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Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. What did Ilya see? Potentially a new path to ASI that’s worth betting billions on — despite no product or revenue stream.
With investors ready to value his secretive company at $30B based on a “different mountain to climb,” is the former OpenAI co-founder sitting on a breakthrough that could rewrite the AI roadmap?
In today’s AI rundown:
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Ex-OpenAI scientist’s new path to ASI
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Microsoft looking to move beyond OpenAI
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Making viral posts 10x faster with AI
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Stanford AI’s obesity treatment breakthrough
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4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Image source: Getty Images
The Rundown: Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever’s startup Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) is reportedly raising $2B at a $30B valuation—with the researcher hinting at a different approach to achieving advanced AI than all other rivals.
The details:
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Sutskever reportedly told investors he has identified a completely new direction for AI development, describing it as “a different mountain to climb.”
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According to the Wall Street Journal, SSI is in talks for funding at a valuation of $30B, despite having no revenue or public-facing product.
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The company is not planning to release any commercial products prior to achieving superintelligence and operates leanly with just 20 employees.
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Sutskever departed OpenAI in the months following the Nov. 2023 ouster of Sam Altman, later saying he “regretted his participation” in the board’s actions.
Why it matters: SSI has no shortage of investors despite the lack of immediate plans for a revenue-generating product. But a contrarian bet on an entirely new path could reshape how we think about achieving ASI — with the next breakthrough potentially coming from rethinking AI’s foundations rather than just continuing to scale models.
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Image source: Getty Images
The Rundown: Microsoft is reportedly developing MAI, a new family of AI models that rivals current industry leaders — alongside the build-out of its own in-house reasoning models to reduce reliance on OpenAI for its Copilot suite.
The details:
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The new MAI models reportedly match top offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic, with the company planning to offer them through Azure.
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They are being tested as replacements for OpenAI’s tech in Copilot while also experimenting with alternatives from xAI, Meta, and DeepSeek.
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Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman reportedly grew frustrated last fall with OpenAI’s refusal to share the inner workings of its o1 reasoning model.
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OpenAI also renegotiated a deal in January with Microsoft, allowing for the use of other server providers, adding to growing tension between the companies.
Why it matters: Despite Microsoft’s $13B investment in OpenAI, the relationship has felt contentious for a long time. While the tech giant may have felt beholden when OpenAI was a clear leader, competition has increased significantly — and an internal rival model would certainly change the dynamic even more.
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🚀 Making viral posts 10x faster with AI
The Rundown: Blotato is an all-in-one AI content tool that helps you create, remix, and distribute AI-optimized content across multiple platforms, accelerating your brand presence 10x faster.
Step-by-step:
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Sign up for a free account at blotato.com.
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Import content from any source—e.g., YouTube, TikTok, PDF, podcast—or type your own preferred topic.
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Select your target social platforms to generate viral-optimized posts tailored to each one.
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Customize the drafts with your insights, add AI images or faceless videos, and then publish to all social platforms seamlessly!
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Image source: Stanford University
The Rundown: Stanford researchers just discovered a natural molecule called BRP that matches Ozempic’s weight loss powers but with fewer side effects—using AI to unlock a potential breakthrough in obesity treatment.
The details:
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BRP targets specific brain regions instead of affecting multiple organs, potentially avoiding common Ozempic side effects like nausea and muscle loss.
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In animal tests, a single dose of BRP cut food intake by half in both mice and minipigs, with obese mice losing significant fat over two weeks of treatment.
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Stanford’s “Peptide Predictor” AI system sifted through 20,000 human genes, analyzing thousands of potential candidates, to find the natural molecule.
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A company has already been created to begin human trials, with researcher Katrin Svensson suggesting that BRP could revolutionize weight loss treatment.
Why it matters: While much of the AI healthcare buzz has focused on diagnosis and drug design, Stanford’s breakthrough shows how AI can unlock new medicines hidden in nature. This success in finding a natural alternative to a blockbuster drug could spark a wave of AI-powered discoveries in our biology.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
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📜 Mistral OCR – SOTA API for extracting text from images or documents
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🤖 Manus AI – Fully autonomous AI agent capable of handling real-world tasks
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🗣️ Tavus – Conversational Video Interface to bring AI agents to life
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💡 Template Hub – Marketplace to create, share, deploy specialized AI agents
📰 Everything else in AI today
Former DeepMind researchers launched Reflection AI with $130M in funding, aiming to build autonomous coding systems as a stepping stone to superintelligent AI.
X added functionality for users to be able to ask Grok questions by tagging an automated @Grok account, joining Perplexity in providing quick access.
Alibaba researchers published START, a new tool-integrated reasoning model that significantly enhances LLM capabilities through code execution and self-checking.
Hedra unveiled Character-3, an ‘omnimodal model’ capable of reasoning across image, text, and audio to create high-quality video generations.
Luma Labs released Ray2 Flash, a new version of its top-tier video generation model that brings 3x faster speed and lower costs.
Sudowrite introduced Muse, a new AI model trained for fiction writing that features advanced storytelling capabilities and longer attention for chapter-length outputs.
Sam Altman’s World Network released World Chat, an encrypted mini-app that allows users to chat, connect, and send money with verified humans.
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See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team
