OpenAI raises $110 billion at $730 billion valuation

OpenAI has closed a $110 billion funding round, valuing the company at $730 billion. Amazon contributed $50 billion, Nvidia $30 billion, and SoftBank $30 billion. Additional investors are expected to join. The round is the largest private financing in history, surpassing OpenAI’s own $40 billion round from the previous year. Amazon’s $50 billion commitment begins …

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The ChatGPT gold rush continues: OpenAI eyes $100 billion in fresh capital

OpenAI is nearing the close of a landmark funding round expected to exceed $100 billion, which would set a new record for startup financing. Bloomberg reports that the deal could push OpenAI’s total valuation beyond $850 billion, up from an earlier estimate of $830 billion. The company’s pre-money valuation stands at $730 billion. The first …

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Google Gemini seemingly loses chat history for many users

A bug in Google Gemini is causing chat histories to disappear from the sidebar for a large number of users. Entire conversation lists are going blank, with some users losing up to a year of stored chats. Reports have surfaced on Reddit, Google’s own support forums, and other platforms, affecting both free and paid subscribers …

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Mistral’s revenue hits $400mn as European demand for sovereign AI grows

French AI company Mistral has reported a 20-fold increase in revenue over the past year, reaching an annualised run rate of more than $400 million. CEO Arthur Mensch attributed the growth in part to rising European demand for AI services that are independent from American technology providers. Mistral, founded in 2023 and valued at around …

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Seedance: ByteDance pledges copyright safeguards for AI video tool

ByteDance faces mounting pressure from major entertainment companies over its Seedance video generation tool. Disney and Paramount Skydance have sent cease-and-desist letters to the Chinese technology giant, accusing it of copyright infringement. Disney’s lawyers claim ByteDance provides users with a “pirated library” of copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel and other franchises. David Singer, a …

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OpenAI removes “safely” from mission statement as it transitions to for-profit structure

OpenAI has removed the word “safely” from its mission statement, a change documented in its 2024 tax filing with the Internal Revenue Service. The deletion coincides with the company’s transformation from a nonprofit organization into a for-profit business. The original mission statement from 2022 and 2023 read: “to build general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) that safely …

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OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI as agent project moves to foundation

Peter Steinberger, creator of the open-source AI agent framework OpenClaw, joins OpenAI to work on bringing AI agents to mainstream users. OpenClaw will transition to an independent foundation while OpenAI sponsors the project. Steinberger built OpenClaw as a personal project that unexpectedly gained massive adoption. The framework attracted 196,000 GitHub stars and 2 million weekly …

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Seedance 2.0: Hollywood panics as AI-generated “Tom Cruise vs Brad Pitt” fight scene goes viral

ByteDance has released Seedance 2.0, an artificial intelligence model that generates videos from text prompts. The system can process text, images, audio, and video simultaneously. ByteDance states the technology is designed for professional film, e-commerce, and advertising productions. The model has generated significant attention on social media. One viral video depicted a rooftop fight between …

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Anthropic raises $30 billion in Series G funding round

Anthropic has closed a $30 billion Series G funding round, making it the second-largest private tech fundraising in history after OpenAI’s $40 billion raise. The round was led by Coatue and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, with participation from numerous investors including Microsoft and Nvidia. The company reports a post-money valuation between $350 billion and …

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Amazon develops AI tools to accelerate film and television production

Amazon is developing artificial intelligence tools designed to speed up film and television production while reducing costs, even as concerns grow in Hollywood about job losses and industry transformation. Greg Bensinger reports for Reuters that Albert Cheng, a veteran entertainment executive at Amazon MGM Studio, leads a small team building AI applications for the entertainment …

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