AI Agenda by Stephanie Palazzolo — The Information

Four times/week (subscribers only)

AI Agenda

By Stephanie Palazzolo

Stay ahead of the technological breakthroughs, startups and leaders in AI with a 14-day free trial of the AI Agenda. After your trial, unlock 25% off on a subscription to The Information for full access to the newsletter, plus all of our original reporting on AI.

By providing your email, you agree to The Information’s Privacy Policy

Recent Editions

Photo via Getty.

Why OpenAI is Taking So Long to Launch Agents

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jan 7, 2025 7:00am PST

Imagine you’re asking a computer-using agent from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google to find and order a new outfit for your upcoming holiday party, and in the process, that model inadvertently ends up on a malicious website that instructs it to forget its prior instructions, log into your email and steal your credit card information.That’s a very real... Imagine you’re asking a computer-using agent from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google to find and order a...

Art by Clark Miller.

How Much Should Consumers Pay For AI?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jan 6, 2025 7:00am PST

If the last month of AI product updates has demonstrated anything, it’s that AI firms are diverging meaningfully in their pricing strategies.On one hand, we have companies like Google, whose new “Flash” model drew droves of price-sensitive developers looking for an uber-cheap yet still high-quality alternative. And on the other hand, we have ... If the last month of AI product updates has demonstrated anything, it’s that AI firms are...

Left to right: Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Sam Altman. Photos via Getty.

How Artificial Intelligence Will Change in 2025

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jan 2, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment

Welcome to the first AI Agenda issue of 2025! We’re expecting a lot in AI this year, given an impressive reasoning model from OpenAI, a new administration and likely lots more multi-billion-dollar funding rounds on the way. Welcome to the first AI Agenda issue of 2025! We’re expecting a lot in AI this year, given an ...

Photos via Getty and Shutterstock

The Top AI Moments of 2024 and What We’re Watching For Next Year

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 31, 2024 7:00am PST

Photos via Getty and Shutterstock

The Top AI Moments of 2024 and What We’re Watching For Next Year

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 31, 2024 7:00am PST

What a year! 2024 toned down some of the AI hype from the previous year, as buyers of AI software began asking when they’d start seeing returns from their purchases. Meanwhile, several well-funded AI developers like Inflection, Adept and Character.AI scrambled to safety in the arms of larger tech giants. Still, there was plenty to be excited... What a year! 2024 toned down some of the AI hype from the previous year, as buyers of AI software...

Photo via Getty

DeepSeek Shows Necessity Is The Mother of Invention

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 30, 2024 7:18am PST · 7 comments

While the rest of us were recovering from heavy Christmas dinners and too much time with relatives, Chinese quant trading firm High-Flyer Capital Management dropped the latest update on Thursday to DeepSeek, its open-weight large language model. Senior researchers at American firms including OpenAI and Meta Platforms almost immediately started... While the rest of us were recovering from heavy Christmas dinners and too much time with...

Art by Clark Miller.

Microsoft and OpenAI’s Secret AGI Definition

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 26, 2024 7:15am PST

Finally, a verifiable, numbers-based description of artificial general intelligence has arrived!Whether AGI has or hasn’t been “achieved” by AI developers has been a hotly debated topic due to its fuzzy and subjective definition. OpenAI has publicly described AGI as automated systems that outperform people at “most economically valuable... Finally, a verifiable, numbers-based description of artificial general intelligence has arrived!...

Art by Mike Sullivan

OpenAI Has Discussed Making a Humanoid Robot

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Amir Efrati · Dec 24, 2024 8:31am PST

Over the past year, OpenAI has dropped not-so-subtle hints about its revived interest in robotics: investing in startups developing hardware and software for robots such as Figure and Physical Intelligence and rebooting its internal robotics software team, which it had disbanded four years ago.Now, OpenAI could be taking that interest to the... Over the past year, OpenAI has dropped not-so-subtle hints about its revived interest in...

Sam Altman. Photo by Getty

OpenAI Wows the Crowd as New Scaling Law Passes Its First Test

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 23, 2024 7:00am PST · 3 comments

Sam Altman. Photo by Getty

OpenAI Wows the Crowd as New Scaling Law Passes Its First Test

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 23, 2024 7:00am PST · 3 comments

OpenAI’s next-generation reasoning model—called o3 for a funny reason—seriously impressed researchers and developers last week.Specifically, o3 and o3-mini (a smaller version of the model) scored impressively on a number of extremely difficult math and coding benchmarks, beating out competitors like Anthropic and Google by a lot. It also reached... OpenAI’s next-generation reasoning model—called o3 for a funny reason—seriously impressed...

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic. Photo by Getty

How Will Anthropic Navigate a Trump Presidency?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 19, 2024 7:22am PST · 1 comment

Lately, AI developer Anthropic has been riding high, with its models’ impressive performance on tasks like code generation helping it to poach customers from its larger rival, OpenAI. What many people haven’t realized, though, is how Anthropic might be disadvantaged in the upcoming Trump era.Anthropic has connections to the effective altruism... Lately, AI developer Anthropic has been riding high, with its models’ impressive performance on...

Courtesy of EQTY LAB.

Meet the Startup Making GPUs More Secure for AI

By Anissa Gardizy · Dec 18, 2024 7:37am PST

When I ask business executives about their use of cloud providers’ generative AI tools, I’m often reminded that many firms don’t yet process sensitive data in cloud servers because they’re concerned about the security of the data. Cloud providers have long used encryption to protect data when it’s stored or moving from one location to the next.... When I ask business executives about their use of cloud providers’ generative AI tools, I’m often...

Via Talkie.

A Booming Competitor to Character.AI Plots Its Next Move

By Juro Osawa · Dec 17, 2024 7:05am PST

Many of you may not have heard of Talkie, a competitor to Character.AI in providing personalized artificial intelligence chatbots.But Talkie, developed by Chinese firm MiniMax, is one of the most-downloaded AI apps in the U.S., according to multiple firms that track downloads. Its core base of users is young people, many of whom use the app for... Many of you may not have heard of Talkie, a competitor to Character.AI in providing personalized...

Art by Mike Sullivan via Midjourney

Runway Shows There’s Money to Be Made in AI Video Too; ‘Scaling Laws’ and Reasoning Dominate NeurIPS

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 16, 2024 7:20am PST

Art by Mike Sullivan via Midjourney

Runway Shows There’s Money to Be Made in AI Video Too; ‘Scaling Laws’ and Reasoning Dominate NeurIPS

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 16, 2024 7:20am PST

AI-generated video seems to be having somewhat of a renaissance this month: OpenAI released its long-awaited Sora video model last Monday and startup Pika released an updated version of its video AI on Friday.Still, the question remains as to whether video model developers can make money off such tools, especially given how expensive and finicky... AI-generated video seems to be having somewhat of a renaissance this month: OpenAI released its...

Photo by Getty

Developers Are Cautiously Optimistic About Google AI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 12, 2024 7:00am PST · 1 comment

A year after Google first gave developers a look at its Gemini AI—the search giant’s answer to OpenAI’s popular GPT models—the company has now revealed the second generation of its conversational AI models, Gemini 2.0.Google announced on Wednesday a new, experimental version of Flash, its smaller and cheaper AI, as well as new AI assistants and... A year after Google first gave developers a look at its Gemini AI—the search giant’s answer to ...

Kate Rouch. Photo via Coinbase.

AI Firms Hunt For CMOs

By Akash Pasricha · Dec 11, 2024 7:32am PST

Before we get to our main item of the day, a note to readers to tune in here tomorrow for reactions to Google’s Gemini 2.0 large language model, which was announced this morning.Now onto our main item…Artificial intelligence developers are realizing they need help standing out in an increasingly crowded market.OpenAI last week hired Kate Rouch... Before we get to our main item of the day, a note to readers to tune in here tomorrow for...

Photo via Getty

The Software Firms OpenAI Works With; o1’s Deception

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 10, 2024 7:00am PST

OpenAI on Monday gave us a deeper look into the software suppliers it works with, specifically those that touch customer data at some point. The list, which includes everyone from Microsoft to Cloudflare to a few smaller and less well known firms, reveals a lot about the enterprise tech stack of one of the most sophisticated and well-funded... OpenAI on Monday gave us a deeper look into the software suppliers it works with, specifically...

Image by Midjourney

OpenAI’s Sora Could Be Here This Week

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 9, 2024 7:20am PST

Image by Midjourney

OpenAI’s Sora Could Be Here This Week

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 9, 2024 7:20am PST

Big news! I’m hearing that an updated version of OpenAI’s video generation model, Sora, is coming this week. This is likely the culmination of the work the company has been doing to train a new version of the model that can quickly generate clips that are higher in quality and longer than the ones it demonstrated earlier this year, as we ... Big news! I’m hearing that an updated version of OpenAI’s video generation model, Sora, is coming...

Photo via Getty

OpenAI’s Latest Rivals Are Getting Help From… OpenAI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 5, 2024 9:51am PST

As artificial intelligence developers find it easier to catch up with OpenAI in reasoning than with traditional large language models—a topic Erin and I wrote about last week—they may be using a tried-and-true strategy.Researchers at OpenAI believe that some rival AI developers are training their reasoning models by using OpenAI’s o1 reasoning... As artificial intelligence developers find it easier to catch up with OpenAI in reasoning than...

Matt Garman delivers a keynote address during AWS re:Invent 2024. Photo by Getty.

Amazon’s Message to Nvidia and Anthropic; Andreessen Horowitz’s Latest AI Agent Bet

By Amir Efrati and Theo Wayt · Dec 4, 2024 7:00am PST

Amazon has relied on artificial intelligence from Anthropic and hardware from Nvidia to boost its cloud sales growth over the past two years. But at the company’s annual re:Invent conference on Tuesday, executives came out with swagger to change the narrative about how dependent it has been on these outside companies. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy... Amazon has relied on artificial intelligence from Anthropic and hardware from Nvidia to boost its...

AWS CEO, Matt Garman. Photo via Getty.

How AWS Can Move the Needle in AI; 2025’s AI Books

By Anissa Gardizy · Dec 3, 2024 7:00am PST

Amazon Web Services’ annual conference for customers kicks off this morning with products AWS Chief Matt Garman said would be “needle-moving.” But what happened to the products unveiled by AWS at last year’s re:Invent?A year ago, Garman’s predecessor, Adam Selipsky, tried to make a splash by unveiling an artificial intelligence chatbot and... Amazon Web Services’ annual conference for customers kicks off this morning with products AWS...

Mike Sullivan via Midjourney

Where AI Valuations Are Cheap

By Sri Muppidi and Rocket Drew · Dec 2, 2024 7:00am PST

Mike Sullivan via Midjourney

Where AI Valuations Are Cheap

By Sri Muppidi and Rocket Drew · Dec 2, 2024 7:00am PST

Some recent fundraisings, including for video generator Synthesia, have suggested valuations for AI startups are coming down to earth. But at 30 times next year’s revenue, you wouldn’t exactly call these deals cheap. You could, however, use that description for the startups that provide computing resources to AI developers.Take Lambda, a... Some recent fundraisings, including for video generator Synthesia, have suggested valuations for...