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By Stephanie Palazzolo

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Recent Editions

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Disney-OpenAI; AI Startup Valuations Keep Falling as Revenue Rises

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 11, 2025 8:34am PST

Before we get to today’s column, we have to mention Disney and OpenAI’s big partnership announcement this morning. As part of a new three-year licensing agreement, OpenAI’s video app Sora and ChatGPT will be able to generate image and video content that includes characters such as Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Mickey Mouse and Iron Man from... Before we get to today’s column, we have to mention Disney and OpenAI’s big partnership...

Baseten cofounder and CTO Amir Haghighat and Parsed cofounders Mudith Jayasekara and Charles O'Neill. Photo courtesy of Parsed.

Inference Provider Baseten Acquires Reinforcement Learning Startup Parsed

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 10, 2025 7:00am PST

AI firms are getting more interested in AI that continues to learn even after it’s been trained, otherwise known as continual learning, as we discussed in this recap from last week's NeurIPS conference. As an example, some small companies have used special techniques like finetuning and reinforcement learning to teach cheaper open-source models... AI firms are getting more interested in AI that continues to learn even after it’s been trained,...

Sam Altman, left, and Sundar Pichai. Photos by Getty Images

ChatGPT Nears 900 Million Weekly Active Users But Gemini is Catching Up

By Sri Muppidi · Dec 9, 2025 7:00am PST

The competition between AI chatbots has been heating up, with Google’s Gemini nipping at OpenAI’s heels. On Monday, I wrote about how Gemini’s share of weekly mobile app downloads increased in late November following the release of Gemini 3, according to data from research firm Sensor Tower, which says it tracks 5 million consumers... The competition between AI chatbots has been heating up, with Google’s Gemini nipping at OpenAI’s...

Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere. Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Cohere CEO Says His Gross Profit Margins Are Great; Takeaways From NeurIPS

By Aaron Holmes and Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 8, 2025 7:00am PST

Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere. Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Cohere CEO Says His Gross Profit Margins Are Great; Takeaways From NeurIPS

By Aaron Holmes and Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 8, 2025 7:00am PST

Before we get to today’s column, check out this story about last week’s Neural Information Processing Systems conference, where a number of researchers cast doubt on some of today’s most popular techniques for improving AI. Some researchers, including at OpenAI, have ideas for new techniques that could produce better results.Other researchers... Before we get to today’s column, check out this story about last week’s Neural Information...

CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Anthropic’s CEO Says He Doesn’t Do ‘Code Reds’

By Rocket Drew · Dec 4, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Wednesday threw shade at archrival OpenAI, saying at The New York Times Dealbook Summit that “we don’t have to do any code reds.” It was a reference to our report Monday that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman initiated a “code red,” shifting staff to improve ChatGPT and image generation in response to Google’s success with its... Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Wednesday threw shade at archrival OpenAI, saying at The New York...

Art by Mike Sullivan

AI’s ‘Split-Brain’ Problem

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 3, 2025 7:00am PST

Developing new artificial intelligence models can sometimes seem like a game of whack-a-mole: fixing a model’s bad answers to certain questions can cause the model to give bad answers to other questions.One version of this problem, according to researchers at OpenAI and elsewhere, is known as a split-brain problem, in which changes to how a... Developing new artificial intelligence models can sometimes seem like a game of whack-a-mole:...

Photo by Getty Images; Art by Mike Sullivan

OpenAI Developing ‘Garlic’ Model to Counter Google’s Recent Gains

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 2, 2025 7:00am PST · 2 comments

OpenAI, which in recent weeks has appeared to fall behind Google in AI development, is fighting back with a new large language model codenamed Garlic.Last week, OpenAI’s chief research officer Mark Chen told some colleagues about the new model, which was performing well on the company’s evaluations, at least when compared to Gemini 3 and ... OpenAI, which in recent weeks has appeared to fall behind Google in AI development, is fighting...

Ilya Sutskever and Dwarkesh Patel. Screenshot via YouTube

OpenAI Co-Founder Sutskever Joins the Skeptics

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 1, 2025 7:00am PST · 3 comments

Ilya Sutskever and Dwarkesh Patel. Screenshot via YouTube

OpenAI Co-Founder Sutskever Joins the Skeptics

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 1, 2025 7:00am PST · 3 comments

As Sri and I head to San Diego for the annual Neural Information Processing Systems conference this week (get in touch if you’ll also be there!), we’re excited to learn more about reinforcement learning, the model training technique du jour at all the major AI developers.There’s rising skepticism among researchers, including OpenAI co-founder ... As Sri and I head to San Diego for the annual Neural Information Processing Systems conference...

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

What Trump's AI Manhattan Project Means for the AI Industry

By Rocket Drew · Nov 26, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment

On Monday, the President signed an executive order laying out his vision for a “Manhattan Project” for AI. The plan calls for the national labs—the Department of Energy-funded research centers—to work together with AI companies to train AI models based on government science data. For instance, it tasks the Secretary of Energy with assessing the... On Monday, the President signed an executive order laying out his vision for a “Manhattan Project...

Art by Getty Images/Mike Sullivan

Revenue From AI Coding Tools Surpasses $3.1 Billion

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 25, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment

There’s been a lot of talk that AI tools have yet to prove their worth. But if revenue is anything to go by, there's one area where AI tools have undoubtedly provided real returns: software engineering.The collective revenue generated from AI coding tools like Anysphere’s Cursor and Anthropic’s Claude Code has surpassed $3.1 billion. This... There’s been a lot of talk that AI tools have yet to prove their worth. But if revenue is...

Art by Getty Images/Mike Sullivan

Why OpenAI Should Worry About Google’s Pretraining Prowess

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 24, 2025 7:00am PST · 4 comments

Google’s breakthrough with Gemini 3, its latest AI model, has lit a fire under OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, who told thousands of his researchers to buckle down and prepare for “rough vibes” and “temporary economic headwinds,” Erin and I reported.What might particularly worry Altman about Google’s latest model is how the tech company got... Google’s breakthrough with Gemini 3, its latest AI model, has lit a fire under OpenAI and its CEO...

President Donald Trump, left, and White House AI "czar" David Sacks. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.

What’s Next for State AI Laws After Trump Order

By Rocket Drew · Nov 20, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment

President Donald Trump, left, and White House AI "czar" David Sacks. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.

What’s Next for State AI Laws After Trump Order

By Rocket Drew · Nov 20, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment

The White House plans an executive order to block states from passing laws regulating AI, as we reported Wednesday. Instead of state laws, the order suggests there should be a federal law governing the information that AI companies have to disclose and how they handle potential bias in models. Specifically, it directs White House AI “czar”... The White House plans an executive order to block states from passing laws regulating AI, as we...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Google Unseats Anthropic With Gemini 3

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 19, 2025 7:04am PST

Before we get to Gemini 3, we want to highlight this morning’s news that former Harvard University President Larry Summers has resigned from OpenAI’s board of directors following a congressional committee’s release of emails showing a personal correspondence between him and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Summers had been on the board of... Before we get to Gemini 3, we want to highlight this morning’s news that former Harvard...

OpenHands cofounders Graham Neubig, Robert Brennan and Xingyao Wang. Photo courtesy of OpenHands.

Gemini 3 Arrives; Open-Source Coding Agent Raises $19 Million

By Erin Woo · Nov 18, 2025 8:00am PST

Before we get to today’s news about Gemini, we should mention that this morning, Microsoft and Nvidia announced that they’re investing in Anthropic, who will be spending at least $30 billion over an unspecified amount of time to rent servers from Microsoft’s Azure cloud equipped with Nvidia chips.... Before we get to today’s news about Gemini, we should mention that this morning, ...

Photo from Getty Images

A Coding Assistant’s Bet on Ads Seems to Be Paying Off

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 17, 2025 7:00am PST

Before we get to today’s column, it’s worth pointing out that Google CEO Sundar Pichai strongly hinted on X that Gemini 3, the long-awaited next update to Google’s line of Gemini models, would be coming out this week. Google has done an impressive job of catching up to the other labs when it comes to conversational AI models, and Gemini 3 will... Before we get to today’s column, it’s worth pointing out that Google CEO Sundar Pichai strongly...

Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang. Photo by Getty Images

Why Nvidia Keeps Backing Would-Be Competitors to OpenAI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 13, 2025 7:36am PST

Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang. Photo by Getty Images

Why Nvidia Keeps Backing Would-Be Competitors to OpenAI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 13, 2025 7:36am PST

As we wrote in this story on Tuesday, investors are rushing to back a new crop of research-focused AI labs (dubbed neolabs) hoping to outflank OpenAI and Anthropic. One investor, in particular, is driving most of these new startups: Nvidia.In Reflection AI’s October fundraising, for instance, Nvidia contributed $800 million out of the $2 billion... As we wrote in this story on Tuesday, investors are rushing to back a new crop of...

Art by Getty Images

Robotics Data Startup Raises $40 Million Led By Bessemer

By Rocket Drew · Nov 12, 2025 8:12am PST

Before we get to today’s column, Steph and Sri broke news Tuesday night about a flurry of investments VCs are making in so-called “neolabs,” or new labs hoping to exploit approaches to developing AI models and research they say major developers like OpenAI and Anthropic may have overlooked.These include companies like agent startup Isara, which... Before we get to today’s column, Steph and Sri broke news Tuesday night about a flurry of...

Art by Mike Sullivan

The Little-Known Search and Browser Startup Generating $100 Million in Annualized Revenue

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 11, 2025 7:00am PST

Consumer-focused AI developers such as OpenAI and Perplexity are jockeying for a share of the browser market, now dominated by Google’s Chrome. But before they have a chance of dethroning Chrome, they first have to surpass Brave.Brave has been around for a decade and passed $100 million in annualized revenue in the first quarter of this year,... Consumer-focused AI developers such as OpenAI and Perplexity are jockeying for a share of the...

Art by Mike Sullivan

China’s Open-Source Models Challenge Anthropic in AI Coding

By Juro Osawa · Nov 10, 2025 7:00am PST

Chinese companies are launching open-source AI models built to power coding assistants as cheaper alternatives to those available from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Late last month, Shanghai-based AI startup MiniMax launched M2, a new open-source large language model developed primarily for coding and AI agents. In a post on X, MiniMax... Chinese companies are launching open-source AI models built to power coding assistants as cheaper...

Ion Stoica. YouTube/Opaque Systems

Why OpenAI CFO Said Uncle Sam Should Backstop Chip Financing; Databricks Co-Founder Responds to Benchmark Critics

By Rocket Drew and Amir Efrati · Nov 6, 2025 7:00am PST

Ion Stoica. YouTube/Opaque Systems

Why OpenAI CFO Said Uncle Sam Should Backstop Chip Financing; Databricks Co-Founder Responds to Benchmark Critics

By Rocket Drew and Amir Efrati · Nov 6, 2025 7:00am PST

It’s not every day one of the world’s most valuable companies asks the U.S. government for assistance, but these aren’t ordinary days. On Wednesday, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar suggested at a Wall Street Journal event that the federal government ought to guarantee the financing of AI chips. Come again?“We’re looking for an ecosystem of banks,... It’s not every day one of the world’s most valuable companies asks the U.S. government for...