Latest AI News
OpenAI is bringing on some big guns in the lead-up to its IPO
OpenAI is bringing on some big names to the team in the lead-up to its public debut: Google DeepMind AI legend Noam Shazeer and former Trump White House AI policy official Dean Ball. Shazeer, a co-lead at Gemini and the founder of AI role-playing startup Character AI,announced his departure on Wednesday. He had been at Google since 2000, leaving only for a three-year period when he left to co-found Character AI. Two years ago,Google re-hired Shazeerin a $2.7 billion deal that gave the tech giant access to the startup’s technology. The move is the latest in a series of shufflings between the top AI labs, including Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. Shazeer is credited for being one of the foundational minds behind modern generative AI. He co-authored the seminal 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need,” which introduced the Transformer architecture. Before leaving Google, Shazeer had also reportedly been stirring the pot when it came to political issues. According toThe Information,Shazeer voiced opinions on internal messaging boards on transgender identity and Israel’s war in Gaza that resulted in management deleting his posts. Whether those controversies will follow him to his new employer remains to be seen. In the meantime, OpenAI is also shoring up its policy credentials by bringing Ball to the team. Ball had a brief stint last year in the White House, where he helped publish America’s AI Action Plan before stepping down to rejoin the techno-libertarian think tank the Foundation for American Innovation as a senior fellow. “I am pleased and honored to announce that, on July 6, I’ll be joining OpenAI as leader of a new team called Strategic Futures,”Ball wrote on X on Thursday. “Our mandate will be to help the company’s leadership shape frontier AI policy.” Ball will report directly to Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon. The “small, high-agency team” will focus on “matters pertaining to: catastrophic risk, recursive self-improvement, labor market impact, and the relationship between the frontier labs, governments (particularly the U.S. Federal Government), and society,” Ball wrote in ablog post. The Strategic Futures team will cover both public-facing policy and internal governance, he added. That last is important — Ball noted that “almost by necessity,” AI labs will have to lead on AI governance decisions. “In other words,internal governancewill be more central to the future of AI than most people realize,” Ball wrote. Ball’s decision to join OpenAI — arguably an AI favorite in the administration — comes as Anthropic battles once again with the U.S. government. Late last week, President Donald Trump ordered anexport control ban on Anthropic’s latest models,Fable 5 and Mythos 5, leading to the AI firm being forced to take the models down entirely to avoid noncompliance. For anyone who had “government interference” on their S-1 risk factor bingo card, Ball is what it looks like when a company locks in its insider status while a rival is squeezed. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for more information.
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Snap spins off AI video team into new company, Dotmo, due to costs
Snap will be spinning off an internal generative AI video team into a separate company. The new company — dubbed Dotmo — will focus on developing AI models that can create interactive gaming experiences, Snap told TechCrunch. Snap cited the high costs of conducting such work internally as one of the reasons for the spinoff. While technically a separate company, Dotmo will retain its close ties to the Snapchat creator. For one thing, Snap will provide Dotmo with a license to adapt its technology for gaming and interactive entertainment platforms. At the same time, the initial Dotmo team will consist of a group of current Snap staff who are leaving Snap to launch the new venture. Additionally, while Dotmo won’t be funded by Snap directly, the company says that Bobby Murphy, its chief technology officer, will act as lead investor and will have a significant personal stake in the new firm. Though a financial backer, Murphy will continue to work for Snap full-time as its CTO and continue to lead its GenAI research and development initiatives. In exchange for the talent and the technology license, Snap will get a large equity stake in Dotmo, the company said — a position that could prove rewarding if the company prospers in the future. Dotmo may also eventually seek outside funding, Snap said. The move marks Snap’s second major spinoff effort this year. Earlier in 2026, Snapspun off Specs into a new companyto focus exclusively on the development of its smart glasses line. (Snap’s recent unveiling of Specswasn’t exactly a home runfor the company. Snap’s stock tanked afterconcerns were raisedabout the hefty price tag attached to the new smart glasses, which is around $2,200.) Snap also underwent a round of layoffs earlier this year, during whichsome 1,000 jobs were cut. Dotmo represents a different kind of spinoff than the Specs operation, in that its team will be focused on developing digital experiences that aren’t currently a part of Snap’s core business priorities, a Snap representative said. However, it could still be considered a partner in the future if the fit seems right, they added. Spin-offs can be a cost savings strategy for companies, although they can serve a variety of other purposes — like showing off a particular asset, generating investor attention, or providing operational flexibility to the team involved. In spinning out Dotmo, Snap may be reducing the financial burden associated with its AI efforts, while still maintaining exposure to any potential upside through its equity stake.
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AI inference startup Baseten reportedly raising $1.5B months after its last mega-round
AI inference company Baseten is close to finalizing a stunning $1.5 billion funding round at a $13 billion valuation,the Wall Street Journal reports. Just five months ago, the startup announced that it had raised a$300 million Series Eat a $5 billion valuation. And that round was just nine months after raising a$150 million Series D. If finalized, this latest round would represent a 160% increase in valuation in less than half a year. However, the WSJ reports that this is asplit-priced round, a tactic startups are using to boost their headline valuation and make lead investors look good on paper. Some investors in this latest funding round are reportedly coming in at a $13 billion valuation, while others at $11 billion, sources told the Journal. This deal is said to be co-led by Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Wellington Management. Launched in 2019, Baseten is a startup benefiting from what The Next Wave hailed the “inference gold rush,” in which VCs are pouring enormous amounts of money into companies building the inference layer. Inference is what the model does after a user submits a prompt. Baseten promises to handle inference quickly while controlling costs by routing requests to the best-for-task model, especially to competent, less-expensive open source alternatives.
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A tech worker-backed PAC is bringing a $5M knife to Big Tech’s $100M gunfight
Loading the player… A grassroots movement is forming among everyday tech workers who are demanding their companies develop and deploy AI responsibly. And the Guardrails Alliance, a new super PAC dedicated to supporting AI legislation, aims to leverage that discontent. Democratic operatives Shaunna Thomas and Leah Hunt-Hendrix launched the Guardrails Alliance on Thursday with backing from tech employees, labor unions, and other groups, according toThe New York Times. “Our fundamental belief here is that people still do have the power to stop this autocratic takeover of the Trump administration and the tech sector,” Thomas told the NYT. Guardrails positions itself as a populist political movement that runs on small donations from people in the trenches of the AI boom. The PAC has about $5 million at its disposal today and plans to raise $15 million this cycle — small potatoes compared to deep-pocketed adversaries like Leading the Future, which has more than $100 million from tech leaders like OpenAI president Greg Brockman. Guardrails will buy ads to support Alex Bores, a New York congressional candidate who becameLeading the Future’s first targetand is running in the primaries next week. On Thursday, Boresshared an adfeaturing the parents of Adam Raine, the teenager who died by suicide after months of prolonged conversations with ChatGPT. Bores is also receiving support from another pro-legislation super PAC,Public First Action, which has backing from Anthropic. While OpenAI has tried todistance itselffrom Brockman’s donations, many employees are reportedly unconvinced, and several have voiced concerns on social media about Leading the Future’s attacks on Bores. This year, tech workers have also mobilized todemand their chiefs end contractswith U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and urge the Pentagon towithdraw its designation of Anthropicas a supply chain risk — a label critics say was imposed without due process in retaliation for Anthropic’s limits on its technology being used for mass surveillance and autonomous warfare. “This is not about matching [Leading the Future] dollar for dollar,” Thomas said. “What this vehicle is meant to do is be a political home for people who are concerned about the way the anti-regulation AI tech sector is trying to manipulate elections.” TechCrunch has reached out to the Guardrails Alliance.
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General Intuition in talks to raise $300M at around $2B valuation
General Intuition, the New York-based startup building a foundation model that trains AI agents how to move through space and time, is in talks to raise around $300 million, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The raise comes eight months afterGeneral Intuition spun out of Medal, a platform for uploading and sharing video game clips, with a $134 million seed round. The fresh funds would bring the startup’s valuation up to just over $2 billion, sources say. Sources tell TechCrunch General Intuition has secured funds from backers, includingJeff Bezosand Eric Schmidt, as well as existing investors Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst. Pim de Witte, who co-founded Medal, founded and leads General Intuition alongside co-founders Eloi Alonso, Adam Jelley, and Vincent Micheli — researchers who bring expertise in world modeling and simulation. The startup trains embodied AI and world models using Medal’s dataset of 2 billion videos per year from 10 million monthly active users. The startup’s pitch is that such a dataset — unique because it allows AI to learn from interactive, first-person gameplay — is the perfect base to teach machines deep spatial-temporal reasoning, allowing them to perceive, anticipate, and interact in real time in simulation. That dataset hasreportedlyattracted the attention of OpenAI, which previously attempted to acquire Medal. And sources say OpenAI hasn’t been the only big AI lab to come knocking. The world model space that General Intuition is playing in is heating up. Startups likeRunway,Decart, andWorld Labshave all recently released world models, and Google’s Genie 3 recently beganintegrating Google Maps datafor more real-world simulation capabilities. All of these companies see gaming and robotics training as near-term commercial use cases, but General Intuition takes a different approach: It builds world models to train agents, not to sell them. The agents are the product, and the startup’s unique dataset gives it a path to viability. General Intuition will use the funds to scale up its compute capacity so it can release a new product by the end of summer or early fall, according to a source familiar with the matter.
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‘Queer Eye’s’ life coach Karamo Brown launches Kē, a wellness app featuring his AI digital clone
Karamo Brown, famous for his pep talks on Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” has jumped into the wellness and AI space with his new app,Kē. After spending a year and a half focusing on his own journey—from fitness and nutrition to meditation, sobriety, relationships, and personal growth—Brown wants to help others do the same. Kē offers a slew of features designed to support users, including personalized fitness plans that cater to users’ existing workout equipment and schedules, as well as nutrition guidance by suggesting meal plans based on the food users have at home. Users have the flexibility to request adjustments to their fitness and meal plans through an AI chatbot, making it easy to customize their experience. Plus, each workout is paired with guided instructional videos to ensure correct form. On the mental health front, Kē includes a meditation section with videos targeting various emotions, helping users manage stress and anxiety. There’s also a community section for users to engage in supportive groups focused on shared experiences, such as sobriety or wellness discussions. But what really sets Kē apart is its “AI Karamo” feature that lets users talk with a digital version of Karamo. They can ask questions and get advice in real-time, delivered in his voice. Powered by AI startupDelphi,the clone pulls from all sorts of material from Brown—like interviews, podcast episodes, and other clips—to ensure it represents him as authentically as possible. (Arnold Schwarzenegger also has his own digital clone with Delphi.) “My best friend and sister to this day still talk to the AI clone when they can’t get hold of me,” Brown told TechCrunch. Brown’s new app reflects a bigger trend, where more celebrities are getting on board with AI. For example, stars likeMatthew McConaughey and Michael Cainehave partnered with ElevenLabs to license their voices for digital replicas. However, many celebrities are publicly expressing their concerns andtaking actionagainst the rise of AI, particularly regarding the unauthorized use of their likenesses and voices in creating digital clones. There has also been a bit of concern about fans forming one-sided emotional attachments to celebrity chatbots. Brown emphasizes that Kē isn’t meant to replace real relationships; instead, it’s a tool to aid in personal development and encourage people to reach out for real support when needed. “If someone is struggling with a sensitive issue, it can direct them toward appropriate resources and remind them to seek support from real people in their lives… At the end of the day, this is meant to be a tool that helps people reflect, learn, and grow, and it’s not a substitute for human connection,” Brown said. When asked if there’s a limit on the frequency of interactions with his digital clone, Brown replied, “People can talk to it as much as they need. That said, the goal isn’t to keep users talking to the AI indefinitely. It’s designed to help people make progress in their lives.” He also mentions that there are safeguards in place to keep interactions safe, with a team of humans overseeing the app. (However, users should keep in mind that using the AI feature means they’re sharing their conversation data with Delphi, so it’s smart to avoid disclosing sensitive info.) He adds, “When AI first started becoming part of the conversation a few years ago, I was honestly pretty skeptical. But the technology has evolved significantly, and what changed my perspective was seeing how thoughtfully companies like Delphi have approached it.” In the future, Delphi plans to introduce agentic capabilities to Kē to perform tasks on users’ behalf. For instance, if AI Karamo gives you advice on your workout routine, it may one day be able to go into the “My Plan” tab for you and adjust it immediately. Kē is now available oniOSandAndroiddevices. The subscription costs $14.99/month after the 3-day free trial.
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The smartphone era created an attention crisis. Slowtech is fixing it
When Tony Fadell entered New York City’s 28th Street Subway Station, he did not expect to come face-to-face withan advertisementfor a product he designed over 20 years ago. But there it was: a five-by-four-foot poster promoting the iPod Shuffle, luring passersby with the promise of “Zero screen time.” “The first thing was, I thought, ‘Wait a second, did somebody not change the ad?’” Fadell, known as the father of the iPod, told TechCrunch. “For somebody like me who knows that thing intimately, it’s like seeing your kid’s picture.” As Fadell stood in the train station, he was surrounded by people wearing wireless Bluetooth headphones to stream music on their phones, effortlessly accessing music libraries with over 100 million songs. This technology that we take for granted makes Steve Jobs’ early iPod tagline —“one thousand songs in your pocket”— sound antiquated. The postage-stamp-sized iPod Shuffle, which relied heavily on shuffle playback and offered little control compared to today’s streaming apps, should not appeal to a modern audience. But we have become so entrenched in technology that our various devices, apps, and algorithms mediate our every experience, from grocery shopping to dating. We’ve built smartphones that can do almost anything, but we’ve also created a constant connectedness that has become more exhausting than enriching. “People are very oversaturated and overstimulated, and they really want to have a more mindful approach to what they’re doing with their tech,” Joy Howard, CMO ofBack Market, an online marketplace for refurbished tech, told TechCrunch. “There’s this fatigue that we have with the need to optimize every single aspect of our life.” Howard and her team were responsible for the iPod Shuffle ad that Fadell was so shocked to encounter. But Howard says that demand is growing for this supposedly obsolete tech — if these devices weren’t driving sales, the company wouldn’t have shelled out for a premium ad placement in a hectic New York City subway station. For younger generations who have never known a world without social media and smartphones, there’s a certain magic to wired headphones, retro gaming consoles, CDs, and digital point-and-shoot cameras. They crave experiences that aren’t trying to monopolize their attention. Old-school cameras can’t upload photos to your Instagram story, retro games don’t spam you with gambling ads, and iPods can’t automatically play music that you’re algorithmically destined to enjoy. That’s the whole point of this movement, which Howard calls “slowtech.” “The ‘fast tech’ up until now has been all about eliminating friction… [Now], people are seeing friction as a way to create boundaries for themselves,” Howard said. “It’s so stunning to me that now people are wanting to bring friction back into their lives, and see that as a feature, rather than a flaw.” Around the same time that Fadell first pitched the iPod to Steve Jobs,Austin Murrayfounded JAMDAT, one of thefirst mobile gaming companies, which quickly went public and was sold to Electronic Arts for $680 million. “When we were pitching our company back in 2000, 2001, people were laughing at us, saying, ‘Why would anyone play games on their cell phone?’” Murray told TechCrunch. Now, investors are just as incredulous when he pitches them on hisscreen-time reduction app, MOQA, which he is building to counteract the very phenomenon he helped create. “It’s watching what happened to my kids and the people around me that hurts my soul the most,” Murray said. “When everyone is doing the same thing — meaning everyone, the average screen time is like five hours probably on a phone every day — it’s not a willpower problem. It’s a product design problem.” This desire to cut back on the time we spend using our phones, computers, and TVs has become ubiquitous —about 53%of American adults say they want to reduce their screen time. “At a certain point, I realized that willpower was insufficient to not waste time on my phone,” said writerCalvin Kasulke, whose novel “Several People Are Typing” imagines workers trapped inside a Slack workspace. He now pays forOpalandFreedom, two apps designed to limit his screen time and social media use. “I don’t need to limit my time on iMessage — that’s people who I really know! But I certainly don’t want to be wasting my time doomscrolling.” “I want to be very clear… I don’t feel smug about this. It’s embarrassing to have two different apps to limit how I use this,” Kasulke said. “I don’t think screens are inherently bad. I just think the way I was using [my phone] was worse and dumb, and now it’s a little bit less dumb.” Others have given up their iPhones altogether, opting instead for flip phones,e-ink devicesthat run Android software, or minimalist touch-screen hardware like theLight Phone. “Our customers for the last 10 years are telling us how they feel more free after switching to the Light Phone,” Light co-founder Kaiwei Tang told TechCrunch. “It’s getting more and more attention, especially among young people. We have quite a lot of the community using Light Phone as 20- to 35-year-olds, which surprised us.” Murray isn’t as optimistic about the future of “dumb phones,” though. “There’s certainly a movement of people who are just kind of anti-tech and ‘get it out of our lives,’” he said. “That’s really hard though, because then you realize you can’t do things that are now assuming you have a smartphone, like banking, or going into a hotel, or [using] credit cards.” Kasulke said if Apple ever made an e-ink iPhone, he would “f–ing donate plasma to be able to afford it.” But that’s unlikely, so he’s not particularly interested in downgrading his phone. “I’m not like a, ‘I wish I could throw this thing in the toilet and go live in the woods’ kind of guy,” Kasulke said. “My phone has some utility for my personal and professional life, but it also lives in your pocket, and it is very, very easy, and in fact, designed in some ways to be addictive and to mindlessly waste time on it.” Screen time isn’t universally bad. We’re accumulating screen time when we video chat with our family, text our friends, read news articles, maintain our Duolingo streaks, or play Wordle. But for as much as tech brings us closer to one another, it also yanks us out of the present moment. “It’s clear people want the convenience of digital, but they don’t want the annoyance of being always connected,” Fadell said. “I’ve always been like, ‘We need less screens, not more of them.’ So to have an Apple Watch with everything, like, no, no, no — I don’t want more, I want less.” It’s not surprising that Fadell’s preferences are a bellwether for the market — he’s a veteran product designer, after all. American spending on fitness trackersgrew 88%year-over-year, according to market research firm Circana, which credits screenless wearables like the Oura ring and Whoop wristband as key sales drivers. Even though these devices don’t have screens, you have to use your smartphone to see your data, which would make it even harder for Oura and Whoop users to try out something like the Light Phone. But most consumers aren’t looking to make such an extreme change as pivoting to a flip phone — instead, some are embracing even more sophisticated hardware that relies on their smartphone, but cuts down their overall screen time. Mark, a $159 AI bookmark, advertises itself as a tool to help users stop pulling out their phone to take notes while they’re reading. While some readers might find the idea of an AI bookmark to be symptomatic of the same problem that pushes people toward a digital detox, Mark founder Eason Tang sees it differently. “The way we try to brand it now is this sort of analog tool, very culturally integrated with design, film, books, and literature,” Tang told TechCrunch. We raised $1M dollars to reinvent how people read. Introducing Mark II – a $159 AI bookmark. Thread belowpic.twitter.com/eL0XsyRlgC There’s something undoubtedly absurd about using an AI bookmark to mediate your relationship with your phone, yet there is a bit of truth to Tang’s pitch — when you stop reading to take notes or snap a photo of a key passage on your phone, you’re bound to encounter some other distracting notification that interrupts your reading. Though AI developments are almost synonymous with “fast tech” culture, there’s a clear allure to the promise that AI agents could simplify our lives and give us more time away from screens. “I think that this idea that people want tools to serve them and not to dominate them is very profound,” Howard said. “I think what the ‘slowtech’ movement is about is people pushing back against the constant digital fatigue, distraction, overwhelm, so if you can use AI to do that, to kind of protect yourself… That’s what people want: more control.” The ubiquity of AI turns some consumers off from the latest products, but this isn’t their sole grievance with big tech. People are also disillusioned by these companies for continually bricking perfectly good hardware just to make us buy the latest model. Back Market, for example, rehabsdiscontinued laptopsand resells them with USB keys that can install ChromeOS Flex, which turns supposedly obsolete hardware into functioning Chromebooks. “One of our developers started finding a way to hack things that had their OS sunsetted to bring it new life. And so one of the first things he hacked was a rice cooker,” Howard said. “His rice cooker didn’t have support anymore! This is actually a really cool use of AI — like, vibe coding your own app to keep your hardware alive longer.” While slowtech adherents may not all agree about AI use, the debate is secondary to the bigger problem at play: We’ve created an ecosystem where we are so dependent on smartphones and our various apps that the whims of the tech industry can control how we cook rice. In this reality, it’s no wonder that people are so eager to disconnect that they want to downgrade to an iPod Shuffle. “People just really want to take back control of their time, their lives, their attention,” Howard said. “They’re down for whatever helps them do that.”
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AI data centers just got a government-mandated fast lane to the grid
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)told grid operatorson Thursday to fast track interconnection requests from data centers and other large electricity users. Under the orders, six major grid operators have to show that data centers are “able to connect to the transmission system in a timely and orderly manner.” Data centers will be responsible for paying the costs of the interconnection. Commissioners approved the orders unanimously. FERC also provided an opening to grid tech startups, directing grid operators to consider “alternative transmission technologies.” The commission didn’t name specific technologies, but the directive could include things likesolid-state transformersorsuperconducting transmission lines. Grid operators now have 30 days to submit a report detailing how much generating capacity they have to spare, if any. They also have 60 days to “defend or revise” electricity rates within their regions. FERC also directed grid operators to be more accommodating to behind-the-meter power for data centers. While FERC’s directives gave data centers a fast lane to connect, they did not address the shortage of generating capacity. Grid connections have been slow to materialize in part because new power plants are also having problems connecting. At the end of 2023, grid connection requests for power plantsexceeded the total capacityof the existing power plant fleet, meaning the line to get on the grid was longer than the grid itself could theoretically serve. Against this backdrop, electricity demand from data centers is expected tonearly triplethrough 2035. Grid operators, which had grown accustomed to near-zero demand growth over the last two decades, have strained under the load. Some, like PJM, the country’s largest grid operator, have descended into something resembling chaos, with major utilitiesthreatening to withdraw. Tech companies and developers, unable to connect to the grid in a timely manner in many locations, have been turning to on-site, or behind-the-meter, power (which is typically more expensive and complicated) out of desperation. Still, enough projects have been able to connect that electricity prices have soared in many regions. Wholesale electricity rates are up as much as 267% compared with five years ago,accordingto Bloomberg. FERC was prodded to take on the issue by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who in October said delays in data center grid connections had threatened to undermine U.S. competitiveness in AI. Since then, public sentiment toward AI and data centers hassoured considerably. Meanwhile, the Trump administration on Wednesday said it wouldpay $765 millionto wind developer Invenergy to cancel offshore wind leases near California, Maine, and New York. The company said it would use the money to build natural gas plants in the Midwest and geothermal projects in the West. One of Invenergy’s wind projects would have generated as much as 2.4 gigawatts of power — enough, at peak output, to supply roughly 1.8 million homes. Altogether, the Trump administration has now spent about $2.6 billion to scuttle offshore wind developments.
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Amazon hopes to challenge Nvidia more directly by selling its AI chips
If Amazon Web Services has its way, the cloud giant is going to push even deeper into Nvidia’s market, in what might be one of the biggest challenges to Nvidia’s AI chip dominance we’ve seen so far. Amazon’s AI chief Peter DeSantistold Bloombergthat AWS is in talks to sell its AI chip Trainium to other companies for use in data centers. DeSantis declined to specify which companies could be the buyers of such chips. Such talks about selling chips are in the early stages, the company tells TechCrunch, and stem from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’sannual shareholder letterin early April, in which he said the company’s homegrown AI chips were so coveted that he was thinking about selling them. “If our chips business was a standalone business, and sold chips produced this year to AWS and other third parties (as other leading chips companies do), our annual run rate would be ~$50 billion. There’s so much demand for our chips that it’s quite possible we’ll sell racks of them to third parties in the future.” How much of a challenge to Nvidia could Amazon be? A $50 billion competitor wouldn’t exactly tank Nvidia — which is currently on a $326 billion revenue run rate —if it keeps delivering quarters like the last one. But it’s akin toIntel’s annual revenues. AWS has so far resisted selling its AI chips for a lot of reasons. The biggest is that the money AWS actually makes on its chips is a waterfall effect. Sure, it charges customers directly for the AI tokens those chips process on its cloud, but it also gets to charge for a host of other services companies need for their AI apps, including storage, security, networking, and monitoring services. Equally importantly, Amazon has touted the capacity of its chips has been selling out faster than it can produce them. In that same shareholder letter in April,Jassy saidthe current Trainium chip capacity had sold out almost instantly. So too, he said, had the capacity for the next one, Trainium4, which won’t even be available for more than a year. This was before AWSformally added OpenAI to the models it was serving up. So selling its chips to others means it would likely have to leave current customers on waiting lists, unless it could somehow manufacture a surplus of chips through its manufacturing partners such as TSMC. But it would have to miraculously elbow Nvidia out of the way to do that with TSMC, which has recentlysupplanted Appleto become the foundry’s largest customer. AWS spokesperson Doron Aronson (who hosted me during a recent private tour of the AWS chip design facility) also confirmed that AWS may sell these chips. “While we’ve historically declined requests to sell chips directly, Andy noted it’s quite possible we’ll sell racks of them to third parties in the future.” So while Nvidia’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang recently declared thathe’s found a brand new $200 billion market for Nvidiain selling CPUs for AI, not just GPUs — thereby moving into Intel and AMD territory — Jassy clearly has his own chip ambitions: a $50 billion market that would put elbow more directly into Nvidia’s world.
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Pixi’s new iOS app turns text messages into interactive AR experiences
Forget stickers, GIFs, and emoji reactions.Pixiis betting that the next evolution of messaging is interactive augmented reality (AR). The startup launched its messaging-native app on theApp Storeon Wednesday, allowing users to send AI-powered AR characters through iMessage. Instead of appearing as static media, the characters come to life through the recipient’s iPhone camera, where they can react to their surroundings, interact with people, and respond in real time. While AR isn’t new and shiny anymore—companies likeSnaphave created AR filters and lenses for years—Pixi believes its approach is different. By combining AR with on-device AI, its characters can understand what’s happening around them and behave accordingly. A virtual cat, for example, reacts when a real dog walks past. (According to the company, all visual and audio processing remains on the device to preserve user privacy.) Pixi founder Mark Drummond (ex-DreamWorks Animation and ex-Apple) says the app is designed to bring a greater sense of presence and spontaneity to digital conversations. Rather than sending a text to wish someone a Happy Birthday, users can send characters that create a shared experience, turning a simple message into something closer to a digital gift or playful interaction. “The consumer problem we’re solving is thinking of a friend when they’re not present,” he told TechCrunch. “Sometimes the psychology is called pebbling or creative gifting. You’re sharing tokens of affection, basically cards, e-cards, and gifts. That’s your dad, or, in some cases, your granddad’s media. We can do better. We can do something that’s digitally native, and that uses everything we learned about AR on the iPhone.” Earlier this week, Drummond demonstrated the app for us, selecting the cat character, which performed a series of stand-up jokes on his desk. Notably, the cat appeared to respond to Drummond’s facial expressions. For instance, the experience concluded when he smiled, showcasing the character’s ability to perceive emotional cues. At launch, users will have access to a robot, a cat, and an animated envelope character that can react to their voice and “attack” their friends in a playful way. If they move, the envelope will chase them. There are also games like tic-tac-toe and whack-a-mole. Pixi plans to expand beyond just a few characters. The goal is to create a marketplace where studios, brands, and independent creators can share their unique characters for users to choose from. The company envisions this being used for events like movie premieres or product launches, allowing characters to generate excitement, such as when M&Ms release a new flavor. Drummond also mentioned introducing Alice in Wonderland as a character option, as she is an open intellectual property. He pointed out that “our Alice character needs to react to objects that she sees on your desktop in an ‘Alice-consistent’ way,” to demonstrate to partners how their creations will interact with the technology. In the future, Pixi hopes to allow users to create their own characters and personalities. “Part of our plan is to open up those generative AI capabilities to our [users], so they can prompt their way to say something, like, ‘I want a blue blob that threatens my friend and growls at them and keeps chasing them on the phone,’” Drummond explained. To send a character to your friend, download the app on iOS and use iMessage by tapping the plus sign button in the lower left corner. No installation is required to receive a Pixi message. Initially, the app will be available only for iPhone models 11 and newer, but there are plans to expand to Android devices and messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram in the future. Also, while the app is free for users, brands will have the option to charge for their characters if they choose. “We’re going to encourage people to do it for free, because then people become your own brand ambassadors. You’re putting them in charge of using your characters to tell their own stories,” Drummond said.
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Inside Indian Hospitals' Multi-Billion Dollar AI Pivot
Hospitals across India are integrating AI into clinical and administrative workflows, but adoption remains uneven.
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Pramaana Labs Raises $27 Million in Seed Round Led by Khosla Ventures
Pramaana Labs has raised $27 million in a seed round led by Khosla Ventures to build AI verification systems for regulated industries.
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