(A)bsolutely (I)ncredible Podcast

AI21, an Israeli startup building its own large language models (LLMs), is raising a $300 million Series D funding round, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. The valuation could not be learned. The company last raised $208 million at a $1.4 billion valuation in 2023. This round would bring the company's total funding to $636 million. AI21 was founded in 2017 by entrepreneurs and AI r...

In this fourth episode of the AI Bros podcast Bruce and John talk about everything from Sam Altman’s second phase of the World rollout with more locations, to ChatGTP being kind to Bruce about the notion of AI Bros. Both Bruce and John share their hot takes, perspective and journey with AI as they learn it and use it in their lives. The AI Bros podcast is where artificial intelligence meets real t...

Investors hoping to back former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati's buzzy new AI startup are being asked to commit a minimum of $50 million, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal. Murati is raising around $2 billion of capital at a $10 billion valuation for Thinking Machines Lab, BI previously reported. Multiple sources say the megaround, led by Andreessen Horowitz, is near...

Artificial intelligence is not just infiltrating the startup world. Now credit card giants Visa and Mastercard are getting into the AI game. Visa announced on Wednesday Intelligent Commerce , which it says enables AI to find and buy. AI agents will be able to shop and make purchases on behalf of consumers, based on preselected preferences. In a statement, Visa chief product and strategy officer Ja...

The crush of traffic going into training and running AI has quickly turned into a major cost and resource headache for organizations. Today, Cast AI , a startup building tools to ease and optimize workloads for AI and other tasks with automation, is raising a major round of funding on the back of strong growth and partnerships with major players in the space. The company has raised a $108 million...

AI-based coding has exploded in popularity on the promise that it will make developers’ jobs faster and easier. But AI coding has also resulted in something else: a vast increase in lines of code, and thus the likelihood of bugs resulting in crashes or other mishaps. On Monday, an Israeli startup called Lightrun , which has built an observability platform to identify and debug (remediate) code bef...

In this third episode of the AI Bros podcast, both Bruce and John share their hot takes, perspective and journey with AI as they learn it and use it in their lives. The AI Bros podcast is where artificial intelligence meets real talk. It’s interesting, fun and informative. Subscribe, Like, Follow, and Share the AI Bros to your favorite social media platforms. The AI Bros podcast is a weekly series...

Nvidia was falling on Monday as it prepares for a new challenge in the artificial-intelligence chip sector from China’s Huawei Technologies. Nvidia shares were down 1.4% at $109.49 in premarket trading. The stock rose 4.3% in Friday’s session. Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing a new chip, called the Ascend 910D, which it hopes will be more powerful than Nvidia’s H100,...

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay Thursday highlighting how little researchers understand about the inner workings of the world’s leading AI models. To address that, Amodei set an ambitious goal for Anthropic to reliably detect most AI model problems by 2027. Amodei acknowledges the challenge ahead. In The Urgency of Interpretability, the CEO says Anthropic has made early breakthroughs...

In this second episode of the AI Bros podcast Bruce and John go completely unscripted and just letting the conversation flow where it goes. They talk about everything from Sam Altman’s controversial TED interview to John’s Animated Action Figure that came to life and broke out of its packaging. It’s interesting, fun and informative. Subscribe, Like, Follow, and Share the AI Bros to your favorite s...

The Trump administration is considering issuing an executive order that would create a policy integrating artificial intelligence into K-12 education, according to a draft executive order circulated by the White House to several federal agencies on Monday and obtained by The Washington Post. Federal agencies would be instructed to take steps to train students in using AI and to incorporate it into...

Every now and then, a Silicon Valley startup launches with such an absurdly described mission that it’s difficult to discern if the startup is for real or just satire. Such is the case with Mechanize , a startup whose founder – and the non-profit AI research organization he founded called Epoch – is being skewered on X after he announced it. Complaints encompass both the startup’s mission, and the...

Before entering into talks to acquire artificial intelligence code-writing startup Windsurf, OpenAI looked at buying another option: Cursor. The ChatGPT creator last year reached out to Anysphere, the startup that sells the Cursor application, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC. OpenAI reached out again this year as Cursor was enjoying a new wave of popularity. The talks again failed to...

OpenAI is working on its own X-like social network, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. While the project is still in early stages, we’re told there’s an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation that has a social feed. CEO Sam Altman has been privately asking outsiders for feedback about the project, our sources say. It’s unclear if OpenAI’s plan is to release t...

The president of one of Silicon Valley's most-watched AI ventures says tools powered by the technology will inevitably become a force multiplier for businesses and spark the kind of productivity gains that turbo-charged the U.S. economy in the 80s and '90s. Daniela Amodei, co-founder and president of Anthropic, also strongly emphasized in her session Wednesday at Canva Create the need for ethical...

Forbes announced its seventh annual AI 50 list, highlighting the most promising startups driving advancements across industries. As AI continues to dominate global discussions, this year’s list celebrates innovative companies that are building impactful products and applications that use AI to solve real-world challenges and generate business growth. Even amid industry-wide challenges such as data...

I met John Lawson III at a conference put together by the Startup Bros; Will Mitchell and Kyle Eschenroeder at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando, Florida about 10 years ago. We have been friends ever since. Connect with John directly at www.johnlawson.com. Recently, John included me in a post saying these are people you need to follow if you’re interested in AI, which I was grateful for. So, I reached o...

Mira Murati, OpenAI's former chief technology officer, is expanding her fundraising ambitions for Thinking Machines Lab, her hotly anticipated generative-AI company, which has been the subject of feverish interest and speculation from investors in Silicon Valley. The company is raising upward of $2 billion in venture funding, people familiar with the matter told Business Insider. That's double wha...

In this episode of the (A)bsolutely (I)ncredible podcast, Bruce Burke sits down with Dennis Wilson, Founder and CEO of DBC Technologies. Dennis is a graduate of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and attended the University of British Columbia. DBC provides AI Voice Agents for small to medium enterprise businesses. Dennis is deeply involved in Jim Roddy’s Retail Solution Providers Assoc...

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is seeking to raise about $20 billion in what will be the largest fund in its history, to capitalize on global investors' interest in backing U.S. artificial intelligence companies, sources told Reuters. The tech investment firm, known informally as a16z, has told limited partners that the fund will be dedicated to growth-stage investments in AI companies a...

Many artificial intelligence startups are still struggling to find paying customers, but not Anysphere Inc., the maker of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor. Despite not having spent a single dollar on marketing, it’s become one of the fastest-growing startups of all time, not to mention part of the daily routine for software programmers at businesses ranging from deep tech companies like OpenAI t...

Meta has announced Llama 4 , its newest collection of AI models that now power the Meta AI assistant on the web and in WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. The two new models, also available to download from Meta or Hugging Face , are Llama 4 Scout — a small model capable of fitting in a single Nvidia H100 GPU — and Llama 4 Maverick, which is more akin to GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash. Meta says it’s...

OpenAI is paving the way for its next major AI evolution, confirming the development of GPT-5, a model the company says is designed to unify and streamline its increasingly complex lineup of AI offerings. This strategic shift aims to create a more powerful, multimodal, and accessible AI experience for all users. As a stepping stone, the company introduced GPT-4.5 as a research preview on February...

Chinese companies have reportedly placed at least $16 billion in orders for Nvidia’s H20 chips in the first three months of the year. ByteDance, Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings are among companies that have been buying up the most advanced Nvidia artificial intelligence chips that are legally available in China under US export controls, The Information reported. The US has imposed export restri...

Analyst firm Gartner released a new report today forecasting that global GenAI spending will hit $644 billion in 2025. That figure represents a 76.4% year-over-year increase over GenAI spending in 2024. Gartner’s report joins a chorus of other industry analyses in recent months that all point to increasing adoption and spending for gen AI. Spending has been growing by 130% , according to research...