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.
Microsoft unveiled a new set of commitments guiding its community‑first approach to AI infrastructure development. The strategy focuses on energy affordability, water efficiency, job creation, local investment, and AI‑driven skilling. As demand for digital infrastructure accelerates, the company is pushing a new model for responsible datacenter growth — one built on sustainability, economic mobility, and long‑term partnership with the communities that host it. The move signals how AI infrastructure is reshaping local economies and what people expect from the tech shaping their future. Read the full blog here.
In July 2024, Keir Starmer won the United Kingdom’s election in a landslide. It has been downhill ever since, with Starmer’s premiership sullied by economic stagnation, intraparty fighting, and a lack of vision for the country.
Meanwhile in the oval office #PUPPETREGIME