E82: 4/4/25
OpenAI raised the largest VC round in history, xAI "acquired" X, Anthropic moved into Higher Ed, Runway's Gen-4 video generation model, Intel/TSMC team up in the US, and much more!
PNW AI News:
Amazon rolled out Nova Act, its foray into agentic AI that navigates your browser autonomously, complete with a full SDK for developers, more reliably than previous Amazon AGI-pursuant models
Oregon-based humanoid robotics company Agility Robotics is reportedly raising $400M in new funding at a $1.75B pre-money valuation, with participation from SoftBank and others
Scientists at WSU used AI to identify animal populations most likely to spread diseases to humans, including Avian flu, hantavirus, black plague, and mad cow disease
Key AI Product/Research Updates:
Anthropic launched Claude for Education, a tailored academic version of its AI assistant, complete with a unique “Learning Mode” and major institutional partnerships
Runway AI has launched its Gen-4 video generation model, offering a significant breakthrough in maintaining character and scene consistency across multiple shots
Elon Musk's Neuralink is preparing to launch human trials for its Blindsight brain implant by the end of 2025, helping individuals who are entirely blind regain visual perception
Researchers at UC Berkeley and UCSF have created an AI system that converts brain signals into spoken words with near-instant accuracy
Closing the latency gap that held back prior brain-computer interfaces (BCIs)
Dartmouth researchers published results from the first-ever clinical trial of an AI therapy chatbot, providing care comparable to “gold-standard cognitive therapy” and showing improvements across depression, anxiety, and eating disorders
Apple is planning a revamped Health app codenamed “Project Mulberry” that will feature an AI-powered health coach
Zhipu AI, a Chinese spinoff from Tsinghua University, has introduced AutoGLM Rumination, China’s first open-access AI agent built for deep research and autonomous task execution
UC San Diego researchers confirmed that advanced AI systems like GPT-4.5 can now consistently pass the "Turing Test", being mistaken for human in the majority of evaluations
Meta is planning to launch new $1000+ “Hypernova” AI-infused smart glasses that feature a screen, hand-gesture controls, and a neural wristband by the end of the year
Goodle Deepmind has released a comprehensive 145-page AGI safety proposal, offering one of the most detailed frameworks yet for managing AGI risks
Key AI Business/Investment Updates:
OpenAI raised $40B in new funding led by SoftBank, with participation from Microsoft, Thrive Capital, and others, at a $300B valuation
The highest value private venture round of all time (!!!), beating their own previous record of raising $6B at $157B valuation in just Oct 2024, 6 months ago
Elon's AI startup xAI has acquired his social media platform X in an all-stock transaction, combining two of his most prominent companies into a new entity called xAI Holdings valued at $113B collectively
The companies will be “blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach”
Intel and TSMC have reached a tentative agreement to launch a joint venture aimed at revitalizing Intel’s US semiconductor manufacturing, adeal facilitated by White House officials
A large step towards boosting domestic chip production, but in turn TSMC acquires a 20% stake and the rest owned by US firms
OpenAI is growing in revenue by 30% in Q1 2025, reaching $5B ARR with 20M paid ChatGPT subscribers, up from just 4.5M this time last year
Their viral Studio Ghibli image generation trend with 4o, which was made free last week, led Sam Altman to say it is "literally melting their GPUs".
They added 1M users in just one hour, and saw over 700M images generated in its first week by 130M+ users
CoreWeave stumbles in debut as AI cloud IPO falls short, then resurged aggressively this week
Runway is finalizing a $308M at a $3B valuation, led by NVIDIA and General Atlantic, to accelerate development of their Gen-4 AI video model
ByteDance and Alibaba are collectively ordering $16.5B in upgraded Nvidia H20 chips, signaling large Chinese demand for their state-of-the-art GPUs
Isomorphic Labs, a Google Deepmind spinout raises $600M in Seed funding for AI-enabled drug discovery, led by Thrive Capital
French regulators fined Apple €150M ($162.4M) for monopolistic practices related to its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature
PNW AI/ML/CV Fundings:
Temporal (Seattle, WA) raised $150M of Series C funding at a $1.7B valuation led by Tiger Global Management, joined by Index Ventures, MongoDB Capital, Amplify Partners, Sequoia, and more.
An open-source microservices orchestration platform designed to build and operate resilient applications at scale, injecting AI automation into several aspects of the app deployment chain – TFTD $353.5M
CEO: Maxim Fateev
No correspondence, too late
Gierd (Post Falls, ID) raised $8M in Series A funding from Nyca Partners, Spokane Angel Alliance, and other undisclosed investors
Omnichannel e-commerce management tool designed to help brands and marketplaces to scale market with AI – TFTD $8M
CEO: Jordan Sielaff
Emovid (Seattle, WA) raised a $7M Seed round funding Steve Kokinos' Family office
AI-based video messaging platform intended to bring the power and efficiency of video correspondence to everyone in businesses – TFTD $7M
CEO: Victor Cho
Sturdy AI (Boise, ID) raised $6M in Seed II funding led by Voyager Capital, joined by Grotech and Fortson VC
AI technology designed to turn client communications in wealth mgmt into capital. – TFTD $11.6M
CEO: Stephen Hazelton
HeyLibby (Seattle, WA) raised $4.5M in Seed funding led by Aglae Ventures and Vertical Venture Partners
AI-powered platform designed to assist users with a variety of tasks by providing personalized and actionable insights – TFTD $4.5M
CEO: Spencer Rascoff
Mediscan (Seattle, WA) raised $1.3M in Seed funding from undisclosed investors
AI-automated medical record analysis software designed for physicians and medical evaluators – TFTD $1.3M
CEO: Kavian Mojabe
Stitch Studio (Portland, OR) joined BrokerTech Ventures as part of its 2025 Cohort and received $100K in funding in the form of SAFE notes
No-code AI assistant platform designed to provide insurance workflows – TFTD $100K
CEO: Santoash Rajaram