Amazon to pilot AI-designed material for carbon removal

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1. Amazon to pilot AI-designed material for carbon removal

Amazon.com is partnering with Orbital Materials to pilot a new carbon-removal material for data centers, which are at risk of worsening emissions from artificial intelligence systems they power. The carbon-filtering substance is designed by Orbital itself, with cavities that interact well with CO2.

The material could save up to 10% of the hourly charge to rent a GPU chip for training powerful AI, a fraction of carbon offsets' price. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world's largest cloud-computing provider by revenue, is piloting the material in one data center starting in 2025 as part of its three-year partnership with Orbital.

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2. AI system that generates 3D worlds from a single image

The first step towards spatial intelligence is an AI system that generates 3D worlds from a single image, allowing users to step into any image and explore it in 3D. Generating in 3D improves control and consistency, and will change how we create movies, games, simulators, and other digital manifestations of our physical world.

The generated worlds are rendered live in the browser using a virtual camera, enabling artistic photographic effects such as shallow depth of field and dolly zoom. Predicting a 3D scene instead offers several benefits, including persistent reality, real-time control, and correct geometry. The 3D scene structure can be used to build interactive effects, such as sonar, spotlight, ripple, and passive animate the scene.

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3. Alibaba releases Qwen with Questions, an open reasoning model that beats o1-preview

Alibaba has released Qwen with Questions (QwQ), an open-source competitor to OpenAI's o1 reasoning model. QwQ uses extra compute cycles during inference to review answers and correct mistakes, making it suitable for tasks requiring logical reasoning and planning like math and coding.

The 32-billion-parameter version is currently in preview and can be used for commercial purposes under an Apache 2.0 license. QwQ's "thinking process" is not hidden, making it easier to understand its reasoning process. However, it still has limitations such as mixing languages or getting stuck in circular reasoning loops.

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4. Nebius Secures $700M Investment Led by NVIDIA and Accel to Scale AI Infrastructure

Amsterdam-based AI infrastructure company Nebius has raised $700 million in strategic equity financing, with investors including NVIDIA, Accel, and Orbis Investments.

The funds aim to accelerate Nebius' expansion in AI infrastructure across key markets, including the U.S. Nebius is expanding its capabilities in GPU clusters, cloud platforms, and developer tools to optimize AI workflows.

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5. In a bid to compete with Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and Samsung invested $700 million in AI chip startup Tenstorrent

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has backed a $700 million funding round for Santa Clara-based AI chip startup Tenstorrent, valued at $2.6 billion.

The investment, led by South Korea's AFW Partners and Samsung Securities, positions Tenstorrent as a competitor to Nvidia, the dominant AI chip market player. Tenstorrent plans to expand its engineering team, strengthen its global supply chain, and build AI training servers.

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