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4 min read

Week 41, 2024

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Highlights

1
OpenAI secures record-breaking $6.6 billion investment

  • Valuation soars to $157 billion.
  • Now 3rd largest private company globally, behind ByteDance and SpaceX
  • Secured additional $4 billion credit line.
  • Total liquidity reaches $10 billion.

Deal terms:

  • OpenAI must convert to for-profit within 2 years.
  • Investors barred from backing/collaborating with competitors (xAI, SSI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Glean).

2
OpenAI opens first New York office amid rapid expansion

  • Employee count surges from 770 to 1,700 in a year.
  • Company recently leased entire 6-floor building in San Francisco.
  • New York office opened in Soho's Puck Building.
  • Building owned by Trump's in-laws.
  • Shared location with Thrive Capital, lead investor in recent funding.
  • Thrive Capital founder is Trump's son-in-law's brother.

3
Investors flock to ex-OpenAI exec Murati

  • Murati's potential new venture attracts significant investor interest
  • Former OpenAI employees have history of successful startups
  • Ilya Sutskever raised $1 billion in seed funding after May departure
  • Anthropic and Perplexity also founded by OpenAI alumni

Speculations continue over why she left:

  • The Information reported internal issues at OpenAI.
  • Altman accused of dishonesty and fostering conflict.
  • Safety testing allegedly rushed for faster product launches.

4
Nvidia's Jensen Huang: "Blackwell demand is insane"

  • Huang's confidence dispels market concerns.
  • "Everybody wants to have the most, and everybody wants to be first," says Huang.
  • Stock rally pushes market cap back over $3 trillion.

Production issues resolved:

  • JPMorgan: "Remains on track to ship its next-generation Blackwell GPU platform in high volume production in 4Q."
  • Huang: "Everything is on track."

5
Nvidia releases powerful open-source LMM

  • Unveiled NVLM-D-72B with 72 billion parameters.
  • Nvidia's foray into frontier model development draws industry attention.
  • Experts praise high benchmark scores.
  • Performance on par with OpenAI and Google's closed models.
  • Nvidia promises to release model weights and training code.

6
Google introduces ads in 'AI Overview'

Move comes as Google's search ad market dominance weakens:

  • U.S. market share at risk of falling below 50%.
  • Amazon emerges as strong competitor in search advertising.
  • TikTok and Perplexity also expanding ad offerings.

7
Google launches voice search for video content

  • Google Lens update enables AI-powered video content search.
  • Users can ask questions about recorded videos using voice commands.
  • AI recognizes content and provides relevant search results.
  • Feature not yet available in OpenAI's GPT-4o.

8
Meta unveils 'Movie Gen' AI video generator

  • Creates realistic videos up to 16 seconds long with synchronized audio.
  • Allows partial editing and lets users animate photos into videos.
  • Will be integrated into Instagram in 2025. no separate launch planned.
  • Competes with OpenAI's 'Sora' and Google's 'Veo'.

In the meanwhile:

  • OpenAI's Sora lead Tim Brooks moves to Google DeepMind.
  • Brooks to focus on "world model" research.

9
Microsoft pulls the plug on AR hardware

  • HoloLens 2 production halted.
  • HoloLens 3 development abandoned long ago.
  • Numerous AR division employees laid off earlier this year.
  • Despite good performance, enterprise demand lacking.
  • Meta expected to dominate with 'Orion' headset.

10
Musk joins Trump rally in Pennsylvania

  • Musk jumps onstage with arms raised, wearing a black MAGA cap.
  • "I'm not just MAGA — I'm dark MAGA," Musk declared.
  • Calls election a "must-win situation" for Trump.
  • WSJ reports Musk secretly donated millions to GOP causes earlier than known.

Other


AI
  • OpenAI debuts 'Canvas' for ChatGPT collaboration.
  • Microsoft's Copilot gains voice and vision capabilities.
  • Microsoft launches 'Bing Generative Search' beta.
  • Microsoft's data center costs soar to $108.4 billion.
  • Apple Intelligence set for initial release on 28th.
Chips
  • AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO.
  • Google considers nuclear power for data centers.
  • ByteDance developing new AI model with Huawei chips.
Device/Hardware
  • Apple to launch iPhone SE 4 with Apple Intelligence.
  • Apple abandons smart ring project, focuses on Watch.
  • Apple opens four new stores in India.
  • Apple's Q3 results due on Halloween.
Content/Entertainment
  • Netflix cancellations spiked after Reed Hastings endorsed Kamala Harris.
  • Tencent explores potential Ubisoft acquisition.
Social Media
  • X loses 80% of its value since Trump acquisition.
Commerce
  • Amazon shuts down three more 'Amazon Go' locations.
EV/Autonomous Vehicles
  • Tesla wins dismissal of 'misleading autopilot ads' lawsuit.
  • Tesla loses key execs ahead of robotaxi unveiling.
  • Tesla halts US sales of 'Model 3' due to tariffs.
  • Waymo selects Hyundai's Ioniq 5 for robotaxi fleet.
  • Toyota invests additional $500 million in Joby.
Space
  • SpaceX forced to cancel another Falcon 9 rocket launch.
Policy/Regulation
  • Apple sued by National Labor Relations Board over employee agreements.
  • Nvidia under scrutiny for potentially concealing crypto mining revenues.
Etc
  • Amazon to lay off 14,000 managers by early next year.
  • Mark Zuckerberg becomes world's second-richest person, overtaking Bezos.

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