Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re looking at OpenAI’s last — and biggest — announcement from its “12 Days of OpenAI” event; Apple’s potential entrance into the foldable market; and why Databricks is choosing to wait to go public. Let’s get into it.
P.S. We’re off for the holidays! Week in Review will be back in your inbox in the new year.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the successors to its o1 reasoning model family: o3 and o3-mini. While the models are not widely available yet, safety researchers can sign up for a preview. The reveal marks the end of the company’s “12 Days of OpenAI” event, which saw announcements for real-time vision capabilities, ChatGPT Search, and even a Santa voice for ChatGPT. You can catch up on everything you missed here.
The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses got a big upgrade this week. Members of Meta’s early-access program can now download firmware v11, which adds “live AI.” The feature lets wearers continuously converse with Meta AI to reference things they discussed earlier in the conversation — and it works with real-time video. Live translation between English and Spanish, French, or Italian, as well as functionality with Shazam are also included in v11.
UnitedHealth’s Optum left an AI chatbot, used by employees to ask questions about claims, exposed to the internet — and anyone could access it with a web browser. While the chatbot did not appear to contain or produce sensitive personal or protected health information, its inadvertent exposure comes at a time when its parent company faces scrutiny for its use of AI tools and algorithms to allegedly override doctors’ medical decisions and deny patient claims.
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News
Oura nabs $200M: The smart ring maker closed a $200 million Series D funding round, bringing the company’s valuation to $5.2 billion. Oura says the cash will help the company expand its product offerings and further invest in product, science, AI, and more. Read more
You can now call ChatGPT from a landline: In an effort to make ChatGPT accessible to as many people as possible, OpenAI announced a 1-800 number to call the chatbot — even from a landline or a flip phone. Users can call 1-800-CHATGPT, and the AI assistant will respond through the phone. Read more
Tesla tries to boost Model S sales: After abandoning its free Supercharging for life offer in 2018, Tesla is bringing it back for some Tesla Model S cars at the end of the year. But it’s important to note that Tesla also just increased the price for the Model S by $5,000. Read more
Google wants to take on Sora: Google DeepMind announced Veo 2, a next-gen video-generating AI. Veo 2 can create two-minute-plus clips in resolutions up to 4k. That’s 4x the resolution — and over 6x the duration — that OpenAI’s Sora can achieve. Read more
Apple eyes the foldable market: Apple is aiming to launch two foldable devices in the next few years, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Another report from Bloomberg, however, claims the company’s focus is on a giant, foldable iPad. Read more
Bob Lee verdict: A San Francisco jury found Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal 2023 stabbing of Bob Lee, the Cash App creator and former CTO of Block. The jurors decided Lee’s murder was not premeditated and found Momeni not guilty of first-degree murder. Read more
Perplexity acquires Carbon: Perplexity acquired Carbon, a small startup specializing in connecting AI systems to external data sources. The company says Perplexity will soon be able to search through your files and work messages in Notion, Google Docs, or Slack sometime in early 2025. Read more
Temu is still on top: Temu was once again the most downloaded free app in the U.S., according to Apple’s list of top apps and games across the App Store. The shopping app moved into the No. 1 slot last year, stealing the position from TikTok. Read more
GitHub launches free version of Copilot: GitHub now has a free version of its popular Copilot code completion/AI pair programming tool. Until now, developers had to pay a monthly fee, with only verified students, teachers, and open source maintainers getting free access. Read more
Google releases its own “reasoning” model: Google has released Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, what it calls its new “reasoning” AI model. It’s currently in the experimental stages, and from our brief testing, there’s certainly room for improvement. Read more
Analysis
To IPO or not to IPO: Databricks just closed one of the largest funding rounds ever, raising a staggering $10 billion. Naturally, technology investors were quick to ask what this means for the company’s highly anticipated IPO. In an interview at Axios AI Summit, CEO Ali Ghodsi said “it’s dumb to IPO this year” and is instead waiting until at least 2025. Databricks is using this “Series J” to let early employees cash out and continue growing. While 2024 was uncertain in many ways, the IPOs of ServiceTitan, Reddit, and other companies have largely been successful. But, as Maxwell Zeff writes, why risk it when you can just raise as much money as Databricks? Read more
