Contemplations News
This is the latest addition to our website, and its purpose is to help you stay in touch with current news posts. Click on any post to read the full text.
- Sources: JPMorgan and Goldman, leading a $5B loan sale with a yield of ~11% for AI startup Volta, took a rare move to limit exposure by underwriting just $1.3B (Claire Ruckin/Bloomberg)
- Anthropic researchers say small AI models may be months away from being able to self-replicate on IoT devices like smart ovens and off-brand Android TV boxes (Anthropic)
- Suki, an AI ambient scribe for healthcare providers, raised a $90M Series E led by Healthier Capital; a source says it projects $60M-$80M in revenue this year (Brock E.W. Turner/Axios)
- Sources: Bumble is in advanced talks to be taken private at a ~$1B valuation by Ithaca Holdings, founded recently by two Silicon Valley execs; BMBL jumps 49.61% (Cara Lombardo/Wall Street Journal)
- Muse Wonder Full (max) outperforms Fable 5.1 (max) on Artificial Analysis' Intelligence Index, matches Sonnet 5.5 (max), and is just shy of Opus 5.5 (max) (@artificialanlys)
- Muse Wonder is available through the Meta Model API and Muse Code, while Muse Wonder Full is available to Muse Code subscribers (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
- Meta says Wonder includes Active Memory and Active Focus, two features designed to help AI systems perform more useful work over extended periods (Ina Fried/Axios)
- Meta says it plans to power its Muse AI agent with Wonder, starting with subscribers, and will develop specialized models it "can bring to everyone using Muse" (Robert Hart/The Verge)
- An interview with Mark Zuckerberg, who says Meta has caught up with rivals at the frontier of AI with its Wonder model and rejects calls for a slowdown (Hannah Murphy/Financial Times)
- Meta introduces Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, saying they deliver state-of-the-art performance on personal and professional agentic tasks (Meta AI Research)
- Getty enters a restructuring agreement to take the company private, with Getty family and Koch Equity committing to invest up to $533M to own 100% of Getty (Anhata Rooprai/Reuters)
- Microsoft says Maia 300 racks will hold 96 chips and use ~167 kW of power and plans to roll out "multi-gigawatt deployments" of the chip starting next year (Reuters)
- How the Chinese scam industry is spreading beyond Asia's fortified compounds as AI makes it cheaper and easier to run fake investment schemes and other scams (Bloomberg)
- Cyberattacks on Sunday night targeted Danfoss-managed refrigeration systems across hundreds of French supermarkets, heating them to 50°C for roughly six hours (Bloomberg)
- Googlebooks hands-on: a rocky start, with severe connectivity, file-sharing, and software stability issues; core productivity software lacks full desktop parity (Dominic Preston/The Verge)
- Global smartphone shipments fell 20% YoY in Q3 to a 14-year low amid memory shortages; Apple's share crossed 20% for the first time in any Q3, reaching 22% (Counterpoint Research)
- Analysis: constructing and equipping a 1GW AI data center in Abilene, Texas, could cost ~$30B, including $17B on chips, $3B on power, and $2.4B on construction (Lynn Doan/Bloomberg)
- A profile of Microsoft EVP of Copilot Charles Lamanna, a potential Satya Nadella successor; a source says Microsoft is on track to pay Anthropic $2B+ per year (Aaron Holmes/The Information)
- Google says Health Guardian is launching later in October on the Fitbit Air and Edge for Google Health Premium users, and expands automatic activity tracking (Cheyenne MacDonald/Engadget)
- Microsoft unveils its third-gen in-house AI chip, the Maia 300, built on TSMC's N2P process node and aimed at serving as its "primary AI inference system" (Tom Warren/The Verge)