billion-dollar bets

AI Breakthroughs, Billion-Dollar Bets & Backlash – The Global AI News Roundup (Aug 11–12, 2025)

OpenAI released GPT-5 on August 7, 2025, but by August 11 users reported sluggish responses and a less personal feel, prompting Sam Altman to admit the rollout was bumpy and to keep GPT-4 available for paying users while fixes are rolled out. OpenAI released GPT-OSS models with 20 billion and 120 billion parameters, the first freely downloadable large language models since 2019, available via AWS and excelling at coding, science, and math. Caltech researchers used reinforcement learning with a two-agent system called “player” and “observer” to crack the 60-year Andrews–Curtis Conjecture, showing AI can find solutions to long-standing group-theory problems.

12 August 2025

AI’s Big Bang: Breakthroughs, Billion‑Dollar Bets & Backlash (AI News Roundup Aug 6–7, 2025)

MIT and Duke researchers used AI to design polymers with iron-based ferrocenes that absorb stress, dramatically speeding up additive discovery from weeks per candidate, with findings published in ACS Central Science. Profluent Bio used a protein language model trained on 500 million sequences to invent OpenCRISPR-1, the first CRISPR enzyme designed entirely by AI, which edited human genome cells with high precision and was published in Nature, with OpenCRISPR-1 open-sourced. OpenAI released two open-weight large language models with 120 billion and 20 billion parameters, optimized to run on a single GPU or a laptop, with the weights openly accessible for

7 August 2025

Artificial Intelligence · Controversies · Industry Trends · Innovation · Tech News

AI’s Frenzy: Billion-Dollar Bets, Breakthroughs & Backlash – Global AI News Roundup (Aug 5–6, 2025)

MIT and Duke University researchers used AI to design tougher plastics, identifying iron-based ferrocene additives and mechanophores that make polymer networks absorb stress, with results published in ACS Central Science. Profluent Bio used generative AI to create OpenCRISPR-1, the first AI-designed CRISPR enzyme, which edited human genome cells and was trained on 500 million sequences, with the work published in Nature and open-sourced. OpenAI unveiled two open-weight LLMs with 120 billion and 20 billion parameters that can run on a single GPU or a laptop, with open weights for fine-tuning and availability on AWS Bedrock. Thomson Reuters launched CoCounsel Legal,

6 August 2025

Artificial Intelligence · Breakthroughs · Global Updates · Industry Trends · Tech News

AI’s 48-Hour Frenzy: Breakthroughs, Billion-Dollar Bets & Bold Policies (July 22–23, 2025)

Google and OpenAI won gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad by solving 5 of 6 problems with new general-purpose reasoning based on natural language understanding. OpenAI disclosed its experimental model scaled up test-time compute to think longer and in parallel, a very expensive undertaking. Google DeepMind’s Gemini Deep Think, unveiled in May, solved IMO problems within the 4.5-hour limit entirely in natural language. MIT CSAIL and Facebook AI researchers presented ICML 2025 work showing image generation with encoder-only tokens, enabling inpainting without a generator and morphing a red panda into a tiger. Alibaba’s Qwen-3 Coder, open-sourced for software development,

23 July 2025

Artificial Intelligence · Business · Innovation · Policy · Technology

Meta’s AI Revolution Unleashed: July 2025 Breakthroughs, Billion‑Dollar Bets & Backlash

In July 2025, Meta AI expanded to include generative video editing powered by the MovieGen model, with one-click effects to change outfits, backgrounds, and lighting. WhatsApp introduced an AI concierge for business chats that handles customer inquiries and post-purchase recommendations, announced at Conversations on July 1, with testing in select markets including Mexico and plans for cloud-based voice and video calling. The Ray-Ban smart glasses’ companion app was rebranded as the Meta AI app, enabling hands-free AI queries and moment recording, following the June debut of Oakley Meta Glasses with built-in AI. In mid-July 2025, Meta and AWS announced a

21 July 2025

Artificial Intelligence · Breakthroughs · Industry Analysis · Meta · NASDAQ:META · Technology

AI in Overdrive: Breakthroughs, Billion-Dollar Bets, and Bold Policies – News Roundup (July 20–21, 2025)

OpenAI’s experimental large language model earned a gold medal at the 2025 International Math Olympiad, solving 5 of 6 problems for 35/42 points, with OpenAI’s Alexander Wei hinting that GPT-5 will be a system of multiple specialized models orchestrated by a routing algorithm. ChatGPT introduced an autonomous ‘Agent’ mode on July 17, enabling web browsing, plugins, and online purchases, though it remains unavailable in the EU due to regulatory uncertainty. AWS unveiled ‘AgentCore’ for building autonomous AI agents, including a sandboxed code interpreter and integrated web browser, and pledged $100 million to fund ‘agentic AI’ startups via its Generative AI

21 July 2025

Artificial Intelligence · Business · News · Policy · Technology