Zuckerberg shares vision for personal superintelligence

Today’s Highlights:

📰 News: Zuckerberg shares his vision for personal superintelligence as Meta continues to poach top AI talent while spending big on AI infrastructure 

💰 Funding: US NSF will invest $100M into 5 new AI research institutes

⚡️ Top News Stories:

1. Mark Zuckerberg shared his vision for Meta’s shifting AI strategy toward personal superintelligence delivered via multimodal devices like smart glasses, while backing away from open-sourcing advanced models due to growing safety concerns. 

2. Meta has launched an aggressive recruitment campaign targeting Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines Lab, offering up to $1Bn to lure top researchers as it races to build competitive superintelligence models and weaponizes open source to undercut OpenAI.

3. Meta has already lured away four key researchers from Apple’s foundation model team, threatening its AI ambitions by providing multimillion-dollar offers, prompting internal unrest and a potential shift toward third-party AI models like ChatGPT amid strategic uncertainty.

4. Meta is set to spend up to $72Bn in 2025 to build out AI infrastructure including massive data centers like Prometheus and Hyperion, as part of a multi-year strategy to lead the AI arms race, while simultaneously investing billions in top-tier AI talent for its Superintelligence Labs unit.

5. Silicon Valley’s AI talent war has reached pro sports-like intensity, as AI researchers are being courted by multiple tech giants with $250M deals and perks like access to tens of thousands of GPUs, turning the hiring process into a strategic, high-stakes spectacle.

6. Google DeepMind has launched AlphaEarth Foundations, a groundbreaking AI model that synthesizes Earth observation data to produce ultra-accurate, near real-time maps for monitoring environmental changes like deforestation and coastal shifts, now available via Earth Engine.

7. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a major ramp-up in AI investments and talent reallocation during the Q3 2025 earnings call, signaling a commitment to deeply integrate AI across Apple’s platforms and products, while defending its slower, quality-focused rollout of features like the upgraded Siri.

8. Reddit’s Q2 earnings highlight the company’s deepening focus on AI, with new advertising tools, growing data licensing revenue, and surging usage of its Reddit Answers feature driving both monetization and user engagement.

9. Anthropic has surged past OpenAI in the enterprise AI market, now holding 32% overall and 42% of the coding segment thanks to its Claude 3.5 and 3.7 models, as businesses increasingly favor closed models and move away from open-source options.

10. xAI’s Grok app is about to leap beyond chat with the launch of its “Imagine” feature for infinite image and video generation—complete with audio and adult-friendly options—alongside a new virtual companion named Valentin, all integrated in-app as xAI aims to rival GPT-5 with a viral-ready creative platform.

11. OpenAI has announced Stargate Norway, its first European AI data center built with British infrastructure provider Nscale and Norwegian energy giant Aker, a 230 MW renewable-powered facility near Narvik designed to support AI workloads with 100,000 Nvidia GPUs and advance Norway’s sovereign AI ecosystem.

12. Google is rolling out a U.S.-based test of machine learning-powered age estimation across its services, automatically restricting content and ads for users flagged as under 18 and offering a verification process to correct errors, in alignment with global child safety regulations.

13. Amazon will pay The New York Times at least $20M annually under a multiyear licensing deal that gives it access to content from the Times’s news, cooking, and Athletic sections for AI training and Alexa integration—the publisher’s first such pact and a milestone in AI-media relations.

14. Quora’s Poe has launched a powerful new developer API offering access to over 100 AI models across text, image, video, and voice through its flexible point-based subscription system, empowering developers to integrate multimodal AI tools into apps using familiar OpenAI-compatible endpoints.

15. Stanford researchers created a fully operational virtual research lab run by AI agents—including a “principal investigator” (PI) and domain-specific specialists—that can collaboratively solve complex biological problems with minimal human input, already designing a nanobody-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate in days—successfully validated in real labs—highlighting the potential. 

💰 Top Funding News:

1. The U.S. National Science Foundation, backed by Capital One and Intel, is investing $100M in five new AI research institutes and a community hub to drive innovations in mental health, drug discovery, STEM education, and workforce development, solidifying America's global AI leadership.

2. Backed by Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Fable has launched Showrunner, an AI-powered platform for user-created animated TV episodes that lets viewers script, star in, and remix stories — potentially transforming streaming into two-way interactive entertainment.

3. Conversion, which uses AI to automate marketing workflows like lead organization and personalized follow-ups for midsize businesses, raised a $28M Series A led by Abstract with participation from True Ventures and HOF Capital.

4. PlayerZero, which uses AI agents to detect, fix, and prevent bugs in AI-generated code for large enterprise codebases, raised a $15M Series A led by Foundation Capital.

5. SixSense, which uses AI to predict and detect semiconductor defects in real-time to boost yield and cut inspection time, raised a $8.5M Series A led by Peak XV’s Surge with participation from Alpha Intelligence Capital, FEBE, and others.

That's all for today's email! If you want more please follow us at the social channels linked below, or check out our website!

Share our newsletter: If you like our work please share/forward this email with your friends, colleagues, and family. It's the best way to support us!

If this email was forwarded to you please sign up here to continue receiving them.

Want your content, product, jobs, or event featured in our newsletter? Reply to this email with the details, and our team will reach out to you.

Do you use AI for work? Tell us how, and you could be featured in our newsletter!

Check out our website for more resources, including a list of AI investors, products, events, and twitter follows.

For an archive of all our posts, click here.

We'd love to hear from you! You can always leave us comments or feedback by replying to this email!

Powered by AI. Curated and edited by Humans.