☕️ Alibaba's Qwen 3 Release, xAI's Potential $20 Billion Fundraiser & Duolingo's Pivot To Go "AI-First"

Chinese AI and industry funding take center stage this time around as Alibaba's Qwen team release Qwen 3, Elon Musk's xAI looks to raise the second-largest private fundraiser ever, and the developers of Manus raise some millions of their own.

Here are the main key takeaways:

• Alibaba releases Qwen 3, its next-in-line family of open-source hybrid reasoning AI models

• xAI reportedly in talks to raise $20 billion, the second-largest private funding round in history

• Duolingo looks to replace contractors with AI as company CEO announces a shift to become "AI-first"

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Alibaba's AI team releases the latest rendition of its Qwen family line of AI models, introducing Qwen 3

On Monday, Chinese tech giant Alibaba released Qwen 3, an open-licensed family of AI models that "match and in some cases outperform" Google and OpenAI's offerings, available on Hugging Face and GitHub. With support for 119 languages, these "hybrid models" integrate thinking and non-thinking modes via a configurable "thinking budget," and some use a mixture-of-experts architecture. Qwen 3's largest variant, Qwen-3-235B-A22B, competitively trades blows with o3-mini and Gemini 2.5 Pro on a variety of benchmarks, even triumphing on some coding and math ones, though this variant is not publicly available yet.

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Bloomberg report details how Elon Musk's xAI could be raising the second-largest private funding round ever

​According to a report by Bloomberg, Musk's xAI Holdings is in early discussions to secure a $20 billion funding round, which would value the combined AI and social media venture at over $120 billion and rank as the second-largest private startup raise in known history, trailing only OpenAI's $40 billion. The extra cash would significantly reduce X's debt load, currently costing it $200 million in monthly servicing fees and over $1.3 billion in annual interest. A fundraiser of this magnitude likely shows the underlying investor allure of AI along with Musk's ever-growing controversial presence in US politics.

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Duolingo's CEO announces that the company is becoming "AI-first" as it looks to phase out contractors in favor of AI

According to a company-wide email sent by co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn, Duolingo will gradually cease using contractors for work that can be done by AI, along with an announcement that the company will become "AI-first." The email, which was posted on Duolingo's LinkedIn account, also details adding "a few constructive constraints," plans to revamp the company's hiring processes, and using AI in performance reviews. However, public reception hasn't been nearly as optimistic, with many arguing against the shift as the move comes off as largely divisive.

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Meta's social media AI chatbots were found engaging in explicit conversations with accounts labeled as underage

Meta found itself in a bit of trouble earlier this week as Meta's AI chatbots were found engaging in sexual roleplay with accounts flagged as underage, the Wall Street Journal reported. In tests, both official and user-created bots, including those voiced by celebrities like John Cena, Kristen Bell, and Judi Dench, would not only indulge users but also steer conversations toward very explicit scenarios despite the bots acknowledging the illegality of such acts. Meta, which denies lax safeguards, says it has added measures to prevent such misuse again.

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MyPillow CEO's lawyer filed an AI-generated brief filled with "nearly thirty" bogus claims and citations

In a defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems' ex-employee, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's attorney Christopher Kachouroff submitted an opposition brief riddled with "nearly thirty" fabricated citations, including "cases that do not exist." Only after Judge Nina Wang pressed him did he admit he "did, in fact, use generative artificial intelligence" and "failed to cite check the authority in the Opposition after such use before filing it with the Court." Judge Wang has ordered explanations by the 5th of May or will refer both Kachouroff and Lindell's other attorney, Jennifer DeMaster, for professional discipline.

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Manus' parent company raises $75 million in a Series A2 at a valuation five times higher than its previous

Beijing startup Butterfly Effect has locked in $75 million in a Series A2 fundraiser that values the company at roughly $500 million - five times its previous worth. The funding arrives two months after it opened invite-only access to its quickly popularity-gaining Manus AI agent, which showcased website development, real-estate research, and more, though it suffered from occasional crashes and task failures. In late March, the company monetized Manus by introducing two paid tiers to the platform at $39/month and $199/month, which puts it in direct competition with the likes of OpenAI's Operator.

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As part of Anthropic's Economic Index series, researchers and scientists at the firm took a look into how AI has impacted the software development industry over the past few years, from its humble beginnings with the mainstream GitHub Copilot to present-day AI-based agents and tooling.

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