NEW LAUNCHES

The latest features, products & partnerships in AI

• OpenAI releases o3-mini, an AI reasoning model great for science, math and coding

• Cadence Design and Arm develop first system chiplet for ADAS and drone applications

• Google’s latest AI feature ‘Ask for Me’ will call local businesses for you

• Mistral AI launches small, local and open-source alternative to GPT-4o mini

• ElevenLabs raises funding at $3.3B valuation for voice AI tech

• Shutterstock-Lightricks partnership offers example of how to ethically source training data for AI video

• iPhone Messages app now offers DALL-E AI image generation

• Entyx.io debuts AI marketing platform to transform advertising

• Authors Guild launches ‘Human Authored’ book certification

DEEPSEEK

Reactions, predictions & more

• Apple CEO Tim Cook shares his thoughts on DeepSeek

• Berkeley research team claims to have recreated DeepSeek’s model for only $30

• Taiwan bans its government departments from using DeepSeek

• On closer look, maybe DeepSeek isn’t actually China’s ‘Sputnik moment’

• How to deploy DeepSeek AI models on AWS

• DeepSeek has a censorship problem — here’s how to get around it

• Beyond the benchmarks: How DeepSeek-R1 and OpenAI’s o1 stack up on real-world challenges

GOVERNMENT

Geopolitics, regulation, defense & global development

• Texas will become the first US state to ban Deepseek and other Chinese-affiliated AI apps

• US tech leaders and lawmakers want more restrictions on Chinese access to AI tech

• Organization of American States: Inside the initiative to establish a unified AI governance framework

• India aims to build its own ChatGPT-like AI models within 10 months

• OpenAI teams with US National Labs to bolster national security through AI

• Perplexity is offering free Pro access to .gov email users for 1 year

• US lawmakers push to further limit China’s access to Nvidia chips

• US Copyright Office suggests the great AI copyright debate was actually settled in 1965

AI AGENTS

Launches, research & more from the AI Agent Report Newsletter 

• One of Boston’s most influential tech leaders is working on a new AI agents platform

• An inside look at OpenAI’s new AI agent ‘Operator’

• AI agents will rival skilled engineers this year, Zuckerberg predicts

• Microsoft and PwC team up to bring AI agents to industries

IMPLEMENTATION

Announcements, strategies & case studies

• How AI and quantum computing are accelerating cancer drug research

• Why business units and not IT departments are leading enterprise AI transformation

• Synthesia and Theory Ventures on the future of AI in B2B SaaS

• How to train an AI image model on images of yourself

• Forrester on AI security: How to prevent jailbreaks, data poisoning and more

IN OTHER NEWS

Compelling stories beyond the usual categories

• Google buys 50 different Super Bowl ads to make sure you know how cool its AI tools are

• How this YouTuber is poisoning the web scrapers stealing her content

• SoftBank eyes $25B investment in AI leader OpenAI

• Despite new AI features, iPhone sales dipped in 2024

What’s happening in AI right now

The race to build AI's physical foundation

Big play

Microsoft and Meta are making unprecedented investments in AI infrastructure, with Microsoft projecting $80 billion in data center investments this fiscal year and Meta targeting 1.3 million GPUs and 1 gigawatt of computing power. These staggering numbers reflect their conviction that extensive physical infrastructure is crucial for AI dominance.

But a fascinating counter-narrative is emerging. The launch of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI chatbot achieving ChatGPT-like capabilities with significantly fewer resources, challenges the assumption that massive infrastructure spending is necessary. This development has particular relevance for Donald Trump's newly announced $500 billion Stargate project, aimed at maintaining U.S. AI supremacy.

Nuclear options and energy challenges

The scale of these infrastructure ambitions creates its own problems. Major tech companies are turning to nuclear power to meet their ever expanding energy needs, a move that introduces new environmental and regulatory complexities. This energy crunch is spurring creative solutions - Bitfarms, a Canadian bitcoin mining company, is exploring converting its facilities into AI data centers, leveraging existing infrastructure while diversifying revenue streams.

Regional innovation hubs

While tech giants build massive centralized infrastructure, an alternative model is emerging through regional innovation hubs. New Jersey's newly announced AI Hub, backed by Microsoft, CoreWeave, and Princeton University, represents a $72 million bet on distributed innovation. This approach emphasizes practical applications and workforce development over pure infrastructure plays.

Public-private partnerships

OpenAI's expansion of its collaboration with U.S. National Laboratories, providing advanced AI models to 15,000 government scientists, suggests another path forward. Rather than building everything internally, this partnership model leverages existing infrastructure while focusing on specific use cases in materials science, renewable energy, and cybersecurity.

Investment flows

The infrastructure build-out continues attracting significant capital. DataBank secured $850 million in new funding to expand its AI-focused data center operations, bringing its total recent fundraising to nearly $5 billion. This level of investment indicates strong confidence in the traditional infrastructure approach, despite emerging alternatives.

Looking ahead

The divergence between massive infrastructure investments and more efficient approaches raises important questions about the future of AI development. Will the tech giants' big bets on physical infrastructure pay off, or will more nimble, resource-efficient approaches prove superior? The answer may lie in finding the right balance between centralized infrastructure and distributed innovation networks.

The coming months will likely reveal whether Microsoft and Meta's massive infrastructure investments were prescient or excessive. Meanwhile, regional hubs and public-private partnerships may offer a more sustainable path forward, combining targeted infrastructure development with practical innovation and workforce development.

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