E75: 2/14/25
OpenAI details its LLM roadmap with GPT-4.5 and o3, Snowflake/Anthropic team up, Perplexity/Cerebras team up, US abstains from a 61-country agreement at the 'AI Action Summit" in Paris, and more
Welcome to another jam-packed week in AI… new LLMs, new partnerships, new lawsuits from publishers, several new multi-$B sovereign investments, and more. Enjoy!
PNW AI News:
Microsoft purchases 390 MW worth of solar panel capacity developed by EDP Renewables, adding to its renewable energy portfolio, in attempt to meet power demands of its AI ambitions
Convoy co-founder/CEO Dan Lewis joined Microsoft as Chief Product Officer for Copilot AI and 'Business & Industry' solutions
Bill Gates joined Geekwire's Podcast "Microsoft at 50", detailing his stance on whats next in AI and innovation, and how his handoff to Satya Nadella as new CEO has left the company in a position of strength
Key AI Product/Research Updates:
OpenAI is preparing to release GPT-4.5 as its final incremental LLM before transitioning to a new reasoning-focused AI architecture
Orion reportedly delivered only marginal improvements over GPT-4, suggesting that scaling traditional LLMs is approaching its practical limits
Rather than deploying o3 as an independent release, OpenAI is integrating it into GPT-5, its next LLM which can autonomously determine when to engage in complex reasoning, leverage external tools, and adapt dynamically across tasks
Snowflake announced a partnership with Anthropic, embedding AI agents directly into corporate data environments, empowering businesses to analyze vast amounts of information while maintaining strict security controls
Anthropic prepares new Claude hybrid LLMs with reasoning capability, in response to OpenAI's o3 and others, as traditional scaling approaches with more data/parameters begins to show diminishing returns
Perplexity has launched an upgraded version of its Sonar search model, now powered by Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B and optimized with Cerebras’ specialized hardware
Elon Musk announced that Grok 3, xAI’s chatbot and competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is in its final development phase and set to launch within two weeks
OpenAI shares plans to bring o3 Deep Research agent to free and ChatGPT Plus users, which rivals Perplexity and others
YouTube announced that it is rolling out Veo 2, Google DeepMind's latest video generation model, into its Shorts platform, allowing creators to generate custom video clips and backgrounds directly from text descriptions
Adobe released its Firefly Video Model in public beta, positioning it as the industry's ‘first commercially safe AI video generation tool’, generating videos at 1080p
OpenAI released an expanded "Model Spec" that outlines how models should handle controversial topics, emphasizing truth, user customization and intellectual freedom while maintaining key safety guardrails
MIT researchers have developed swarms of tiny robotic insect drones that can fly 100x longer than previous designs
OpenAI is near completion of its first bespoke AI chip, with plans to roll out mass production by 2026, courtesy of TSMC's 3-nanometer process:
Key AI Business/Investment Updates:
Elon Musk’s letter of intent to acquire OpenAI was revealed, with a deadline of May 10, an all-cash offer of $97.4B, and requirements like full access to company records
Sam Altman responded, saying this is only a "minor distraction"
Scarlett Johansson is once again in AI limelight, calling on the government to pass a law limiting the use of AI for deepfakes, after a video featuring an AI deepfake of the actress circulated online
At the AI Action Summit in Paris, 61 countries, including China, India, and Canada, signed a joint declaration advocating for an “open, inclusive, and ethical” approach to AI development
The US and the UK abstained, citing concerns about ideological biases and the risk of AI being co-opted of authoritarian purposes
EC President von der Leyen announced a €200B AI investment initiative, trying to position Europe as an open-source alternative to US AI development
French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled plans for €109B in AI investments ahead of the Paris AI Action summit, including a massive UAE-backed datacenter campus and a €20B commitment from Brookfield to develop infrastructure
Saudi Arabia pledged a new $1.5B investment into AI inference startup Groq, marking one of the largest single-country commitments to specialized AI chip developmentSaudi Arabia pledged a new $1.5B investment into AI inference startup Groq for specialized AI chip development
One of the largest single-country commitments in history
Over a dozen major news publishers filed a lawsuit against Cohere, alleging copyright infringement and trademark violations for using their content to train AI models and generating articles that mimicked their brands
Another week, another publisher/AI model company lawsuit
Apptronik announced a $350M Series A funding round led by B Capital and Google, with plans to scale production of its Apollo robot and expand into healthcare and consumer markets
AI played a prominent role in Super Bowl LIX’s commercial lineup, with OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others shelling out for advertising slots
PNW AI/ML/CV Fundings:
Converz AI (Redmond, WA) raised $16m in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures., joined by Afore Capital, Recall Capital, Left Lane Capital, and Foundation Capital
Ai virtual recruiting platform designed to automate candidate screening calls – TFTD $20.95m
CEO: Ashwarya Poddar
Pendulum (Seattle, WA) raised $14m of Series A funding co-led by Munich Re Ventures and Lowercarbon Capital, joined by Madrona, Cercano, Decisive Point, Collaborative Fund, Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Cross Border Impact Ventures and more
Intelligence software platform designed to identify brand risks and opportunities that arise from social media and other online content – TFTD $19.9m
CEO: Mark Listes
Hydra (Seattle, WA) raised $3m in Seed funding from undisclosed investors
A private computer game using AI, designed to provide a tactical, immersive experience for military training use cases – TFTD $3m
CEO: Louis Gresham
Official AI (Seattle, WA) raised $2m in Seed funding led by PSL Ventures, joined by Mudita Venture Partners and the AI Studio Fund (joint venture between Mayfield and PSL)
A licensing marketplace designed to manage publicity rights within generative AI content – TFTD $3m
CEO: Dave Siegfried