Meta is pushing for the government to use its AI

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1. Meta is pushing for the government to use its AI

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the company is working with the public sector to adopt its AI model, Llama, across the US government. The company has partnered with the US State Department to address challenges such as expanding access to safe water and electricity, supporting small businesses, and making the financial aid process more user-friendly for students.

Meta has also been in touch with the Department of Education to learn how Llama could benefit the government. However, there is no payment involved in these partnerships. Meta's AI rivals, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, have also been cozying up to the government, with Google's models being used by DARPA, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Meta plans to continue spending more on AI in 2025, but Zuckerberg sees the upside as being worth it.

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2. OpenAI builds first chip with Broadcom and TSMC, scales back foundry ambition

OpenAI is working with Broadcom, TSMC, and Nvidia to build its first in-house chip designed to support its artificial intelligence systems. The company has dropped the ambitious foundry plans for now due to the costs and time needed to build a network of factories for chip manufacturing. Instead, OpenAI plans to focus on in-house chip design efforts.

OpenAI relies on substantial computing power to train and run its systems, and as one of the largest purchasers of Nvidia’s GPUs, it uses AI chips both for training models and for inference. The company is still determining whether to develop or acquire other elements for its chip design and may engage additional partners.

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3. Elon Musk’s xAI startup in talks to raise funding at $40B valuation

Elon Musk's xAI startup is in talks for a funding round valued at $40 billion. The company, founded by Musk and SpaceX, was last valued at $24 billion just five months ago after a $6 billion round. Musk is seeking to raise several billion dollars in this latest funding round, adding to the company's $40 billion valuation. Silicon Valley's AI startups have been raising billions of dollars to fund their technological advancements and gain a lead in the AI race.

OpenAI raised $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation earlier this month, making it one of the largest private funding rounds in US history. Mainstream tech giants like Alphabet and Meta have been betting big on artificial intelligence and funneling profits into new projects.

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4. Google’s AI-powered weather app is rolling out to older Pixels

Google's Pixel 9 has launched a standalone weather app that uses AI to summarize outdoor conditions. The app pulls saved locations from the built-in weather service on Pixels, allowing users to track weather in multiple locations, arrange data blocks, track weather on a map, and get a summary.

The app has a 2.3-star rating, but some complaints include not being able to check weather in random cities without adding them to the saved locations list.

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5. Iambic Therapeutics announces "Enchant," an AI platform that predicts clinical outcomes from the earliest stages of drug discovery

Iambic Therapeutics has developed a multi-modal transformer model called Enchant™, which breaks down the "data wall" between preclinical and clinical research and development. Enchant uses a combination of human trial data and abundant pre-clinical discovery data to predict key clinical properties of drug candidates.

This allows researchers to make informed decisions to boost a program's chance of clinical success before entering the clinic. This could reduce the cost of drug research and development and lessen the burden on participants in clinical trials. Enchant is designed to cut years from preclinical development, speed up trial timelines, and prevent late-stage discoveries of liabilities that can jeopardize clinical success.

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