E94: 7/3/25

Microsoft's 'Medical Superintelligence', Cloudflare charges bot crawlers microtransactions, viral AI music, Meta Superintelligence Labs - OpenAI talent war, Amazon's 1M+ robots, MSFT layoffs, and more

Happy 4th weekend everyone!

PNW AI News:

• Microsoft announced their AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO), which faced off and handedly won against 21 experienced physicians from the US/UK on diagnosis

  • MAI-DxO gave a correct diagnosis for 85.5% of the test cases, while the doctors hit the mark 20% of the time, hinting at "Medical Superintelligence"

• Amazon has deployed its 1 millionth robot (compared to its 1.5M global human workforce), as it rolls out an AI system called DeepFleet, designed to optimize robot movement across fulfillment centers

  • Built with internal logistics data and AWS tools such as SageMaker, it functions like a traffic controller, improving travel efficiency by 10% and cutting delivery costs

• Microsoft cuts another 4% of its workforce across the company, about 9K jobs (~800 in WA), in continued efficiency push driven by AI automation

• In a decisive 99-1 vote, the US Senate struck down a provision that would have banned states from regulating AI for 10 years, an amendment co-sponsored by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash

  • Washington has an AI Task Force that has already enacted several AI-related protections, including:

    • Bans on deepfakes mimicking political rivals

    • Prohibitions on the non-consensual distribution of AI-generated sexual images

    • Rules against fabricated digital likenesses used for fraud

• Microsoft teaming up with the English Premier League to enhance soccer fans’ digital experience using AI

• Intuit acquires tech from Seattle startup Relevvo, which uses AI to help B2B sales teams connect with buyers, on undisclosed terms

• Ai2 released SciArena, a new benchmarking platform focused specifically on scientific literature knowledge, with OpenAI’s o3 ranking atop the leaderboard

Key AI Product/Research Updates:

• Cloudflare, the largest internet content delivery network (CDN), will now automatically block AI crawlers by default on new websites: "Content Independence Day!"

  • It also launched a marketplace where publishers can charge bots micropayments for accessing content

• A mysterious band that went viral on Spotify with over 500K monthly listeners has been revealed as an " AI art hoax", with music created using the AI generator Suno

• Japanese lab Sakana AI just introduced AB-MCTS, a new algorithm that lets competing AI models collaborate on complex problems, using their collective intelligence to solve problems too difficult for any of the individual models

• Perplexity launched Max, a new $200/mo tier giving users unlimited access to its Labs tools, early access to new products like its Comet browser and advanced models

• OpenAI-backed Chai Discovery announced Chai-2, an AI capable of creating functional antibodies for drug development, nearing a 20% hit rate that marks a 100x improvement over methods that typically achieve less than 0.1%

• Runway is launching Game Worlds, a browser-based platform for building AI-powered text adventure games

• Researchers from Helmholtz Munich developed Centaur, an AI model that simulates human decision-making and behavior with extreme accuracy from training on millions of choices from 60k+ psychological experiments

• Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis hinted at potential “playable world” models coming for its Veo 3 video generation model

Key AI Business/Investment Updates:

• OpenAI is building out a consulting arm that charges enterprises at least $10M to customize AI models, competing with Accenture and Palantir

• Meta has launched Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), a total overhaul of its AI operations aimed squarely at building human-level and beyond AI systems

  • Leading MSL is Alexandr Wang, now Chief AI Officer at Meta, fresh off a $14.3 billion deal to absorb Scale AI

  • Sam Altman sent a message to researchers Monday night, dismissing Meta's recruiting tactics as "distasteful" while pitching why building AGI at OpenAI beats chasing paychecks

• Anthropic is reportedly on pace for $4B in annual revenue, 4x higher than its projections at the start of 2025

• Grammarly acquired AI-first email platform Superhuman, aiming to create a multi-agent AI productivity platform centered around users’ inboxes

• OpenAI is expanding its Stargate partnership with Oracle, renting about 4.5 GW of data center capacity to power its AI energy needs

• AI startup Lovable is reportedly set to raise a new $150M funding round, valuing the vibe-coding platform at close to $2B, from Accel, Creandum and 20VC, after raising just a $15M Seed round in Feb '25

PNW AI/ML/CV Fundings:

• None to report!

Nolan Van Nortwick

Senior Associate | FUSE