AI: Weekly Summary. RTZ #729

1. Google hits AI home run at I/O 2025: Google fired on all AI product cylinders at its 2025 I/O conference, with CEO Sundar Pichai’s keynote walking through a firehose of AI offerings leveraging Google’s unique vertical technology stack of AI TPU infrastructure. And integrated into properties like Search, YouTube, Gmail et al. Its latest LLM AI Gemini 2.5 will be distributed across a wide array of its product ecosystem, with ‘AI Mode” being the flagship feature in Google Search in the US and beyond. Particularly interesting, were its text to video product Veo-3, which surpasses the competition in audio capabilities. Also notable were Google’s AI Agent and Reasoning products embedded in its various platforms like Astra and Mariner. Overall, the company is lapping its competition in AI innovation in most key areas. More here.

   

2. OpenAI follows with IO merger w/ Jony Ive: OpenAI and founder/CEO Sam Altman had their own ‘IO’ bombshell headline with a $6.5 billion in stock merger with ex Apple Uber designer Jony Ive’s io Products, focused on building next generation AI native devices. The complex deal brings io Products’ 55 top ex-Apple technologists into OpenAI, with Jony Ive heading the creative design function for all of OpenAI’s product and services portfolio. Jony will not be an employee of OpenAI, since he still has design commitments with Lovefrom, his other San Francisco based design company. The move positions OpenAI to compete more directly with Google, Apple and others in the mainstream market for AI devices beyond smartphones and laptop/computers. Informed speculation has the company releasing the first in a family of products next year, with a goal of ramping it up to 100 million plus in sales by 2027. More here.

   

3. Nvidia fleshes out 2025 AI roadmap at Computex: Nvidia’s founder/CEO Jensen Huang had a successful Computex 2025 developer conference with its partners and customers in Taiwan, updating customers on its progress with its Blackwell AI GPU infrastructure roadmap, which will be followed by Rubin and Feynman in the next few years to come. . The keynote is worth watching for the technology roadmap and its financial implications for the company going forward. One new announcement was ‘NVLink Fusion’ which allows its vendor partners and customers to build their own customized AI infrastructure around semi custom systems built with Nvidia components. This potentially expands the market for Nvidia products and services despite the ‘Frenemies’ relationship with its top customers. More here.

   

4. Microsoft leans into Enterprise Ai at Build 2025: Microsoft had a successful AI developer and enterprise event at Build 2025 this week, with a portfolio of new products and innovations. The keynote by CEO Satya Nadella is worth watching to get a sense of Microsoft’s AI progress with and beyond their partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft had Elon Musk virtually on stage to announce the incorporation of xAI’s Grok LLM as part of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service offerings. A lot of focus on tools and products around AI Agents for the enterprise, along with deeper AI reasoning products. Also notable was Microsoft’s native support for AI interoperability ‘model context protocol (MCP), which I discussed recently. More here.

   

5. China’s Ai Progress & US China Hawks: China’s AI companies continue to race ahead on AI despite the accelerating opposition to US/China tech/AI trade and cooperation by US China Hawks. Chinese companies, with half the world’s AI researchers, continue to make headway despite rising US trade curbs and tariffs on US AI infrastructure from Nvidia and others. If anything, US China Hawks’ actions merely accelerate China’s efforts to diversify from US tech like Nvidia’s open source CUDA AI frameworks to develop their own. While that may take longer with additional expense, it sets the stage for meaningful global competition for US tech companies sooner than anticipated. And cost US companies tens of billions in meaningful business in China. More here.

   

Other AI Readings for weekend:

1. Sam Altman on Generational Differences in AI Use. More here.

   

2. Deep dive into Apple’s AI issues with Siri and beyond. 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)