E81: 3/28/25
Perplexity submitted a bid to takeover TikTok in the US, OpenAI's 4o went multimodal, Seattle's AI House opened its doors with a bang, and more!
PNW AI News:
The AI House officially opened its doors on Pier 70 in downtown Seattle, in partnership with the AI2 Incubator, with a 108K square foot space and 1,000 desks availavle for AI builders and startups to work from
It is already home to 20+ AI startups, many of them AI2 co's
Vinod Khosla spoke at the AI House opening party in downtown Seattle on Wednesday
Yujian Tang's Seattle Startup Summit is being held at the Westin Hotel downtown as we speak, with a focus on AI dev tools, hosting 900+ attendees and featuring 40+ startups
Perplexity partners with Seattle startup Firmly to boost shopping features within AI search app
Seattle startup Shelf Engine, which used AI/ML to optimize ordering for grocers to reduce food waste, was acquired by Crisp for an undisclosed fee
I interned with Shelf on the data science/growth team back in 2020 - LFG Shelf!!
Microsoft 365 Copilot unveiled Researcher and Analyst, two new AI agents designed to handle workplace tasks with research and data analysis directly in users’ workflows in Excel/Word
Zenoti, a profitable Seattle unicorn software startup selling into the beauty sector and into gyms, injected several AI features into its product
Amazon is testing new AI search experience that suggests products based on prompts, called "Interests"
Amazon ramps up its fight against counterfeit products with help from AI and law enforcement, saying it seized more than 15M fakes in 2024
Manny Medina, the founder and former CEO of unicorn Outreach, launched a new startup tackling AI agent monetization called Paid.ai, backed with EQT/Sequoia, and had a big launch party in London UK this week
Key AI Product/Research Updates:
OpenAI has integrated GPT-4o’s native image generation into ChatGPT, making it the default across free and paid tiers, with stunning styles
It has gone viral for its Studio Ghibli style animations… check me out!
OpenAI has also refined ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode, making conversations smoother by reducing interruptions
xAI is upgrading its Grok chatbot with DeeperSearch, an advanced research tool that refines queries by taking longer to process fewer, higher-quality sources
Figure AI’s 02 humanoid can now walk more naturally like a human, with better balance/locomotion
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek just released an updated version of its V3 model, a massive 641GB model capable of running on high-end personal computers
China firm Agibot plans 5,000-strong humanoid robot army to rival Elon Musk’s Optimus robotic manufacturing capabilities at Tesla
Google has introduced Gemini 2.5, its most advanced reasoning model, pushing the boundaries of AI-driven problem-solving in math, coding, and multimodal analysis
Researchers just unveiled an AI model called ECgMLP that identifies endometrial cancer with 99.26% accuracy from microscopic tissue images
Image generation startup Ideogram just released version 3.0 of its AI model, introducing major improvements in photorealism, text rendering, and style consistency
Reve just emerged from stealth with Reve Image 1.0, a new text-to-image AI model that topped global rankings with the codename “Halfmoon”
Alibaba released Qwen2.5-Omni-7B, a new multimodal, open source LLM capable of processing text, images, audio, and video simultaneously while being efficient enough to run directly on consumer hardware like smartphones
xAI announced that its Grok chatbot is now integrated directly into messaging app Telegram, available to Premium users at no additional cost
Key AI Business/Investment Updates:
AI search startup Perplexity just published its proposal to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations, promising to rebuild the platform's algorithm with transparency and American oversight while integrating its own search tech
OpenAI is undergoing restructuring, with CEO Sam Altman stepping back from daily operations to focus on research and product strategy. COO Brad Lightcap will now oversee operations, partnerships, and international growth
Chinese tech giant Alibaba and automaker BMW announced a strategic alliance to develop advanced in-car AI tailored for the Chinese market, bringing cutting-edge vehicle cockpit tech to BMW models in 2026
A federal judge rejected music publisher UMG’s request to block Anthropic from using song lyrics to train Claude, saying the claim failed to show “irreparable harm”
AI chip startup FuriosaAI reportedly turns down $800M acquisition offer from Meta
PNW AI/ML/CV Fundings:
Paid.ai (London, UK/Seattle, WA) raised $10M in Seed funding from Sequoia, EQT Ventures, GTMfund, Exceptional Capital, Alt Capital, SV Angel, Founders' Co-op, and more
AI agents platform with Billing, Invoicing, RevRec, taxes and all the back-office needs in a single pane of glass - TFTD $10M
CEO: Manny Medina
Opanga Networks (Seattle, WA) raised $16.0M in Series A-2 funding from Falcon Partners, Axtel, FTI Delta, and more
Mobile network densification technology designed to offer speed up mobile networks while slowing down network CapEx – TFTD $49.3M
CEO: Cole Brodman