News

Former DeepMind researcher raises $55M at $300M valuation for visual AI startup

Andrew Dai left DeepMind to build visual AI models for AGI, then raised a $55 million seed round at a $300 million valuation before shipping a product. This podcast breaks down how he chose strategic partners like Nvidia and Menlo Ventures over higher offers, why speed is his biggest moat, and how startups can recruit top researchers away from Big Tech.

Read MoreFormer DeepMind researcher raises $55M at $300M valuation for visual AI startup

Why AMI Labs’ CEO won’t call his AI ‘AGI’ or ‘superintelligence’

Alexandre LeBrun refuses to call his company's work AGI or superintelligence, arguing the terms are undefined and deflect from the real problem: AI's inability to understand the physical world. His approach at AMI Labs is to build world models that predict the next state of reality, not the next token, and to partner with industrial Asia rather than chase marketing labels.

Read MoreWhy AMI Labs’ CEO won’t call his AI ‘AGI’ or ‘superintelligence’

RL with Verifiable Rewards, Where the Verifier Is a Wet Lab

Lila Sciences treats the wet lab as a verifier in an RL loop, generating 10 trillion experimental tokens to train a single generalist model across biology, chemistry, and materials. The lab becomes a data center, not a product factory — and the counterintuitive result is that breadth across sciences yields better model depth than narrow specialization.

Read MoreRL with Verifiable Rewards, Where the Verifier Is a Wet Lab

Microsoft’s record 570 patches attributed to AI bug discovery

Microsoft's record 570-patch Tuesday, driven by AI-powered vulnerability discovery, signals a permanent shift in patch volume. Two zero-days were already exploited, forcing organizations to rethink their patch cadence and rollback strategies. This is not a one-time spike but a new operational baseline for anyone running Windows or SharePoint.

Read MoreMicrosoft’s record 570 patches attributed to AI bug discovery

Whatnot acquires Shaped to power real-time live shopping recommendations

Whatnot's acquisition of Shaped tackles the core tension in live commerce: helping shoppers find products when inventory, auctions, and intent shift second by second. By integrating Shaped's real-time recommendation tech, Whatnot aims to push personalization from minutes to near-instant, leveraging 500K+ hours of live video weekly.

Read MoreWhatnot acquires Shaped to power real-time live shopping recommendations