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People walk behind the logo of SoftBank Corp in Tokyo.
Hard Numbers: SoftBank’s hardy investment, Grok gets cash infusion, Humane’s rescue plan, Kenya’s tech upgrade, News Corp and OpenAI strike a deal
6 billion: Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has raised $6 billion from venture capital investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, plus Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Kingdom Holding Company. The new funding round boosts the value of xAI, which makes the AI chatbot Grok, to $24 billion. Musk is a cofounder of OpenAI but severed ties with the firm in 2018 and has since sued the ChatGPT maker, alleging it abandoned its founding principles.
750 million: Humane, the company that recently released an AI-powered pin to scathing reviews, is reportedly looking for a buyer to swoop in. While customers have to cough up $699 for the signature pin, a corporate buyer would need to pay between $750 million and $1 billion — if the company’s current management fetches any interest, that is.
1 billion: Microsoft and the UAE-based tech giant G42 are pouring $1 billion into a geothermal-powered data center in Kenya. This East African investment is the first big announcement since Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42 in April, a deal brokered by the Biden administration. Microsoft and G42 also pledged to work on local language and skills training initiatives with the Kenyan government and companies in the country.
250 million: OpenAI struck a licensing deal with News Corp., the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, reportedly worth $250 million over five years. News Corp’s stock rose on the announcement, and the deal represents a burgeoning revenue stream for news companies. But the deal isn’t without critics: The Information’s founder Jessica Lessin wrote that publishers like News Corp need to know their worth with AI companies, hungry for content, and not rush into any deal for “relative pennies.”
A picture of someone wearing the Humane AI Pin.
Let’s ‘pin’ it on technical problems
Most of the artificial intelligence we talk about comes packaged in software: chatbots, image generators, and other tools that add an AI kick to your typical internet experience. But one company’s efforts to fuel a brand-new hardware product with AI is getting … less-than-stellar reviews.
The startup Humane is taking orders for its $699 AI pin, a wearable device that wants to replace your smartphone. Humane, which counts OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Microsoft among its funders, also charges users a $24 a month fee that includes a T-Mobile cellular data plan (!) in order to connect you to the internet wherever you go.
This is essentially an AI-powered smart assistant that’s placed on your chest and takes in the world around you, answers your questions, and communicates with others. It has a laser projector instead of a screen, along with a camera and a speaker.
GZERO has not yet tested this very expensive new gadget, but we’ve read the early reviews. One New York Times reviewer admitted the device piqued his curiosity, though he pledged he would never pay so much for it. (The device overheated and shut down on him during a photo shoot.) The Verge was even less amenable: “The AI Pin is an interesting idea that is so thoroughly unfinished and so totally broken in so many unacceptable ways that I can’t think of anyone to whom I’d recommend spending the $699 for the device and the $24 monthly subscription.” YouTube gadget czar Marques Brownlee called it, simply, “the worst product I’ve ever reviewed.” It’s essentially a prototype that doesn’t realize it’s still a prototype.With the Ai Pin, your hand is the screen. A built-in projecter shows updates and controls, while hand gestures and voice commands can be used to navigate the rest.
Hard Numbers: Must-have accessory?, Americans on AI, Bill Gates’ prediction, Massive paychecks, Airbnb's big bet
$699: There’s a new AI-powered wearable device on the market. The Verge likened the Humane magnetic pin to a “smartphone without a screen.” The mysterious device — which costs $699, plus a $24 monthly subscription fee — is a bid to make the power of computing nearly invisible. The pin functions with voice commands and projects images, from menus to incoming calls, with a laser.
27: Only 27% of Americans see regulating AI as a “top priority,” according to a new poll conducted by Axios and Morning Consult. Another 33% think reining in the new technology is “important” but not a top priority — which suggests that AI will not be an urgent campaign issue in 2024.
5: In the next five years, AI will utterly change the way you use computers, according to Microsoft CEO and co-founder Bill Gates. “You won’t have to use different apps for different tasks,” he wrote in a new blog post. “You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do. And depending on how much information you choose to share with it, the software will be able to respond personally because it will have a rich understanding of your life.” What could possibly go wrong?
$10 million: OpenAI recruiters are reportedly telling researchers their total compensation package falls between $5 and $10 million. That’s mostly based on maybe-generous estimates of private stock options. But it’s an eye-popping range that’s sure to help OpenAI lure top talent away from competitors like Google, let alone the public sector.
$200 million: Airbnb just made its first acquisition as a publicly traded company, reportedly buying a little-known AI startup called Gameplanner.AI for about $200 million. In an interview in May, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said he wanted the company to utilize AI as the "ultimate concierge" for travelers.