AI news and funding updates from the last 24 hours(2nd April 2025):

✅ Google DeepMind

- AGI Safety Research:

Google DeepMind has released a paper that outlines its safety approach to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The research discusses potential risks associated with recursive AI improvement and proposes mitigation techniques, sparking debate about the realistic timeline and challenges of achieving AGI.

✅ Cognizant

- Leadership Appointment & Strategy:

Sailaja Josyula has been named Global Head of Cognizant's Global Capability Center Service Line in Hyderabad. She will lead the worldwide GCC strategy, leveraging her extensive leadership experience—including her prior role heading Cognizant’s Hyderabad operations.

- Training Initiative:

Cognizant is set to build a Chennai-based learning center that will annually train 100,000 individuals in AI.

✅ Microsoft

- Cybersecurity Enhancement:

Microsoft Security Copilot, an AI-powered tool, has identified vulnerabilities in open-source bootloaders such as GRUB2, U-Boot, and Barebox. The tool expedited vulnerability detection, prompting the release of patches to address potential security risks.

✅ Meta

- Executive Departure:

Joelle Pineau, Meta's VP of AI Research, has announced her resignation. Having led Meta’s FAIR research lab and overseen major open-source initiatives like PyTorch and Llama, Pineau’s departure marks a significant transition as Meta ramps up its AI investments and restructures its AI research efforts.

✅ RRP Electronics

- Semiconductor Exports:

Mumbai-based RRP Electronics became the first Indian company to export packaged semiconductors under the government's Semiconductor Mission. Their initial export focused on ASICs, supporting the “Make in India” initiative, while the company continues to expand through strategic partnerships and new ventures.

✅ Emergence AI

- Platform Upgrade:

Emergence AI has enhanced its platform to enable the autonomous creation and assembly of AI agents. The upgraded system features an “orchestrator” that automates coding, planning, and management of AI agents, reducing human intervention while allowing oversight.

✅ OpenAI

- Educational Expansion:

OpenAI has broadened its Academy by launching a free online resource hub. This initiative provides tutorials, courses, and events designed to boost AI literacy for educators, students, and business owners globally.

- Copyright Allegations:

A new paper from the AI Disclosures Project alleges that OpenAI’s GPT-4o model was trained using unlicensed, copyrighted books, raising questions about its data sourcing practices.

✅ Wikimedia Foundation

- Infrastructure Strain:

Wikimedia Foundation reports a 50% increase in multimedia bandwidth consumption since January. The surge is attributed to AI scrapers disproportionately accessing content, prompting efforts to block these automated crawlers to preserve resources for human users.

✅ Parasail

- GPU Access Platform:

Parasail, an AI startup, is launching a platform that provides on-demand GPU access. Aimed at challenging cloud giants like AWS and Azure, the service will offer high-performance GPUs (including Nvidia’s H100) at competitive prices to support the growing demand for AI infrastructure.

✅ Anthropic

- Education-Focused Chatbot:

Anthropic has introduced Claude for Education, a new tier of its AI chatbot tailored for higher education. This version includes features such as a “Learning Mode” and is designed to enhance critical thinking and streamline administrative processes, in direct competition with similar offerings from OpenAI.

✅ Actively AI

- Sales Intelligence Innovation:

Actively AI, a startup in the AI sales rep space, leverages advanced “reasoning” models to identify high-value sales prospects. Their custom solution, which integrates models from OpenAI and Anthropic, has already generated significant additional revenue for clients like Ramp, attracting strong investor support.

AI news and funding updates from the last 24 hours(1st April 2025):

✅ Amazon

- Nova Act SDK: Amazon released its Nova Act SDK powered by Nova foundation models, enabling developers to build AI agents that automate web browser tasks (e.g., searching, checkout). This positions Amazon to compete with offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic.

- Alexa+: The upgraded Alexa+ assistant has launched but is missing several key features (such as agentic tasks and visual person recognition), with some functionalities limited to a select group.

✅ HCLTech

- Semiconductor Partnership: HCLTech became a Design Solution Partner in Samsung’s Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE™), combining its engineering expertise with Samsung’s process technologies for ASIC design.

- Public Sector Solutions: HCLTech also introduced a new subsidiary—HCLTech Public Sector Solutions—to deliver AI-driven digital transformation for U.S. government agencies and related organizations.

✅ Infosys

- Responsible AI Initiative: Infosys partnered with Linux Foundation Networking (LFN) to promote Responsible AI adoption by contributing its Responsible AI Toolkit (built on the AI3S framework) to projects like Salus and Essedum.

✅ OpenAI

- Massive Funding & Expansion: OpenAI secured $40 billion in funding, reaching a post-money valuation of $300 billion, to enhance its infrastructure for ChatGPT’s 500 million weekly users.

- Open-Weight Model & Image Generation: The company is preparing its first open-weight language model since GPT-2 and recently released a new image generator powered by GPT-4o for all ChatGPT users—even as it faces capacity challenges (including temporary video generation disablement in the Sora AI tool and service slowdowns due to high demand).

- Content Misuse Concerns: ChatGPT’s new image generator, capable of generating realistic text within images, has raised concerns over the creation of convincing fake receipts, prompting discussions about creative freedom versus potential misuse.

✅ Agility Robotics

- Funding for Humanoid Robots: Agility Robotics is raising $400 million—valuing the company at $1.75 billion—to further develop its humanoid robot Digit for warehouse and industrial tasks, with deployments already seen at companies like Amazon and SPANX.

✅ Akamai

- Cloud Video Processing: Akamai launched Cloud Accelerated Compute Instances integrating NETINT Video Processing Units (VPUs) to deliver scalable, efficient, and cost-effective video streaming solutions in the cloud.

✅ Microsoft

- AI Startups & Innovation: Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott highlighted the creative potential of AI startups, noting that smaller companies (e.g., Cursor) can explore unique opportunities that large corporations might overlook.

✅ TCS

- Marathon Partnership: TCS became the official AI and technology partner for the Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris. Using innovations from its Paris-based PacePort hub, TCS will enhance race-day experiences with performance tracking and AI-powered coaching.

✅ Chef Robotics

- Robotic Meal Assembly: Chef Robotics secured $43.1 million in Series A funding to expand its AI-powered robotic meal assembly systems. Their technology—powered by ChefOS—has already produced over 44 million meals, supporting food automation at companies like Amy’s Kitchen and Sunbasket.

✅ Runway

- Gen-4 Video Generator: Runway debuted Gen-4, an advanced AI video generation model that offers superior fidelity, dynamic motion, and consistency in maintaining characters and scenes. Despite its innovative features, Runway faces a copyright lawsuit regarding its training data practices.

✅ Andhra Pradesh / Quantum Valley

- Quantum Computing Hub: The Andhra Pradesh government launched Quantum Valley in Amaravati, a project in collaboration with IIT Madras, IBM, and TCS, to create a world-class quantum computing hub and drive deep tech innovation aligned with India’s National Quantum Mission.

AI news and funding updates from the last 24 hours(30th March 2025):

CoreWeave's IPO debuted with a muted reception, pricing lower than anticipated at $40 and raising $1.5 billion, falling short of initial hopes. Despite this, the IPO marks the largest AI-related and biggest US tech listing since 2021, highlighting its significance in the current market. The company's journey began unexpectedly with crypto mining by former hedge fund managers who stumbled into AI infrastructure through open-source collaborations. From a pool table mining operation to a massive GPU fleet, CoreWeave's growth was propelled by chance encounters and partnerships, notably with EleutherAI and OpenAI. Now a major player with significant data centers and GPUs, CoreWeave faces substantial debt but expresses confidence in its customer contracts and the future of AI training.

In an all-stock transaction, Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has acquired his social media platform X, formerly Twitter. This merger values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, combining the strengths of both entities. The acquisition aims to integrate X's vast data, distribution network, and talent with xAI's AI models and computing power. Executives believe the combined entity will attract investment more easily, leveraging X's increased valuation and 600 million users. This move underscores the strategic importance of X's resources for advancing Musk's broader AI ambitions, particularly as xAI competes with industry leaders like OpenAI.

A new book excerpt reveals the OpenAI board fired Sam Altman over concerns about his behavior and conflicts of interest, including a personally owned Startup Fund. Co-founder Ilya Sutskever and CTO Mira Murati compiled evidence, like Slack screenshots, alleging Altman's dishonesty, citing an instance about GPT-4 Turbo's safety review. The board ousted Altman and appointed Murati as interim CEO, but faced immediate backlash from employees who demanded Altman's return. This employee revolt led to Altman's swift reinstatement as CEO. Subsequently, both Sutskever and Murati departed OpenAI to pursue their own entrepreneurial ventures.

Amazon has introduced "Interests," a new generative AI tool designed to personalize the shopping experience by suggesting products based on individual hobbies and preferences. This feature allows users to use conversational language to discover items like apparel for sports fans or equipment for hobbyists. Currently available to a limited group of US shoppers on the Amazon app and mobile website, "Interests" continuously works to filter products and offer tailored recommendations. Analysts suggest this tool is an evolution of existing recommendation systems rather than a groundbreaking innovation. This launch of "Interests" aligns with Amazon's broader push into AI and coincides with their Spring Sale event.

OpenAI's recent launch of a native image generator within ChatGPT has been met with immense popularity, so much so that CEO Sam Altman reported their GPUs are "melting" under the user load. This surge in demand has forced OpenAI to implement temporary rate limits, restricting free users to three image generations per day while they work on efficiency improvements. The article explains that GPUs, originally designed for graphics, are now essential for AI due to their parallel processing capabilities needed for complex computations. This high demand for powerful GPUs underscores their critical role as the "new oil rigs" for AI companies like OpenAI, who are investing heavily in them.

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AI news and funding updates from the last 24 hours(29th March 2025):

OpenAI has launched a new image generator in ChatGPT, boasting enhanced capabilities like Studio Ghibli style images. Simultaneously, the company significantly altered its content moderation policies, now permitting the generation of images depicting public figures, racial features, and even hateful symbols in certain contexts. This shift marks a move away from blanket refusals towards a more nuanced approach focused on preventing real-world harm and providing users with greater control. This policy evolution is part of a larger effort to "uncensor" ChatGPT, allowing it to handle a wider range of requests and reduce limitations on sensitive topics. These changes arrive amidst growing debates around AI content moderation and potential regulatory scrutiny, though OpenAI asserts its motivation is user empowerment and technological advancement, rather than political influence.

Elon Musk announced that his AI startup, xAI, has acquired his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) in an all-stock transaction. This acquisition values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, integrating the two companies' data, models, and resources. Musk emphasizes the intertwined future of xAI and X, highlighting the strategic combination of their assets to advance AI development. X's valuation, though volatile, has recently risen, and its vast data trove provides a crucial advantage for xAI in the competitive AI landscape. This move underscores Musk's ambition to leverage X as a key component in his broader AI endeavors, further blurring the lines between his various ventures.

Intel Capital, Intel's venture arm since 1991 and considered a pioneering corporate VC, is spinning out to become an independent firm. This transition, long discussed internally, aims to allow the VC to be more agile while leveraging its established track record and maintaining Intel as an anchor investor. The decision was influenced by Intel Capital's recent successful exits, like Astera Labs, amidst a challenging VC exit landscape, making it attractive to outside investors. Despite some leadership changes, the new firm, expected to launch in Q3 2025, will largely resemble Intel Capital, focusing on early-stage investments in AI, cloud, and related tech sectors. Currently, Intel Capital continues its operations as usual, actively investing and managing its portfolio in anticipation of the formal spin-out.

AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave commenced trading on Nasdaq, with its stock closing unchanged at $40 on its opening day, following an IPO priced at $40 per share which generated $1.5 billion. While experiencing a remarkable 737% surge in revenue to $1.9 billion, CoreWeave remains unprofitable, posting a considerable net loss of $863 million. Monitored as an indicator of the IPO market's rebound, the launch nonetheless highlights anxieties surrounding the rate of AI adoption and possible data center oversupply. Key investors in CoreWeave encompass Magnetar Capital, Fidelity, and Nvidia. Listed under the ticker CRWV, the IPO was spearheaded by JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.

Chennai-based SaaS startup Chargebee has acquired Trainn, an AI-powered customer training platform, for an undisclosed sum. This acquisition aims to enhance Chargebee's AI-driven customer training capabilities. Following the deal, Chargebee will become Trainn's first customer and will support Trainn's existing client base of 200 customers. Trainn's technology will be integrated into Chargebee's offerings to improve customer engagement. This acquisition follows Chargebee's recent purchase of AI payments management platform Inai, signaling a continued expansion strategy.

AI news and funding updates from the last 24 hours(28th March 2025):

✅ Accops & pi-labs

- News: The two companies have joined forces to fight deepfake-enabled identity fraud.

- Details: Their partnership combines facial authentication with AI-powered deepfake detection for real-time verification. This solution is aimed at protecting businesses, financial institutions, and government agencies by analyzing facial inputs to block synthetic identities in scenarios such as vKYC and virtual hiring.

✅ 2am VC

- News: The venture capital firm has launched its second fund to invest in 30 Indian startups.

- Details: With 60% earmarked for initial investments and the remainder for follow-on rounds, 2am VC is expanding its early-stage investment portfolio, building on their previous $10 million fund and investments in 47 companies.

✅ Yutori

- News: A new startup, Yutori, has been founded by ex-Meta AI executives to develop autonomous AI personal assistants.

- Details: The company secured $15 million in funding led by Radical Ventures, with its first product—an "AI chief-of-staff"—set for a closed beta launch this spring.

✅ Twin & Qonto

- News: AI startup Twin has partnered with fintech Qonto to introduce Invoice Operator, an automation tool.

- Details: This AI agent streamlines invoice retrieval for business customers by handling diverse website complexities with OpenAI’s CUA model, offering a user-friendly, minimal-technical-expertise solution.

✅ Other News

- India’s Indigenous AI Initiative:

- News: In response to concerns over the long-term accessibility of open-source AI models, India is spearheading the development of its own large language model under the IndiaAI mission.

- Details: With support from a significant government budget, this initiative leverages diverse national datasets and resources like AI Kosha and Compute Portal, aiming to ensure strategic autonomy in AI within ten months. The move also follows concerns raised by OpenAI’s shift towards closed-source models.

- AI Web-Crawling Bots & Developer Countermeasures:

- News: AI web-crawling bots are overwhelming websites, particularly in the open-source sector, prompting creative defenses by developers.

- Details: Solutions such as Anubis employ proof-of-work and other inventive tactics, including misleading bots with fake content, highlighting both the challenges posed by aggressive AI scraping and the community’s resilience in fighting back.

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AI news and funding updates from the last 24 hours(27th March 2025):

✅ Perplexity

- Growth & Revenue: The AI search engine startup has reached $100 million in annualized revenue within 20 months of launching its Pro plan, with a 6.3x year-over-year growth.

- Offerings & Funding: It offers free, Pro, and Enterprise plans (plus API access) and is reportedly in funding talks for an $18 billion valuation—double its previous round. Major backers include NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos.

- Product Update: Recently launched its in-house AI model Sonar, built on Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B, now available for Pro users.

✅ Together.ai

- Product Launch: Introduced Together Chat—a consumer-focused AI platform that integrates various open-source models (e.g., DeepSeek R1, Qwen Coder) for coding, research, and creative tasks.

- Funding: The launch follows a $305 million Series B funding round.

✅ IBM

- Collaboration: IBM is in discussions with the Indian government to explore partnerships in quantum computing, AI, and geospatial solutions, aligning with India’s National Quantum Mission to boost technological innovation.

✅ Deloitte

- Space Initiative: Launched the ‘Deloitte-1’ satellite in collaboration with SpaceX and Spire, as part of a broader space strategy that also includes the rollout of a Global AI Simulation Centre of Excellence.

✅ Anthropic

- Model Enhancements: Plans to release an upgraded Claude 3.7 Sonnet model with an expanded 500k token context window. It has also introduced Claude Code for agentic coding tasks and a web search feature for paid users.

- Partnership: Joined forces with Databricks in a five-year deal to integrate its Claude models into Databricks’ data intelligence platform.

✅ Alibaba

- Multimodal Upgrade: Rolled out voice and video chat features for Qwen Chat via its new open-source model, Qwen2.5-Omni-7B, which supports text, images, audio, and video processing in real time.

✅ DeepLearning.AI

- Educational Initiative: Launched a free short course, “Vibe Coding 101 with Replit,” designed to teach users how to build and deploy applications using AI coding tools, in line with its mission to provide accessible AI upskilling.

✅ OpenAI

- Revenue & Funding Projections: Expected to see dramatic revenue growth—from $12.7 billion this year to $29.4 billion next year—with a substantial $40 billion funding round (led by SoftBank) in the works.

- Product Innovations: Enhancing ChatGPT with native image generation features and integrating Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) to improve model connectivity to external data. Due to high demand, the new image generation feature is currently delayed for free users.

- Copyright Debates: Its AI image generation tool, popular for producing Studio Ghibli-style images, has sparked copyright discussions.

✅ EY India

- Industry-Specific LLM: Developed a fine-tuned large language model (LLM) built on Llama 3.1-8B tailored for the BFSI sector, aiming to enhance customer interactions, efficiency, and risk management, with claims of up to 50% cost savings.

✅ Databricks

- Strategic Partnership: Collaborating with Anthropic to integrate Claude AI models into its platform, which will empower over 10,000 businesses to build and deploy advanced AI agents for data processing and automation.

✅ Datagrid Solutions

- Expansion: The IT outsourcing firm is set to hire 100 new employees—including leadership roles and senior technical positions—to strengthen its service quality and industry standing.

✅ GetReal

- Funding & Focus: Secured $17.5 million to advance its forensics platform designed to detect AI-generated deepfakes in audio, video, and images. The startup, co-founded by deepfake detection expert Hany Farid, counts strategic investors like Forgepoint Capital, Cisco, and In-Q-Tel among its backers.

✅ Nvidia

- Acquisition Talks: In discussions to acquire Lepton AI—a startup that rents servers powered by Nvidia’s AI chips—in a deal valued at several hundred million dollars.

AI news and funding updates from the last 24 hours(26th March 2025):

Google

- Gemini 2.5 Launch: Google unveiled its latest AI model, Gemini 2.5, with enhanced reasoning for tasks like coding, math, and science. The Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental variant leads benchmarks and features a large context window (1 million tokens initially, expanding to 2 million soon).

- Future Integration: These advanced “thinking model” capabilities are set to be integrated into all future Google models, available via Google AI Studio and the Gemini app.

OpenAI

- Native Image Generation in GPT-4o: OpenAI has enabled native image creation directly in GPT-4o, allowing the generation and refinement of diverse images (e.g., infographics, comic strips) without external models.

- ChatGPT Upgrade: CEO Sam Altman announced major upgrades to ChatGPT’s image generation, surpassing previous capabilities (e.g., DALL-E 3), with improved accuracy and detail. These enhancements are initially available to Pro users, with broader access coming soon.

Figure AI

- Humanoid Robot – Figure 02: Figure AI introduced its new humanoid robot, Figure 02, which achieves human-like walking through reinforcement learning. This approach enables natural gait features and scalability for industrial and domestic applications.

Cloudflare

- Enhancing AI Protocols: Cloudflare is boosting its Model Context Protocol (MCP) by enabling the creation and deployment of remote MCP servers. This initiative—likened to “HTTP for AI”—simplifies AI application development and broadens access to advanced AI agents.

Cerebras Systems

- IPO Delays: Cerebras Systems’ planned IPO has been delayed further due to a national security review. The review was triggered by a $335 million investment from Abu Dhabi-based G42, with staffing vacancies at key government positions contributing to the slowdown.

Poe (Quora’s Chatbot App)

- New Subscription Tiers: Poe has rolled out new subscription plans—a $5 monthly plan and a $250 high-volume plan—offering users access to various AI models (including GPT-4o and Claude 3.7 Sonnet) via a points system. The app remains available across multiple platforms, with a limited free version still offered.

Earth AI

- Critical Mineral Discovery: Using advanced AI algorithms to analyze historical mining data, Earth AI has discovered promising deposits of critical minerals (e.g., copper, cobalt, and gold) in Australia. The startup has also developed its own drilling equipment to validate these predictions, aiming to accelerate mineral discovery.

Microsoft

- Deep Research in 365 Copilot: Microsoft is integrating “deep research” capabilities into its Microsoft 365 Copilot. Two new tools—Researcher and Analyst—are designed to enhance strategic analysis and data processing (including Python execution) by leveraging both web and internal work data.

BMW & Alibaba

- Automotive AI Partnership: BMW and Alibaba are expanding their collaboration to integrate Alibaba’s Qwen large language model into BMW’s Neue Klasse vehicles in China. This partnership aims to enhance in-car experiences with AI agents like Car Genius and Travel Companion for improved voice recognition and personalized services.

Deloitte India & Zoho

- Digital Transformation Alliance: Deloitte India and Zoho have joined forces to accelerate digital transformation for Indian mid-market and enterprise companies. Their collaboration focuses on customized cloud solutions across sectors such as healthcare and e-commerce, leveraging Zoho’s extensive suite of interconnected applications and Deloitte’s industry expertise.

NVIDIA

- Project G-Assist: NVIDIA has introduced an experimental AI system assistant—Project G-Assist—for GeForce RTX desktop users. This locally run assistant helps optimize game settings, system performance, and peripheral management using voice or text commands, making complex PC settings more accessible.