. More here.

   

2. Meta announces Movie Gen AI models, joining the text to video race with OpenAI Sora, Runway et al

   

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)