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By Stephanie Palazzolo

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Recent Editions

Art by Clark Miller. Screenshots via YouTube.

A $4 Billion Enterprise Software Firm Acquires AI Coding Startup Codegen

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 23, 2025 7:00am PST

This year has been a big one for AI coding startup acquisitions. Who can forget the dramatic Google-Windsurf-Cognition saga from this summer? And this month alone, Anthropic acquired developer tool startup Bun and Cursor bought code review startup Graphite.Another coding deal is sneaking in before the end of the year. ClickUp, a $4... This year has been a big one for AI coding startup acquisitions. Who can forget the dramatic ...

Clay CEO Kareem Amin. Photo courtesy of Clay.

Why Some App Developers View ChatGPT as an Opportunity, Not a Threat

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 22, 2025 7:00am PST

When OpenAI in October announced “apps in ChatGPT,” allowing people to use external apps like Zillow or Spotify in ChatGPT—essentially bringing the apps’ core functions into the chatbot—some developers wondered if this would be a blow to consumer apps that would further separate them from their customers. That’s a fear DoorDash, for instance,... When OpenAI in October announced “apps in ChatGPT,” allowing people to use external apps like ...

Art by Mike Sullivan

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Problem

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 18, 2025 7:00am PST

OpenAI has a problem and, unfortunately for it, that problem is also how it makes most of its money: ChatGPT.In this story that Sri, Amir and I published this morning, we revealed that over the past year OpenAI staffers had noticed that improvements to the company’s models weren’t necessarily lifting ChatGPT usage. Their quandary is that... OpenAI has a problem and, unfortunately for it, that problem is also how it makes most of its...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Why Turing Is Buying Up Failed Startups’ Codebases

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

Art by Mike Sullivan

Why Turing Is Buying Up Failed Startups’ Codebases

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

Last night The Information broke the news that Amazon was in talks to invest at least $10 billion in OpenAI at a valuation of more than $500 billion. As part of the deal under discussion, OpenAI would agree to use Amazon’s Trainium chips, we reported. It's the latest in a string of deals OpenAI has done to raise the money it needs to pay for its... Last night The Information broke the news that Amazon was in talks to invest at least $10 billion...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Why Alien Hunters Want Jensen Huang to Fund Their AI Telescope

By Rocket Drew · Dec 16, 2025 7:00am PST

While alien hunting is often associated with tinfoil hats and flying saucers, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute has established itself as a leading scientific organization since it was founded 41 years ago. As it scans the cosmos for alien life, it has published research in peer-reviewed astronomy journals and collaborated... While alien hunting is often associated with tinfoil hats and flying saucers, the Search for...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

When Will We Reach AGI—And Other Prediction Market Bets

By Rocket Drew · Dec 15, 2025 7:00am PST

On Friday, I wrote about how companies are scrambling to prevent employees from using confidential company information to bet on prediction markets, sites like Polymarket and Kalshi that offer derivatives to wager on events. Opportunities to bet on AI outcomes, say a model release, have exploded in popularity—bets for the latest OpenAI model ... On Friday, I wrote about how companies are scrambling to prevent employees from using...

Getty Images

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

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 · 1 comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, ...