☕️ Did DeepSeek Just Take The Western AI World by Storm?

Hailing from China, DeepSeek takes the Western tech world by storm and alarm with its latest model, causing massive disruption in the stock market, but could it be a blessing in disguise? Other key highlights of the week include:

• Perplexity updates its proposal to merge with Tiktok US to instead become a new holding company called NewCo

• Grok 3 was spotted in the wild as users on X/Twitter got access to it for a short while before being revoked

• Apple turns its AI suite on by default and temporarily axes AI news summaries in its latest batch of software updates

Join us at AI Tangle as we untangle this week's happenings in AI!

DeepSeek shocks the tech stock market as its DeepSeek-R1 model sows doubt in western AI spending

Tech and chip stocks from Nvidia to Microsoft dropped sharply on Monday as Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's latest open-source AI model, DeepSeek-R1, not only challenged US dominance in AI but also put its enormous investments under the spotlight. DeepSeek officials say that the startup trained its models with way fewer Nvidia chips than industry leaders while beating out all of them and matching OpenAI's o1. However, though it could be seen as a disruption, many analysts claim this could be a net positive for chipmakers in the long run if DeepSeek's approach is something to learn from.

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​And it just recently released a new family of image models on top​

If crashing Wall Street's AI market wasn't enough, DeepSeek also unveiled a family of "novel autoregressive framework" image models, called Janus-Pro, that it claims can outperform OpenAI's DALL-E 3. The models are available on Hugging Face for anyone to download and range from 1B to 7B parameter variants, which roughly corresponds to a model's problem-solving skills. All of this had led to OpenAI losing its position as the #1 most downloaded app on Apple's App Store to DeepSeek, but the widespread attention has made the company fall victim to "large-scale malicious attacks," reportedly. As a result, DeepSeek has temporarily hit the breaks on user registrations, though existing users can continue to use its services as normal.

Perplexity revises its proposal to merge with Tiktok US in a bid to ByteDance

AI-based search company Perplexity on Sunday updated its proposal to merge with TikTok US to form a new holding company, "NewCo," in which the US government would own up to 50% after a future IPO with a $300 billion valuation. The proposal indicates that ByteDance would sell TikTok US to investors while retaining its core recommendation algorithm. Perplexity stated it would also be willing to be acquired by the new entity if its investors received NewCo equity. As part of a temporary 30-day measure, TikTok services were recently restored after legal action shut them down in the US.

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Some users on X/Twitter inexplicably got access to xAI's Grok 3 AI model for a few hours

Elon Musk’s AI company xAI may soon release its latest model, Grok 3, which has reportedly been accessed, be it by accident or not, by some users on X/Twitter, including popular reverse engineer Alexey Shabanov. Early tests revealed its ability to tackle logical reasoning, riddles, and coding, though it seems to do minor slip-ups in the latter. Not more than 2-3 hours later, access was revoked. Grok 3 was trained with 10x more compute than its predecessor, according to Musk, at its giant Memphis data center and leaks indicate it may debut with a voice mode.

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Apple's recent iOS 18.3 updates turn Apple Intelligence on by default as it nears a more complete rollout

Whether users like it or not, in Apple's recent iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3 software updates, the company has turned its Apple Intelligence suite of AI features on by default, as stated in developer release notes. Apple's infamous AI-powered news summary push notifications, meanwhile, have been turned off for constantly twisting its news notifications to display inaccurate facts, brought out into the limelight by the BBC. Apple Intelligence's rollout has been slow as Apple tries to ease its users into it, though users still uninterested in the suite retain the option to turn it off in the Settings app.

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Security researchers discover a critical security vulnerability in Meta's Llama AI Stack framework

Researchers recently discovered a critical vulnerability (CVE-2024-50050) in Meta's Llama Stack AI framework that could allow attackers to remotely execute malicious code. The vulnerability, which poses significant risks such as data breaches or theft of computing resources, stems from the misuse of the PyZMQ library and was rated 9.3/10 in severity by experts but only 6.3/10 by Meta itself. However, according to the researchers, Meta was quick to patch the issue in version 0.0.41, and PyZMQ maintainers updated their documentation to prevent future occurrences.

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Meta's Zuckerberg states the company plans to invest upwards of $65 billion in AI infrastructure in 2025

Calling it "a defining year for AI," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on Facebook to announce Meta's plans to invest up to $65 billion in 2025 to expand its AI infrastructure. On top of that, Meta also wants to construct a more-than 2-gigawatt data center in Manhattan, ramp up hiring for AI-centric roles, and end the year with over 1.3 million Nvidia GPUs in its possession. Zuckerberg aims to make Meta AI the market's leading assistant and Llama 4 the leading state-of-the-art model, along with developing an "AI engineer" that could start making a difference in its codebases.

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AI-Developed Drugs Are Coming Full Circle (​3-min read​)

Aside from coding, one area that AI has been increasingly more prominent is in healthcare, and at the World Economic Forum, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis talked in length about his enthusiasm, expecting AI-designed pharmaceuticals to be in clinical trials as early as the end of 2025.

How Far Away Really is Human-Level Intelligence? (​3-min read​)

Whether AI is overhyped or underhyped by one public figure or another, AI is advancing at rapid speeds. Although he's not calling it AGI, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei believes the technology could overtake human capabilities not long after 2027.

​Sam Altman's memo​ about AI agents "joining the workforce" in 2025 takes their first steps to become a reality with the release of Operator, the company's first major agent product. Other key takeaways of the week include:

• SoftBank, Oracle, and OpenAI announce a $500 billion US AI data center venture named Stargate Project

• Mistral CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch confirms that the French AI startup is preparing for an IPO

• Another $1 billion from Google - The tech giant's investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic continues to grow

Join us at AI Tangle as we untangle this week's happenings in AI!

OpenAI takes its first major step into AI agent tech with the release of Operator

Not long ​after rumors of OpenAI's elusive AI agent nearing its launch​ began popping up, the AI poster child pulled the trigger and released its first attempt at changing the playing field - Operator. ​As detailed in the company's blog​, Operator is a general-purpose AI agent that can take control of a web browser and independently perform tasks on the web, all powered by OpenAI's Computer-Using Agent (CUA) model.

What more do we know of Operator?

The CUA model, specifically trained to interact with websites, combines the vision capabilities of GPT-4o and advanced reasoning from OpenAI's more advanced models, likely o1. Operator has been promised to automate tasks ranging from online shopping to reserving restaurants, though OpenAI warns that the CUA isn't perfect - it might struggle with more specialized tasks. Tasks like sending emails or banking transactions, however, require user supervision for security reasons.

Operator is currently out as a research preview, and only users in the US with the $200/mo Pro subscription plan will have access to it, though a rollout to Plus, Team, and Enterprise tiers will follow shortly. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed Operator would be available in other countries soon enough, though European users specifically will have to wait a while.

SoftBank, Oracle, and OpenAI shake hands for a joint venture to pour $500 billion into US AI data centers

Earlier this week, ​the Stargate Project​ was unveiled at a press conference by SoftBank, Oracle, and OpenAI representatives at the White House, where President Donald Trump spoke at length about investment plans in US infrastructure. The goal is to pour $500 billion over four years into data centers in the US, starting with Texas, with an initial commitment of $100 billion, of which ​SoftBank and OpenAI have already pledged $19 billion each​. Additionally, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Arm are named as additional technical partners in what is one of the largest ventures in the US' AI sector.

French AI startup Mistral confirmed by company CEO Arthur Mensch to be setting up for an IPO

Following an ​interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum​, Arthur Mensch, the co-founder and CEO of French AI startup Mistral, said that the company is preparing for an IPO while expanding into Asia-Pacific with a new office in Singapore. On top of that, Mensch also dismissed any acquisition rumors involving Microsoft, which, so far, has invested €15 million in the startup. Founded in April 2023 by former DeepMind and Meta researchers, Mistral has grown rapidly and raising $1.14 billion at a $6 billion valuation, with its most notable offerings including its ​Mistral Large​ and ​Le Chat​.

Google invests a further $1 billion in Silicon Valley AI unicorn Anthropic

Google is set to invest over $1 billion in AI startup Anthropic, separate from a recent $2 billion funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, valuing the firm at $60 billion, ​according to an article by Financial Times​. This adds to ​Google's previous $2 billion worth of investment in the company​. Anthropic, a key rival of OpenAI, generates $875 million in annualized revenue through direct sales and partnerships like Amazon Web Services, through which it primarily sells access to enterprise clients to its models and technology.

Microsoft gets demoted from its position as OpenAI's exclusive cloud computing provider

On top of the Stargate news, Microsoft no longer finds itself as OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider but retains the "right of first refusal" for additional computing needs, ​as explained in a blog post by the tech giant​. Despite OpenAI's expanded partnerships and a recently made "new, large Azure commitment" for products and model training, Microsoft still holds onto exclusive API rights and IP usage for integration into their products, like Copilot.

ChatGPT goes down worldwide once again as OpenAI begins investigating the "increased errors"

ChatGPT has yet again experienced a significant outage on Thursday this week, with, as of writing, over 10,000 users in the UK alone reporting issues via Downdetector. Users encountered a "bad gateway error," and OpenAI has yet to provide an official explanation for the cause. The outage began at 11:00 GMT that day, disrupting services for many of the ​chatbot's 300 million weekly users​. While some users were understandably frustrated, ​others joked about the downtime on social media​ to highlight just how much they or others depend on it for everyday tasks.

Battery manufacturer SES secures $10 million in contracts to build AI-developed batteries

SES AI, a Li-Metal battery manufacturer, has recently secured contracts worth up to $10 million with two global OEM partners to develop AI-discovered materials for automotive batteries. These contracts build on SES's AI-powered Molecular Universe project, ​which recently delivered the first battery using an AI-discovered electrolyte​. Company CEO and founder Qichao Hu highlighted the contracts as a milestone for AI-driven battery innovation. SES' shares rose in accordance, up to 60% in premarket trading that day following the announcement.

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AI-Developed Drugs Are Coming Full Circle (​3-min read​)

Aside from coding, one area that AI has been increasingly more prominent is in healthcare, and at the World Economic Forum, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis talked in length about his enthusiasm, expecting AI-designed pharmaceuticals to be in clinical trials as early as the end of 2025.

How Far Away Really is Human-Level Intelligence? (​3-min read​)

Whether AI is overhyped or underhyped by one public figure or another, AI is advancing at rapid speeds. Although he's not calling it AGI, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei believes the technology could overtake human capabilities not long after 2027.