Databricks Closes In On $55 Billion Valuation After Latest Fundraise
Databricks is in talks to raise up to $8 billion from investors that would value the data analytics company at $55 billion, in one of the largest fundraises in Silicon Valley.
One of the world’s most valuable private tech companies is raising billions more in cash and is in no rush to go public, sources told CNBC.
San Francisco-based Databricks is raising at least another $5 billion in its latest funding round, though it could raise up to $8 billion given the round is ongoing, according to several people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. The latest raise would value the company at $55 billion and could top the largest round of the year, by OpenAI.
The latest funding is designed to help Databricks employees sell shares, one of the people said. Reducing pressure from employees to cash out also reduces the need for a liquidity event such as an IPO. One source said the funding round makes Databricks’ highly anticipated public debut less urgent. But it could still happen in the back half of next year.
Databricks was founded in 2013 and sells software that helps enterprises organize data and build their own generative AI products. It uses machine learning to help clients from AT&T to Walgreens parse and make sense of massive troves of data.
More about Databricks fundraising efforts on CNBC
Inside NotebookLM with Raiza Martin and Steven Johnson | Google Deep Mind
NotebookLM is a research assistant powered by Gemini that draws on expertise from storytelling to present information in an engaging way. It allows users to upload their own documents and generate insights, explanations, and—more recently—podcasts.
This innovative feature, also known as audio overviews, has captured the imagination of millions of people worldwide, who have created thousands of engaging podcasts ranging from personal narratives to educational explainers using source materials like CVs, personal journals, sales decks, and more.
Join Raiza Martin and Steven Johnson from Google Labs, Google’s testing ground for products, as they guide host Hannah Fry through the technical advancements that have made NotebookLM possible. They'll explore what it means to be interesting, the challenges of generating natural-sounding speech, as well as exciting new modalities on the horizon.
These AI Minecraft Characters Did Weirdly Human Stuff All On Their Own
Hundreds of LLM-powered AI agents spontaneously made friends, invented jobs, and spread religion. Left to their own devices, an army of AI characters didn’t just survive — they thrived. They developed in-game jobs, shared memes, voted on tax reforms and even spread a religion.
The experiment played out on the open-world gaming platform Minecraft, where up to 1000 software agents at a time used large language models (LLMs) to interact with one another. Given just a nudge through text prompting, they developed a remarkable range of personality traits, preferences and specialist roles, with no further inputs from their human creators.
The work, from AI startup Altera, is part of a broader field that wants to use simulated agents to model how human groups would react to new economic policies or other interventions.
But for Altera’s founder, Robert Yang, who quit his position as an assistant professor in computational neuroscience at MIT to start the company, this demo is just the beginning. He sees it as an early step towards large-scale “AI civilizations” that can coexist and work alongside us in digital spaces. “The true power of AI will be unlocked when we have actually truly autonomous agents that can collaborate at scale,” says Yang.
More on Altera’s interactive AI Agents on MIT Technology Review
Cohen | How AI Could Impact Geopolitics
The rise of AI could have profound implications for geopolitics given the decisions about where AI infrastructure is going to get built. Jared Cohen, president of global affairs and co-head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute, discusses the data center diplomacy that is shaping geopolitics.
ChatGPT For iOS Adds New Shortcut For Using SearchGPT
As we reported last month, OpenAI has finally launched SearchGPT, which is essentially a search engine developed by OpenAI that uses artificial intelligence to find and combine the best results from the web. And with the latest ChatGPT update for iOS, it’s now easier to use SearchGPT.
ChatGPT app adds SearchGPT extension to Apple Shortcuts
The latest version of the app for iPhone and iPad adds a new Apple Shortcuts integration, which lets users create shortcuts to open SearchGPT. With this shortcut, you can open a new conversation in the ChatGPT app with SearchGPT enabled. It’s worth noting that shortcuts can be added to the Home Screen or even triggered by Siri.
While ChatGPT has always sort of been used as a search engine by some, OpenAI has made specific upgrades that provide the sort of features we’ve all come to expect from search providers like Google and Bing. Here’s how OpenAI explains it:
ChatGPT can now search the web in a much better way than before. You can get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for. This blends the benefits of a natural language interface with the value of up-to-date sports scores, news, stock quotes, and more.
ChatGPT will choose to search the web based on what you ask, or you can manually choose to search by clicking the web search icon. OpenAI has partnered with news and data providers so it can provide real-time information, and package it in new dedicated designs for specific content types.
Read more about using SearchGPT with Apple shortcuts
CoreWeave Unleashes the Power of the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72
CoreWeave is proud to present one of the first demonstrations of the GB200 NVL72 by a cloud provider, showcasing its remarkable performance, advanced cooling technology, networking power and energy efficiency.
Artists Say They Leaked OpenAI’s Sora Video Model In Protest
OpenAI first teased its text-to-video AI model, Sora, back in February and hasn’t provided any meaningful updates on when it will be released since then. Now, it looks like some artists leaked access to the model in protest of being used by the company for what they claim is “unpaid R&D and PR.”
On Tuesday, a group of Sora beta testers claimed to have leaked early access to Sora with a working interface for generating videos. In a post on Hugging Face, a public repository of AI models, they say that people were able to create lots of AI videos — all of which resemble OpenAI’s own Sora demos — before the company intervened to shut down access.
From the group’s open letter:
DEAR CORPORATE AI OVERLORDS
We received access to Sora with the promise to be early testers, red teamers and creative partners. However, we believe instead we are being lured into “art washing” to tell the world that Sora is a useful tool for artists.
ARTISTS ARE NOT YOUR UNPAID R&D
☠️ we are not your: free bug testers, PR puppets, training data, validation tokens ☠️
The letter goes on to say:
“We are not against the use of AI technology as a tool for the arts (if we were, we probably wouldn’t have been invited to this program). What we don’t agree with is how this artist program has been rolled out and how the tool is shaping up ahead of a possible public release. We are sharing this to the world in the hopes that OpenAI becomes more open, more artist friendly and supports the arts beyond PR stunts.”
More about artists leaking early access to Sora on The Verge
Anthropic's New Model Context Protocol (MCP) In 10 Minutes | Developer’s Digest
In this video, we dive into Anthropic's latest announcement about their new open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP). Designed to create a universal standard for connecting AI systems with various data sources, MCP aims to simplify and enhance the way AI models interact with data trapped in information silos and legacy systems.
I read through the official blog post, exploring how to integrate MCP into your applications, and discuss the specifics of using the Model Context Protocol SDKs.
I'll also highlight the prebuilt MCP servers for popular platforms and show you how to get started quickly. This development holds promise for a more connected and efficient AI environment.
Thats all for today, however new advancements, investments, and partnerships are happening as you read this. AI is moving fast, subscribe today to stay informed.