Your weekly briefing on all things AI

AI is reshaping traditional notions of expertise, requiring businesses to redefine core competencies and realign operations. OpenAI has streamlined focus to developing AI intelligence and Elon Musk's x.AI is expanding to that arena. With tools like automated user interface design, design agencies may need to reimagine their core set of services. This will continue to happen in more and more industries. The key question for companies to explore is: what does your core value proposition look like in an AI-powered world?

Let’s dive in:

📰Open AI opened a new position for a Research Robotics Engineer.

📈 Musk's xAI secures $6 Billion to prepare a gigafactory of computing power. 

💡 Sightful's Spacetop G1: the first screenless laptop is here.

 🛠️ Web/App development workflows supercharged with AI.

📰 AI in the News

OpenAI Refocuses on Robotics, But In A Way It Knows Best

OpenAI is revitalizing its robotics division with a strategic pivot: instead of building robots, they are now developing AI models to power robots for other companies (let’s not forget the millions OpenAI has invested in Figure AI, 1X Technologies, and Physical Intelligence). The job description mentions “training multimodal robotics models to unlock new capabilities for our partners’ robots, researching and developing improvements to our core models, exploring new model architectures, collecting robotics data, and conducting evaluations.” 

This move marks a significant shift from their previous focus on proprietary robotics to a collaborative approach, offering advanced AI “brains” to industry partners that can focus on the necessary hardware or “braun” so-to-speak. This development not only underscores OpenAI's adaptive strategy in the dynamic tech landscape but also promises to catalyze advancements in AI-powered robotics. (Full Story)

EthonAI Continues to Prove Value of AI in Manufacturing

As factories and manufacturing facilities have become smarter with sensors, robotics, and connected technologies, a wealth of data is being generated, offering potential insights into bottlenecks and process improvements. However, much of this data is unstructured and difficult to harness. Unlike the finance and logistics sectors, big data analytics has not fully penetrated manufacturing, leaving an untapped reservoir of insights and a growing market for technologies to capture and analyze this data. Recently, U.K.-founded Oden Technologies raised $28.5 million for its manufacturing data analytics platform, Germany’s Daedalus secured $21 million for AI in precision manufacturing, and Belgium’s Robovision garnered $42 million for computer vision in industrial machinery. Now, Swiss startup EthonAI has raised CHF 15 million ($16.5 million) in a Series A round led by Index Ventures, with participation from General Catalyst, Earlybird, and Founderful. These advancements create major opportunities for increased productivity and competitive advantage. (Link)

More Stories

• A former OpenAI board member explains why they fired Sam Altman. (Link)

• Elon Musk is feuding with ‘AI Godfather’ Yann LeCun. (Link)

• Nvidia is now worth more than Amazon and Tesla combined. (Link)

• Top VC Kai-Fu Lee says his prediction that AI will displace 50% of jobs by 2027 is ‘uncannily accurate’. (Link)

• Peter Thiel says AI is bad news for people with math skills, not writers. (Link)

• Anthropic hires a former OpenAI safety lead to head up a new team. (Link)

• PwC strikes a deal with OpenAI to become the first reseller of ChatGPT Enterprise. (Link)

• OpenAI begins training a new frontier model, but GPT-5 won’t be available for at least 90 days. (Link)

• China commits $47B to boost semiconductor sovereignty. (Link)

• The future of financial analysis: How GPT-4 is disrupting the industry, according to new research. (Link)

• GitHub Accelerator fuels the open-source AI revolution, empowering startups to democratize access. (LInk)

📈 Venture Deals 

Next-Gen AI on the Horizon: xAI Secures $6 Billion, Prepares "Gigafactory" Supercomputer

Elon Musk's year-old AI firm, xAI, just secured a hefty $6 billion funding round from tech giants like Andreessen Horowitz. This cash injection fuels xAI's race against established players like OpenAI (co-founded by Musk himself) as they aim to develop their first AI products, build cutting-edge infrastructure, and achieve the ambitious goal of "truthful" AI. (Link)

To power this ambitious agenda, Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, is building an AI supercomputer dubbed the "Gigafactory of Compute" to revolutionize its chatbot, Grok. This machine, targeted for completion by fall 2025, will boast a staggering 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. With this powerhouse under development, xAI is poised to become a major player in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence, aiming to rival industry leaders like OpenAI and Google. (Link)

More Venture Deals

• Sword Health Raises $130M (Now a $3B Valuation) for Virtual Physical Therapy (Link)

• Storyblok Raises $80M to Add AI to Their Headless CMS Platform (Link)

• GetWhy Raises $34.5M for Interview Based Market Research (Link)

• Maven AGI Secures $28M to Propel Generative AI in Customer Support (Link)

• Neural Concept Raises $27M to Significantly Cut Down EV Design Time (Link)

• Play AI Raises $4.3M for AI-Driven Hyper-Personalized Gaming (Link)

• Exactly AI Secures $4M to Help Artists Scale & Retain Legal Ownership of Their Work (Link)

• Zendata Attracts $2M to Innovate AI Governance & Data Privacy with No-Code Solutions (Link)

💡 Industry Impacts

🤖 Tech

The World's First AR Laptop Beams a 100-Inch Workspace: Tech startup Sightful has introduced Spacetop G1, the world's first screenless laptop designed for the age of spatial computing. Instead of a traditional display, Spacetop G1 projects a massive 100-inch virtual workspace through AR glasses, offering a lighter and more portable experience. Boasting an 8-hour battery life and a significant 70% performance leap over prior models, the Spacetop G1 promises to usher in a new era of mobile computing. (Link)

🏠Real Estate

Deeper AI opportunities in Real Estate: The market for AI in real estate is estimated to reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35% over the next five years, crossing $1,335 billion by 2029. What’s fueling these predictions? Forbes digs into some great use cases! Applications include marketing content generation, property tours, deal-closing analysis, and customer support. Property managers are employing AI for tenant screening, management, maintenance, and security. (Link)

🔐Cybersecurity

Hugging Face recently detected unauthorized access to its AI model hosting platform, Spaces. The intrusion potentially exposed private information, known as Spaces secrets, which are used to unlock protected resources. In response, Hugging Face has revoked affected tokens and advised all users to refresh their keys. This breach adds to existing concerns over the platform's security, following earlier vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to execute code and install malware. Hugging Face is collaborating with cybersecurity experts to investigate the issue and has reported the incident to relevant authorities. (Link)

🛠️ Tool of the Week

Forget Months of Iterations: Design in Seconds with Figma & AI

Tired of lengthy UI design cycles?  A revolutionary future awaits. Simply upload your product requirements document (PRD) to Figma, now powered by GPT-4o AI. In seconds, the software analyzes your vision and generates user interfaces (UIs) that perfectly align with your concept. This isn't just a time-saving tool; it's a game-changer for designers. (Link)

More Tools: Build website mockups with a single prompt

Struggling to translate your dream website into reality? Stop wrestling with code! Simply provide a single prompt describing your dream website and these innovative tools will take care of the rest. Watch your ideal website come to life in no time!

Tools To Try:

• Dorik AI

• Dora

• Pineapple Builder

• Durable

• Startkit