Industry Trend AI News & Updates

Nvidia Faces Growing Challenges Despite Record GTC Attendance and New Product Launches

At GTC 2025, Nvidia unveiled new chips and products to a record 25,000 attendees while addressing growing challenges including U.S. tariffs, emerging competitors like DeepSeek, and AI clients developing in-house alternatives. CEO Jensen Huang emphasized that reasoning models will increase demand for Nvidia chips and announced plans for U.S. manufacturing investments to address potential supply chain issues.

Perplexity AI Eyes Massive $1B Funding at $18B Valuation Amid Search Competition

AI search startup Perplexity is reportedly in early talks to raise up to $1 billion at an $18 billion valuation, doubling its previous valuation from December. The company, which has reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue, faces increasing competition as Anthropic adds web search to Claude and Google tests an AI-powered search engine.

SoftBank Acquires Chip Designer Ampere Computing for $6.5 Billion

SoftBank Group is acquiring Ampere Computing, a semiconductor designer specializing in ARM-based server chips, for $6.5 billion in an all-cash deal. This acquisition follows SoftBank's series of AI-focused investments, including partnerships with OpenAI and investments in AI infrastructure, as part of its strategy to support artificial superintelligence development.

AI Researchers Challenge AGI Timelines, Question LLMs' Path to Human-Level Intelligence

Several prominent AI leaders including Hugging Face's Thomas Wolf, Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, Meta's Yann LeCun, and former OpenAI researcher Kenneth Stanley are expressing skepticism about near-term AGI predictions. They argue that current large language models (LLMs) face fundamental limitations, particularly in creativity and generating original questions rather than just answers, and suggest new architectural approaches may be needed for true human-level intelligence.

Meta's Llama Models Reach 1 Billion Downloads as Company Pursues AI Leadership

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company's Llama AI model family has reached 1 billion downloads, representing a 53% increase over a three-month period. Despite facing copyright lawsuits and regulatory challenges in Europe, Meta plans to invest up to $80 billion in AI this year and is preparing to launch new reasoning models and agentic features.

Elon Musk's xAI Acquires Hotshot to Accelerate Video Generation Capabilities

Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, has acquired Hotshot, a startup specializing in AI-powered video generation technologies similar to OpenAI's Sora. The acquisition positions xAI to integrate video generation capabilities into its Grok platform, with Musk previously indicating that a "Grok Video" model could be released within months.

Nvidia GTC 2025 Conference Begins with Anticipated Major Hardware Announcements

Nvidia's GTC 2025 conference has commenced with expected announcements about new AI hardware, including Blackwell Ultra processors and partnerships with GM. The event will feature updates on Nvidia's next-generation computing platforms, described as "personal AI supercomputers."

OpenAI Secures $11.9 Billion Computing Deal with CoreWeave

OpenAI has signed a five-year, $11.9 billion contract with cloud provider CoreWeave to secure AI computing resources, while also acquiring a $350 million equity stake in the company. This significant investment comes as CoreWeave prepares for an IPO and maintains deep connections with Microsoft, potentially reshaping the dynamics in the AI cloud computing sector.

Browser Use Tool Sees Explosive Growth as AI Agents Gain Traction

Browser Use, an AI tool enabling automated interaction with websites, has experienced rapid growth following its association with viral AI agent platform Manus. The tool, which extracts website elements to facilitate AI interaction, saw daily downloads increase from 5,000 to 28,000 in a week, with co-creator Gregor Zunic predicting more AI agents than humans on the web by year's end.

Google's $3 Billion Investment in Anthropic Reveals Deeper Ties Than Previously Known

Recently obtained court documents reveal Google owns a 14% stake in AI startup Anthropic and plans to invest an additional $750 million this year, bringing its total investment to over $3 billion. While Google lacks voting rights or board seats, the revelation raises questions about Anthropic's independence, especially as Amazon has also committed up to $8 billion in funding to the company.