E95: 7/11/25
AI2's new data paradigm, Grok 4, AI-designed cancer therapies, more medical AI, Perplexity's AI browser, and... "Coding is dead"
PNW AI News:
AI2 introduced FlexOlmo, a new language model training paradigm that enables data owners to contribute to AI development without sharing their raw data
Microsoft and Replit announced a new partnership to bring the startup’s agentic coding capabilities to Azure enterprise customers
Microsoft is making a $4B, five-year commitment to support schools and nonprofits with AI tools and training through a new initiative called "Microsoft Elevate"
Microsoft President Brad Smith gave a talk on their AI investments, job cuts, and the uncertain future of work later in the week
Microsoft CCO Judson Althoff said they saved over $500M in the past year from AI’s infusion in call centers, following last week’s cut of 9,000 jobs
Microsoft open-sourced BioEmu 1.1, an AI tool that can predict protein states and energies
Amazon secured AI licensing deals with publishers Conde Nast and Hearst, enabling use of the content in the tech giant’s Rufus AI shopping assistant
Five months after completing its $8.4 billion take-private deal by Vista, Smartsheet is racing to "AI-ify" their business, applying Ai automation to existing features, but also reinventing their GTM with AI
Magdalena Balazinska, director of UW’s School of Computer Science & Engineering, says “Coding, or the translation of a precise design into software instructions, is dead."
"The hard problem is to precisely figure out what we want computers to do in order to accomplish some task. That creative and conceptually challenging work is the true work of a software engineer.”
UW professor Dieter Fox leaves NVIDIA's robotics research lab, to lead robotics foundation model initiatives at Allen Institute for AI (AI2)
Key AI Product/Research Updates:
Alphabet's AI-powered drug discovery company, Isomorphic Labs, is preparing to start its first human clinical trials for its AI-designed cancer drugs, with an ultimate goal of “solving all diseases”
Backed by $600M in funding, with a Nobel Prize-winning team that developed AlphaFold 3, an AI system for predicting protein structures and molecular interactions
xAI just announced Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy, its next-gen reasoning-only models that are “better than PHD levels in every subject” and deliver state-of-the-art capabilities across benchmarks
The Mayo Clinic introduced Vision Transformer, an AI system for detecting surgical-site infections quickly and accurately via photos during outpatient monitoring
Perplexity launched Comet, a new AI browser that embeds the company’s search engine alongside an assistant capable of performing agentic tasks, like booking meetings and navigating websites
Moonvalley just released Marey, a filmmaker-focused AI video model trained exclusively on licensed content that gives directors granular control over scenes
Google launched new updates to MedGemma, releasing two medical AI models, including a 27B multimodal model for interpreting medical images and patient records and a MedSigLIP tool for image and text analysis
Researchers from Anthropic and Scale AI just published a study testing 25 AI models for “alignment faking,” finding only five demonstrated deceptive behaviors (Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Llama 3 405B, Grok 3, and Gemini 2.0 Flash)
Key AI Business/Investment Updates:
Meta invested $3.5B into Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica SA, giving the company a 3% stake in the world’s largest eyewear maker and expanding its AI glasses partnership
The American Federation of Teachers partnered with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to create a national AI training hub that will prepare 400,000 educators to integrate the technology into classrooms across the U.S.
SAG-AFTRA video game actors voted to end their strike against gaming companies, approving a deal that secures AI consent and disclosures for digital replica use
A departing Meta AI scientist posted a long internal essay comparing the company's culture to "metastatic cancer,” describing the AI unit as plagued by fear, confusion, and a lack of direction
OpenAI recruited four new senior engineers from Tesla, xAI, and Meta for its scaling team, joining to work on the Stargate data center and infrastructure initiatives
PNW AI/ML/CV Fundings:
Portola (San Francisco, CA / Seattle, WA) raised $20M in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures, joined by Lachy Groom and others
Portola builds colorful AI companions that help kids feel more grounded in their daily life - TFTD $30M
CEO: Quentin Farmer
Fiveonefour (Portland, OR) raised $10.9M in Seed funding from undisclosed investors
AI development toolkit designed to provide data engineering solutions to technical teams – TFTD $17.0M
CEO: Tim Delisle
Duranta (Seattle, WA) raised $7M in seed funding from Base10 Partners, Fifth Wall, and Coalition Operators
AI software platform designed to streamline landscaping operations. – TFTD $7M
CEO: Samuel Adeyemo
Wokelo AI (Seattle, WA) raised $5.1M in seed funding from undisclosed investors.
Gen-AI powered investment research platform designed to automate complex research activities such as due diligence, sector research, and portfolio monitoring.– TFTD $10.6M
CEO: Siddhant Masson
Stich Studio (Portland, OR) raised $3M in seed funding from BrokerTech Ventures and Manchester Story.
No-code AI assistant platform designed to provide insurance workflows. – TFTD $3.05M
CEO: Santoash Rajaram
Rapta (Tigard, OR) raised $2.7M in seed funding from Portland Seed Fund, Phase Shift Ventures, Roadster Capital, Ben Johnson, Dennis Fritz, Joe Dobrenski, Ryan Permeh, and SeedFunders.
AI-powered manufacturing platform designed to improve productivity and quality control in industrial environments. – TFTD $2.7M
CEO: Aaron Brown
OnDeck AI (Vancouver, Canada) raised $0.5K in pre seed funding from YC.
Computer vision-based monitoring tool designed to support sustainable ocean management in the fisheries. – TFTD $2.06M
CEO: Alexander Dungate