AI Pulse ๐จ
A bite-sized curation of this week's most important AI news.
๐ OpenAI secures historic $40B funding round at a $300B valuation, marking the largest private funding in AI history. The deal with SoftBank includes conditions requiring OpenAI to complete its for-profit transition by year-end.
๐ OpenAI plans to launch first open-source model since 2019. The company plans to release an โopen-weightโ language model in coming months, allowing developers to run it on their own hardware.
๐ฐ Manus AI, the Chinese AI Agent Platform that went viral, launched paid subscription plans starting at $39/month for 3,900 credits, with a premium tier at $199/month offering 19,900 credits and priority access.
๐ Anthropic launches Claude for Education, a specialized AI tool for universities with new Learning mode.
๐ฌ Runway releases Gen-4, their next-generation video model with improved motion consistency, character persistence, and cinematic-quality scene creation at 1080p resolution.
๐ Amazon launches Nova Act SDK, an AI agent designed to perform actions within web browsers with 90%+ accuracy, outperforming OpenAIโs Operator and Anthropicโs Computer Use in benchmarks.
๐ Windsurf releases Wave 6 with one-click app deployment capabilities, improved conversation performance, and new enterprise features. Updates include commit message generation, conversation table of contents, and enhanced Tab functionality for Jupyter notebooks.
๐งช GPT-4.5 passes Turing test in new research, being judged as human 73% of the time - surpassing actual human participants in conversation tests.
๐ฃ๏ธ ElevenLabs introduces Actor Mode in their AI Studio, allowing users to control AI-generated speech with their own voice, including custom pacing and emphasis.
๐ OpenAI launches Academy, a free AI learning platform offering courses from beginner lessons to advanced topics like AI safety and governance. Includes hands-on training in prompt engineering, multimodal AI, and fine-tuning.
๐ฅ Apple developing AI health agent for its Health app ecosystem that can provide personalized recommendations based on sleep patterns, eating habits, and heart health.
๐ Alibaba head warns of AI data center bubble due to massive investments without clear demand. Despite $52 billion committed to AI development, concerns are rising about over investment in the sector.
โ