☕️ OpenAI & Oracle Make AI History With a $300B Cloud Deal

As AI compute demand outstrips availability, OpenAI looks for greener pastures as it signs a landmark $300 billion deal with cloud computing giant Oracle.

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

​​​OpenAI and Oracle sign a historic cloud compute partnership deal worth upwards of $300 billion

OpenAI and Oracle have reportedly struck a historic cloud deal, one worth $300 billion of compute power over the span of five years, more than OpenAI has even brought in as revenue. According to The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is set to begin purchasing the compute come 2027, though neither side of the deal has commented on the news. The news even briefly caused Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to topple Elon Musk as the world's richest man, as Oracle's stock ballooned roughly 40% after the report.

With OpenAI needing all the power it can get to face the likes of Google and xAI, along with Oracle being no stranger to working with the AI firm, the deal may come off as natural as OpenAI looks to expand its cloud partnerships after moving away from an exclusivity deal with Microsoft Azure in January of this year.

​​​💸 Perplexity Bags $200M - At a valuation of $20 billion, a recent surge of reports claim that AI search startup Perplexity has quietly raised another $200 million.

📱 Baidu's Latest Debut - China's Baidu has debuted its newest top reasoning model, ERNIE X1.1, while open-sourcing its previous lightweight thinking model.

🧠 Claude Gets an Upgrade - A recent update to Anthropic's desktop app now allows it to create and edit files on the spot, upping Claude's game in your browser.

​​​Alibaba and Baidu begin the shift from Nvidia GPUs to their own internally designed ones

Alibaba and Baidu have begun training AI models with their own designed chips, partially replacing their Nvidia GPUs, as continuous U.S. export restrictions leave China with few options, as reported by The Information. Alibaba has reportedly been using in-house chips for smaller models since the start of the year, while Baidu is testing its Kunlun P800 chip on new versions of ERNIE. Although both firms still heavily rely on Nvidia for their most advanced models, it could change in the future as reports claim that Alibaba's chip has reached a level ground with Nvidia's China-specific H20.

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Microsoft taps into Anthropic's AI over OpenAI's to power its Office 365 apps

​Another article by The Information alleges that Microsoft will be lessening its reliance on OpenAI by paying Anthropic for its Claude in Office 365 apps, according to two sources. The Information reports that Microsoft's move is not a negotiating tactic, but that Anthropic's latest models merely perform better than OpenAI's in certain aspects. It would not be Microsoft's first time spreading its wings, as it already offers Anthropic's Claude and xAI's Grok via Microsoft Azure, while the company itself recently made its own first debuts with MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-preview.

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Cloud API developer Kong acquires OpenMeter to develop a unified platform for AI API monetization

Earlier this month, San Francisco-based developer of cloud API and AI technologies, Kong, finalized its acquisition of OpenMeter, a popular open-source platform for billing and metering. A press release from Kong states that it will be integrating OpenMeter's tech into Kong Konnect to unify monetization and API infrastructure into one platform, allowing organizations to measure and price their APIs, AI tokens, and data streams. Additionally, OpenMeter's engineering and design team will be joining Kong as part of the arrangements, along with co-founders Peter Marton and András Tóth.

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RSS co-founder Eckart Walther launches a new system for licensing AI training more easily

​In the wake of AI's global copyright problem, RSS co-creator Eckart Walther has launched a new system to enable data licensing at scale called Real Simple Licensing, or RSL. The system encompasses both a legal and technical framework, dubbed the RSL Collective and RSL Standard, respectively. The RSL Collective helps negotiate terms and collect royalties, while the RSL Standard lays out specific licensing terms that providers can set out for their content. A handful of web publishers have already joined the collective, including Reddit, Yahoo, and Medium, with others such as Quora and Adweek supporting it from the sidelines.

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Albania appoints the world's first AI-created government minister to root out corruption

Albania has appointed an AI digital assistant named Diella as the world's first "virtual cabinet minister," put in charge of public procurement to lessen government corruption. Prime Minister Edi Rama stated that Diella will progressively take over responsibility for objectively evaluating and awarding public tenders, ensuring decisions are transparent and free of bribery, threats, or conflicts of interest. While local news outlets have praised the announcement as a major shift in Albanian politics, the reception is ultimately mixed, with many locals expressing skepticism on social media.

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