AI: Weekly Summary. RTZ #885

1. OpenAI’s Exceptional Execution: OpenAI has had an exceptional Fall thus far, with a breathtaking array of execution across the AI Tech Stack, from Infrastructure to Applications. The pace of the execution has been noteworthy, particularly as the company ramped from 500 employees less than two years ago to over 3,000 today. And of course changing the ‘Mag 7’ club in AI to ‘Mango’ and more. While most of these efforts are in their earliest days, the range of ambitions on each one is unprecedented relative to prior major tech waves. OpenAI’s acquisition of Sky, an AI Mac OS overlay software company this week, points to ambitions across software operating systems of today and tomorrow. With ambitions in vertical content areas like AI Music and beyond. More here.

   

2. OpenAI enters AI Browsers: Just zooming in on a key item above, is OpenAI’s official launch of its AI Browser dubbed ChatGPT Atlas, for now only on the Mac OS on those desktops. Presumably other platforms both on desktops and mobile to come, with of course support for Windows and Android in particular. Early reviews are positive. The initial launch shows off deep integration with ChatGPT across modalities like images, video, and voice, as well as better personalization by leveraging memory of end user interests and activities. OpenAI is also focused on the AI Agent functionality in these browsers. An additional issue for all entrants continues to be security around ‘prompt injection’ and other types of malicious attacks. And the need for all the entrants like Google, Perplexity, Apple and others to emphasize user Trust and Privacy of their data habits More here.

   

3. Meta Prunes AI Talent: Meta Founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking a moment to pare and prune an aggressive Summer’s worth of AI Talent hiring in the billions of dollars, from rivals like OpenAI, Apple, and others. While the numbers amount to hundreds of folks from the newly organized Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) unit, the overall direction of the investment effort and AI Infrastructure ramp remains in place. In the meantime, its peers also continue to scale up their AI Talent, with companies like OpenAI finding hundreds of new hires from Meta for now. So both companies are in a ‘digestion’ phase, as well as continue the ongoing hunt for AI Talent globally. More here.

   

4. Anthropic/Google Ramp up AI Data Centers: While OpenAI lines up its string of AI Infrastructure and Power deals adding up to a trillion dollars, no. 2 LLM AI company Anthropic, which counts Amazon and Google as core investors, announced multi-gigawatt data center plans with Google, using its AI TPU chips. Those compete well with Nvidia’s long family of AI GPU chips, currently in the Blackwell mode. The deal adds up to tens of billions in data center and power builds, and continues to accelerate the pace of investments globally for both. The race is on for more AI Compute to deliver the myriad of AI Intelligence tokens needed for the almost limitless flood for AI Inference demand to come. And of course for the ongoing AI Training ramps as well, to Scale AI across the spectrum. More here.

   

5. Snap & Samsung still into AI/VR Smart Glasses: Both Snap and Samsung are doubling down on AI Smart Glasses at both ends of the spectrum, from normal looking AI glasses, to bull on AR/VR headsets a la Apple’s $3499 Vision Pro. The latter just got an update with Apple’s latest M5 chips. Samsung’s XR glasses in partnership with Google is being launched with full YouTube and Netflix apps, both missing on the Apple version. Snap at the other end of the spectrum has been a pioneer in the AI Smart Glasses space, with years of effort and investment. And now going up against deeper pockets with the likes of Meta, Apple, Google, Amazon and others. The company is reportedly looking to raise a billion or more from sources like the Saudi Arabian PIF Sovereign Wealth Fund. The space will continue to see rapid entrants, updates and investments, as companies look for the next AI platform beyond smartphones and computers. More here.

   

Other AI Readings for weekend:

1. Microsoft updates Clippy to Mico with more AI anthropomorphizing. More here.

   

2. Amazon AWS Challenges with AI Ramps by peers. More here.

   

(Additional Note: For more weekend AI listening, have a new podcast series on AI, from a Gen Z to Boomer perspective. It’s called AI Ramblings. Now 26 weekly Episodes and counting. More with the latest AI Ramblings Episode 26, on AI issues of the day. As well as our latest ‘Reads’ and ‘Obsessions’ of the Week. Co-hosted with my Gen Z nephew Neal Makwana):

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)