Hard Numbers: Seeking employees with AI skills, Cursor’s cash, Kremlin lies infiltrate chabots, Singapore’s aging population, VC’s spending spree, OpenAI ❤️s CoreWeave
25: Nearly 25% of all US technology jobs posted so far this year have sought employees with artificial intelligence-related skills. That number was higher for IT jobs, of which 36% in January requested comprehension of AI. It seems white-collar employees will need some proficiency with AI tools in the years ahead.
10 billion: Anysphere, the startup behind the AI coding assistant Cursor, is in talks to raise money at a $10 billion valuation, according to a report in Bloomberg on Friday. Talks of a new funding round come only three months after it last raised capital in December 2024 — $100 million based on a $2.5 billion valuation. AI assistants like Cursor, Devin, and Windsurf have become popular ways for software developers to code in recent months
3.6 million: The misinformation monitoring company NewsGuard found 3.6 million articles from 2024 featuring Russian propaganda in the training sets of 10 leading AI chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok, plus Perplexity’s AI search engine. A Kremlin network called Pravda, it says, has deliberately tried to flood search results and web crawlers with “pro-Kremlin falsehoods,” many of which are about Ukraine.
25: By 2030, 25% of Singaporeans will be 65 or older. That’s up from just 10% in 2010, a massive demographic shift for the small but bustling Asian country. Singapore’s government and companies are deploying AI solutions, including in-home fall-detection systems and patient-monitoring systems in hospitals. Without some technological assistance, the country will need to hire an additional 6,000 nurses and elder care workers annually to meet its aging population’s needs.
30 billion: Investment firms have poured $30 billion into US startups this quarter, according to new data from Pitchbook data reported by the Financial Times on Sunday. Another $50 billion is reportedly on the way with Anduril, OpenAI, and other companies raising money. This could be the biggest year for US venture capital since 2021 when it spent $358 billion.
12 billion: OpenAI has signed a five-year $12 billion contract with the cloud computing startup CoreWeave. The ChatGPT maker will take a $350 million equity stake in CoreWeave, which specializes in cloud-based processors for AI companies, ahead of its planned IPO, which is expected in the coming weeks.