Hard Numbers: Musk’s new money, A Marvell to behold, Enter the Chatbot Arena, Meta’s millions, OpenAI’s Sora

December 10, 2024

A photo illustration with the xAI logo displayed on a smartphone with the official profile of Elon Musk in the background.

Jaque Silva/SOPA Images via Reuters

6 billion: xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, secured $6 billion in new funding last week, bringing its total investment to $12 billion and valuation to $50 billion. The company, which makes the Grok chatbot, is also reportedly building a supercomputer facility in Memphis, Tennessee.

100 billion: The chipmaker Marvell Technology saw its market capitalization rise above $100 billion last week after positive earnings and news that it’s helping Amazon develop its own AI chips. The AI boom has helped this small California-based chipmaker become more valuable than Intel, which has struggled in recent years and recently forced out its CEO.

170: A project from UC Berkeley aims to be the Billboard Hot 100 of AI models. Chatbot Arena is a website that lets users test different AI models and rate them, creating a crowdsourced ranking in the process. Google’s Gemini-Exp-1206 model is currently atop the leaderboard followed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o-latest model.

600 million: Nearly 600 million people use Meta’s AI tools every month, the company now claims. Meta boasts 3.29 billion daily users across its social media and messaging apps — about half of the world population — so it’s unclear if the company is counting anyone who interacts with AI on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp or solely through its chatbot.

20: OpenAI announced on Monday that its long-awaited Sora video model is now publicly available, letting users generate clips up to 20 seconds in 1080p resolution. The company first announced the project in February but limited access to a small group of testers.

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A woman lights a cigarette placed in a placard depicting Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, during a demonstration, after the Hungarian parliament passed a law that bans LGBTQ+ communities from holding the annual Pride march and allows a broader constraint on freedom of assembly, in Budapest, Hungary, on March 25, 2025.

REUTERS/Marton Monus

Hungary’s capital will proceed with Saturday’s Pride parade celebrating the LGBTQ+ community, despite the rightwing national government’s recent ban on the event.

Where we get our news - and why it changes everything

American President Donald Trump's X Page is seen displayed on a smartphone with a Tiktok logo in the background

Avishek Das / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect

In August 1991, a handful of high-ranking Soviet officials launched a military coup to halt what they believed (correctly) was the steady disintegration of the Soviet Union. Their first step was to seize control of the flow of information across the USSR by ordering state television to begin broadcasting a Bolshoi Theatre production ofSwan Lake on a continuous loop until further notice.

Hard Numbers: Musk’s new money, A Marvell to behold, Enter the Chatbot Arena, Meta’s millions, OpenAI’s Sora

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More from GZERO Media

In this episode of Europe in :60, Carl Bildt discusses the outcomes of the NATO Summit and where Europe stands with the Israel-Iran conflict.

Hungary’s capital will proceed with Saturday’s Pride parade celebrating the LGBTQ+ community, despite the rightwing national government’s recent ban on the event.

GZEROMEDIA

Subscribe to GZERO Media's newsletter: Signal

Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.

Small businesses are more than just corner shops and local services. They’re a driving force of economic growth, making up 90% of all businesses globally. As the global middle class rapidly expands, new opportunities are emerging for entrepreneurs to launch and grow small businesses.

The two-day NATO summit at the Hague wrapped on Wednesday. The top line? At an event noticeably scripted to heap flattery on Donald Trump, alliance members agreed to the US president’s demand they boost military spending to 5% of GDP over the next decade.