E88: 5/23/25
Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft all drop major series of AI platform announcements, OpenAI acquires Jony Ive's startup for $6.5B, and a busy week of AI dealflow in the PNW!
PNW AI News:
At Build 2025, Microsoft laid out its vision for an “open agentic web,” unveiling over 50 AI updates across software development, system architecture, and scientific research
Includes a revamped GitHub Copilot, Copilot Studio, Azure Foundry, an AI browser agent, and more
Microsoft unveils Windows AI Foundry, a new framework to help developers fine-tune and run AI models directly on PCs, effectively retooling PC operating system for agents
Microsoft expands AI partnership portfolio with Anthropic and xAI integrations, looking beyond OpenAI alliance exclusivity
Microsoft is bringing the Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini AI models from Elon Musk’s xAI to its Azure AI Foundry platform, as new offerings hosted and billed directly by Microsoft
Amazon added another AI feature its shopping app, with generative AI audio "shopping experts” that analyzes product details, customer reviews and more to allow customers to simply hear key info
Amazon shareholders on Wednesday rejected all eight oversight proposals at their annual meeting, including measures seeking greater scrutiny of its climate risks, AI practices, and warehouse working conditions
E/acc!!!
Microsoft makes largest-ever biochar carbon removal deal with Exomand Green, which will remove at least 1.24M tons of CO2 over the next decade, as the AI boom threatens climate ambitions
UW researchers just developed an AI-powered headphone system that can translate multiple speakers simultaneously while preserving spatial location and unique voice characteristics
Key AI Product/Research Updates:
Google had a massive series of announcements at their I/O 2025 event:
Gemini 2.5 Pro “Deep Think,” which offers parallel hypothesis evaluation and configurable thinking budgets for complex math and coding
Gemini Diffusion accelerates text generation through iterative noise refinement
Gemini 2.5 Flash enhances efficiency with thought summaries and reduced token use
Gemini 3n targets smartphones and edge devices with lightweight multimodal processing and advanced multilingual support
Veo 3 delivers lifelike video generation with integrated audio, lip syncing, and physics
Imagen 4 produces high-quality 2K images with improved texture detail and typography
Flow combines Veo 3, Imagen, and Gemini to enable cinematic scene creation with story management
Lyria RealTime offers interactive music generation via Gemini API, supporting detailed control over genre, instruments, and audio quality
MedGemma and SignGemma focus on medical image analysis and sign language translation, respectively
OpenAI just introduced Codex, a new cloud-based software engineering agent that can autonomously handle a range of development tasks simultaneously for coders
OpenAI has expanded its Responses API to support remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling integrations with platforms like Stripe, Twilio, and Shopify using minimal code
Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, advanced language models designed for long, complex tasks and improved coding support. They also announced several new API tools:
A secure Python code execution environment
A Multi-Channel Protocol (MCP) connector linking Claude to apps like Zapier and Asana
A Files API for persistent document storage
Extended prompt caching that retains recent context for up to an hour
Apple’s lightweight smart glasses may debut in late 2026, powered by a custom AI chip, accelerating development timelines
Mistral released Document AI, an enterprise tool for extracting text from documents and images with 99% accuracy and the ability to process thousands of pages a minute
Mistral just partnered with All Hands AI to release Devstral, a new lightweight open-source coding model that outperforms much larger rivals on software engineering tasks
Musk’s xAI has upgraded its Grok AI assistant with two new capabilities: visual chart generation and customizable image aspect ratios
AI startup Rime just unveiled Arcana, a new spoken language (text to speech) model focused on subtle nuance of human communication and the imperfections and subtleties that make speech feel authentic
Key AI Business/Investment Updates:
OpenAI has finalized its $6.5B acquisition of legendary Apple designer Jony Ive’s AI hardware startup, io, to co-develop a discreet, always-on, screenless wearable, described as “slightly larger than Humane’s AI Pin” yet compact and elegant in form
Silicon Valley Bank published a report warning of ‘Zombiecorns’, as AI megadeals crowd out VC market away from pre-2022 unicorns with poor growth or unit economics
OpenAI’s data center in Abilene, TX, secured $11.6B in new funding, expected to be the largest used by the company as it ramps up its Stargate infrastructure project
OpenAI launched Stargate UAE, the project’s first international deployment to provide nationwide ChatGPT access and build computing centers in Abu Dhabi starting in 2026
AI benchmarking platform LMArena announced $100M in Seed funding from A16Z, also revealing plans for a new relaunch of the site next week
China issued a statement telling the US to “correct its wrongdoings” following recent guidance that said using Huawei’s AI chips will be a violation of US export controls
PNW AI/ML/CV Fundings:
Elastix (Seattle, WA) raised $16M in Seed funding led by FUSE, joined by Catapult, Tyche Partners, Liquid 2 Ventures, and DNX Ventures
Developing an AI inference platform designed to optimize how LLMs are run using FPGAs to optimize hardware configurations – TFTD $16M
CEO: Mohammad Rastegari
Yoodli (Seattle, WA) raised $13M in Series A funding from investors including Madrona, Cercano Capital, AI2, Ascend, and others
A public speaking coaching platform intended to improve communication skills with real-time AI feedback – TFTD $19.8M
CEO: Varun Puri
Tradeverifyd (Bozeman, MT) raised $12M in Series A funding by Silicon Road and Bread & Butter Ventures, joined by Acronym Venture Capital and several others
An AI-driven platform designed to help enterprises identify supply chain risks before they happen – TFTD $15.3M
CEO: Michael Prorock
Emovid (Seattle, WA) raised $6.18M of Seed II funding from existing investors
AI-based video messaging platform intended to bring the power and efficiency of video correspondence to everyone in businesses – TFTD $13.4M
CEO: Victor Cho
Pay-I (Seattle, WA) raised $4.8M in Seed funding co-led by FUSE and Tola Capital, joined by Pear VC and several others
Platform helping AI application companies to structure LLM costs to drive more revenue - TFTD $3M
CEO: David Tepper
Sophia Space (Seattle/California) raised $3.5M in Pre-Seed funding led by Unlock Ventures
Orbital datacenter company, designed to enable data processing, AI acceleration, and edge computing for satellites, defense systems and commercial space stations – TFTD $3.5M
CEO: Rob DeMillo
Skriber (Pasco, WA) raised $1.3M in Pre-Seed funding led by Morgan Creek Capital Management and SeedToB Capital, joined by several others
AI-based transcriptionist platform designed to automate doctor documentation – TFTD $1.3M
CEO: Hayden Plummer
BrilliantHarvest (Calgary, AB) raised $0.5M in Seed+ funding from undisclosed investors
AI-powered helpdesk platform designed to improve equipment dealer teams across customer experience – TFTD $2.2M
CEO: Remi Schmaltz