Rise of New AI Startups

Our 207th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 04/14/2025

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
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In this episode:

• OpenAI introduces GPT-4.1 with optimized coding and instruction-following capabilities, featuring variants like GPT-4.1 Mini and Nano, and a million-token context window.
• Concerns arise as OpenAI reduces resources for safety testing, sparking internal and external criticisms.
• XAI's newly launched API for Grok 3 showcases significant capabilities comparable to other leading models.
• Meta faces allegations of aiding China in AI development for business advantages, with potential compliances and public scrutiny looming.

Timestamps + Links:

• Tools & Apps
  • (00:03:13) OpenAI’s new GPT-4.1 AI models focus on coding
  • (00:08:12) ChatGPT will now remember your old conversations
  • (00:11:16) Google’s newest Gemini AI model focuses on efficiency
  • (00:14:27) Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, launches an API for Grok 3
  • (00:18:35) Canva is now in the coding and spreadsheet business
  • (00:20:31) Meta’s vanilla Maverick AI model ranks below rivals on a popular chat benchmark
• Applications & Business
  • (00:25:46) Ironwood: The first Google TPU for the age of inference
  • (00:34:15) Anthropic rolls out a $200-per-month Claude subscription
  • (00:37:17) OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence reportedly valued at $32B
  • (00:40:20) Mira Murati’s AI startup gains prominent ex-OpenAI advisers
  • (00:42:52) Hugging Face buys a humanoid robotics startup
  • (00:44:58) Stargate developer Crusoe could spend $3.5 billion on a Texas data center. Most of it will be tax-free.
• Projects & Open Source
  • (00:48:14) OpenAI Open Sources BrowseComp: A New Benchmark for Measuring the Ability for AI Agents to Browse the Web
• Research & Advancements
  • (00:56:09) Sample, Don't Search: Rethinking Test-Time Alignment for Language Models
  • (01:03:32) Concise Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning
  • (01:09:37) Going beyond open data – increasing transparency and trust in language models with OLMoTrace
  • (01:15:34) Independent evaluations of Grok-3 and Grok-3 mini on our suite of benchmarks
• Policy & Safety
  • (01:17:58) OpenAI countersues Elon Musk, calls for enjoinment from ‘further unlawful and unfair action’
  • (01:24:33) OpenAI slashes AI model safety testing time
  • (01:27:55) Ex-OpenAI staffers file amicus brief opposing the company’s for-profit transition
  • (01:32:25) Access to future AI models in OpenAI’s API may require a verified ID
  • (01:34:53) Meta whistleblower claims tech giant built $18 billion business by aiding China in AI race and undermining U.S. national security