E74: 2/7/25
Amazon Q4 earnings, UW/AI2/Stanford joint research on "stopping to think" with s1, OpenAI's o3-mini with more transparent "chain of thought", DeepSeek getting banned in US agencies, etc.
PNW AI News:
Amazon beat earnings expectations for Q4 2024, with $187.8B in total revenue (up 10% YoY) and quarterly profits of $21B (up 88% YoY)
AWS specifically generated $28.8B in revenue with $10.6B in operating profits, driving 50% Amazon's entire bottom line
Amazon is now on pace to exceed $100B in yearly CapEx in 2025, after spending $26.3B in Q4, a "vast majority" of which will go towards AWS' AI datacenter capacity
Amazon also announced it will spend $16B building the two datacenter campuses in Jackson, MS, $6B more than what it originally planned to invest
Amazon announced plans to revamp Alexa’s AI core with Amazon's Titan and Anthropic's Claude LLMs, ready for February launch
Researchers from UW, Ai2, and Stanford have developed a technique called "test-time scaling" that makes AI models think longer before answering
They also released a new open source model "s1" that uses this technique
WA Governor Bob Ferguson is creating a "workgroup" to analyze the economic and environmental impacts of datacenters in the state, exploring energy and employment factors
Microsoft hired three former members of Google DeepMind, which was originally co-founded as a startup research lab by Microsoft’s current CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, to found Microsoft's AI office in Europe
Key AI Product/Research Updates:
OpenAI released o3-mini, a new cost-efficient reasoning model that brings advanced STEM capabilities, while significantly reducing costs and response times compared to previous versions
Researchers from TikTok owner ByteDance just unveiled OmniHuman-1, an AI system that can generate some of the most realistic deepfake videos ever seen, all from just a single reference image and audio input
Hugging Face and Physical Intelligence released "Pi0", an open-source robotics model that allows robots to execute complex tasks( e.g. folding laundry, bussing tables, packing groceries) straight from natural language commands, without custom pre-training
Trained across seven robotic platforms and 68 task domains, Pi0 wields flow matching to generate real-time action trajectories at 50Hz
NVIDIA and Carnegie Mellon researchers introduced 'ASAP', an AI framework that lets humanoid robots learn complex movements from simulations, enabling the replication of iconic celebrations and moves from pro athletes
Google has dropped its high performance SLM Gemini 2.0 Flash into general availability, pushed the ultra-cost-efficient Flash-Lite into public preview, and rolled out an experimental LLM Gemini 2.0 Pro
OpenAI has updated the Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning in its O3-Mini models, making it more transparent through the reasoning process, but is still a step short of full disclosure
Direct response to DeepSeek-driven criticism of their model's transparency
OpenAI has expanded ChatGPT’s memory limit by 25% for Plus, Pro, and Team users, with plans to roll out the increase platform-wide soon
Johns Hopkins researchers just created AbdomenAtlas, an AI-powered dataset of 45,000 3D CT scans with 142 annotated anatomical structures, dramatically accelerating medical image analysis for early cancer detection
A 36x larger dataset than its predecessor, aggregating data from over 145 hospitals
OpenAI has introduced "deep research," a new ChatGPT agent designed to tackle complex research tasks across fields like finance, science, policy, and engineering, as well as for consumers making high-stakes decisions
Hugging Face then released Open Deep Research, an open-source project designed to replicate OpenAI’s deep research tool
Key AI Business/Investment Updates:
OpenAI’s latest trademark filing suggests a deeper push into AI-integrated hardware, covering wearables, AR gear, and humanoid robotics
Their application to the USPTO, lists AI-enhanced smartwatches, headsets, and “user-programmable humanoid robots” built for adaptive learning and interaction
Kanye West confirmed he's using AI on his upcoming album 'BULLY,’ comparing the role of technology in music to that of autotune
In response to DeepSeek's popularity but also security concerns over Chinese biases, US agencies like NASA/CIA, US Congress, the Pentagon, the US Navy, the State of Texas, and entire countries including Italy and Taiwan have outright banned it
Enterprise software giant Workday announced plans to cut 1,750 jobs (8.5% of its workforce) as part of an AI-driven restructuring plan
PNW AI/ML/CV Fundings:
Edera (Seattle, WA) raised $15M in Series A funding led by undisclosed investors, joined by existing investors FPV Ventures, Eniac Ventures, 645 Capital and more
Developer of an AI security system designed to secure the organization's AI workloads – TFTD $20M
CEO: Emily Long, ex-Chainguard COO
Affective Software (Seattle, WA) raised $6.5M of Series A funding from undisclosed investors
Software with patented AI technology designed to assess and help people strengthen their relationships – TFTD $10.1M
CEO: Rafael Lisitsa
Deltagen (Seattle, WA) raised $1.2M of Pre-seed funding from Alongside Forward VC, B5 Capital, and Techstars
AI-powered platform designed to make AI tools accessible and efficient for everyone – TFTD $1.3M
CEO: Rene Bystron (Congrats Rene!!)
Upsight (Beaverton, OR) raised $1.1M in SAFE notes from Dreamit Ventures and other undisclosed investors
Developer of a security software designed to protect users from AI-assisted phishing attacks – TFTD $2.3M
CEO: Tracy Camp
Dopl Tech (Seattle, WA) raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding led by Tacoma Venture Fund, joined by Precursor Ventures, Seattle Angel Conference, Flywheel (NCW Tech Alliance), The Pitch Fund, Measured Capital, Dream Variation Ventures and several angels
Remote robotic and autonomous AI healthcare delivery as a service – TFTD $1.6M
CEO: Ryan James
Adronite (Seattle, WA) raised $0.5M in Pre-Seed funding from undisclosed investors
AI platform intended to achieve code clarity and increase the software development process – TFTD $1.3M
CEO: Ephraim Rothschild