A scoop-filled AI Agenda this morning...

If you thought the FM developer space was saturated, think again. Here are the startups raising millions from VCs to build new types of foundation models to take on OpenAI.

theinformation.com/articles/a-new…

New: TikTok has started pitching advertisers on an in-development generative AI tool that would create AI avatars to star in their ads—potentially competing with creators for brand deals in the process.

scoop with Jing Yang and Juro Osawa: theinformation.com/articles/tikto…

New: OpenAI has invited former employees to participate in its $86 billion tender offer.

The move reflects continued demand in the ChatGPT-maker, even while some VCs sit out the share sale due to the startup's high price.

W/ Jon Victor:

theinformation.com/briefings/open…

And here's a great write up from Stephanie Palazzolo on the AI that came up during our capital conference

theinformation.com/articles/dont-…

AI startups are beginning to lose their rose-colored glasses.

The latest example: Tome, an AI presentation startup that's raised $80MM+ from VCs like Coatue and Greylock.

But Tome isn't alone—here's what their struggles can teach us about AI startups.

theinformation.com/articles/the-a…

New: It’s been a year of big changes for Google DeepMind—and for its leader, Demis Hassabis. My look at how he’s been dealing with the AI unit’s new dynamic, which has at times left him deeply frustrated:

theinformation.com/articles/googl…

important question …. is it bad luck to watch the solar eclipse today

Remember the mysterious AI device Sam Altman and Jony Ive were working on?

Well now it's in talks to raise up to $1Bn in funding.

More from Jessica Lessin Kate Clark Cory Weinberg:

theinformation.com/articles/jony-…

New: Saudi Arabia is pushing to get closer to artificial intelligence startups with more direct stakes & a new mega-fund that’s under discussion. But AI startups shouldn't count on that cash just yet. theinformation.com/articles/saudi…

i literally moved away from SF to avoid earthquakes....

New in today's AI agenda: 🤖Malicious Models🤖

A newly discovered Hugging Face vulnerability would let hackers upload models that could execute code, letting them steal data from other people's models on HF or change how those models behave. Not great!
theinformation.com/articles/huggi…

An interesting trend I've noticed... model developers trying to find lifelines by becoming... chip resellers?

More in this morning's AI Agenda:

theinformation.com/articles/start…

Jam-packed AI Agenda for y'all this morning:

- What's the latest with AI startup valuations (hint: a correction could be coming)
- Early glimpses of OpenAI's search engine efforts
- And a scoop from Kalley Huang highlighting Meta's brain drain

theinformation.com/articles/ai-va…

Happy Monday! Can always count on Anissa Gardizy to turn a topic as complicated as networking cables into something interesting & educational :)

Read more in today's AI Agenda about why OpenAI is trying to lessen its reliance on some Nvidia hardware:

theinformation.com/articles/opena…

The AI tsunami is coming.

Y Combinator's W24 mega-batch of 157 AI startups touching 20+ different sectors gives us a glimpse of where AI is headed this year.

Here's a breakdown of the top 6 themes 🧵👇

NEW:

Unpaid bills, bungled contracts, a disastrous meeting with Jensen Huang.

From interviews with 32 sources, Iain Martin and I have the story on how poor business judgment and wild overspending unraveled Emad Mostaque's reign as Stability AI's CEO:

forbes.com/sites/kenrickc…

here comes stargate!

theinformation.com/articles/micro…

the art for this is giving jesus (which is quite appropriate for easter weekend)

What's better than one model? Two!

In this morning's AI Agenda, hardmaru from Sakana AI and I chat about model merging, a compute-efficient technique for improving AI models' capabilities on specific tasks that's breaking into the mainstream:

theinformation.com/articles/why-t…

Breaking: Canadian pension fund PSP Investments is set to co-lead cohere's funding round at a valuation of ~$5Bn. The model developer's ARR is at $22MM this month, up from $13MM at the end of last year.

theinformation.com/briefings/cana…