Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The AI world’s biggest partnership feels ready to explode — with a new report saying OpenAI is potentially ready to drop the “nuclear option” of antitrust complaints against Microsoft.

With tensions between the two sides reportedly reaching a “boiling point,” it seems like the alliance that defined the AI boom might end with lawyers instead of AGI.

Reminder: Our next live workshop is today at 4 PM EST with Retool — join and learn how to supercharge and automate your prospect follow-ups with AI agents. RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

• OpenAI, Microsoft partnership hits ‘boiling point’

• MiniMax’s open reasoner with 1M token context

• Add image generation and editing to projects

• McKinsey details AI investment ‘paradox’

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI & MICROSOFT

😡 OpenAI, Microsoft partnership hits ‘boiling point’

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: The WSJ just declared that the massive partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft is at a “boiling point,” with the AI leader considering filing antitrust complaints after disputes over compute access, IP rights, and company restructuring.

The details:

• The latest argument comes over OpenAI’s $3B acquisition of Windsurf, with the company wanting to withhold the IP due to Microsoft’s rival GitHub Copilot.

• OpenAI is reportedly considering the “nuclear option” of accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior and pushing for a federal review of the partnership.

• Microsoft was also a key holdout in OpenAI’s PBC restructuring, with the two sides reportedly meeting to renegotiate their partnership last month.

• OpenAI has been seeking to reduce its dependency on Microsoft, partnering with rival Google on cloud compute last week.

Why it matters: AI’s defining partnership has been absolutely frigid for a while now, but OpenAI's resort to a legal “nuclear option” would be a shocking move against its largest investor. The AI leader is desperate to break free and control its own destiny before AGI arrives, and its initial collaboration is quickly turning into competition.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

🛡️ Turn security into your startup’s secret sales weapon

The Rundown: Startups move fast, but today’s buyers expect enterprise-grade security from day one — turning security from a nice-to-have into a potential blocker for growth. In this joint session with AWS, Vanta, and BreachRx, you’ll learn how early-stage teams are turning that pressure into an advantage.

Join and discover:

• Practical tips and proven strategies for your compliance journey

• Real-world examples from founders who have scaled trust alongside growth

• How BreachRX built customer confidence and sped up deals through early compliance

Register here.

MINIMAX

🧠 MiniMax’s open reasoner with 1M token context

Image source: MiniMax

The Rundown: Chinese AI startup MiniMax released M1, an open-source reasoning model with a massive 1M token context window that achieves comparable performance to leading open models at a fraction of the training cost.

The details:

• MiniMax claims M1 has the “world’s largest context window,” handling 1M input tokens while supporting an 80k token “thinking budget” for outputs.

• While competitive across the board, M1 excels in software engineering and agentic tool use, also massively outperforming in long-context benchmarks.

• The company also introduced CISPO, a new reinforcement learning algorithm that achieved 2x faster training compared to existing methods.

• The startup said CISPO helped the model’s full training run cost just $535k and took just three weeks, dramatically undercutting the budgets of rival systems.

Why it matters: Chinese labs continue to push forward with new open-source powerhouses, with M1 pushing the boundaries for context capabilities. MiniMax’s training efficiency also shows that innovative AI architecture continues to challenge assumptions about cost being a key factor in scaling intelligence.

AI TRAINING

🎨 Add image generation and editing to projects

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Flux.1 Kontext API to add professional image generation and editing capabilities to any application with simple API calls.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Black Forest Labs playground, create a free account, and copy your API key for authentication

2. Use the Google Colab notebook provided here, replace “BFL_API_KEY” with your key, and modify the prompt

3. For editing, upload your image to Colab, update the filename, and add editing prompts

4. Copy the working code to Cursor/Windsurf and prompt: “Create a web app for image generation with this API structure”

Pro tip: Use the Pro model for development speed, then switch to Max for production quality.

PRESENTED BY UNSTRUCTURED

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The Rundown: Building your own data processing pipeline starts simple, but scaling it is another story — with a few scripts and connectors quickly turning into a tangled mess of never-ending fixes and updates.

Unstructured replaces the DIY rat’s nest with:

• Coverage across 35+ data sources and 64+ file types with zero maintenance overhead

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Get started today.

AI ENTERPRISE RESEARCH

💸 McKinsey details AI investment ‘paradox’

Image source: McKinsey

The Rundown: McKinsey released a report analyzing why many companies aren't seeing returns on their AI investments, arguing that agents are the key to unlocking its impact by reimagining business processes rather than just automating tasks.

The details:

• The firm identifies a “genAI paradox,” noting that nearly 80% of companies use the tech, but a similar number report almost no material impact on earnings.

• McKinsey says companies largely use general-purpose AI tools, which make improvements that are hard to measure and don’t show up in financial results.

• The company argues that success requires enterprises to rebuild processes around agents rather than inserting them into already existing workflows.

• The report concludes the shift is a leadership challenge, calling to end broad “experimentation phases” and drive more strategic, top-down transformations.

Why it matters: Almost every company is trying to implement AI, but few are likely willing to redesign operations completely for a new AI-driven world. While some firms may spend millions on copilots, they might find themselves leapfrogged by competitors who are willing to take the organizational leap and embrace agent-based systems.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• ⚡ Deepgram Voice Agent API - Build production-ready voice agents with a unified speech-to-speech API*

• 🧊 Hunyuan 3D 2.1 - New open-source model for creating 3D assets

• 🗂️ ChatGPT Projects - Support for Deep Research, Voice Mode, and more

• 🎥 KLING 2.1 - SOTA AI video model lineup with enhanced speed and quality

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💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 📞 The Rundown - Account Manager

• 🚀 Cohere - Enterprise Deployment Specialist

• 🛠️ Union - Full-Stack Software Engineer

• 🧱 Lakera AI - Senior Full-stack Engineer

📰 Everything else in AI today

Moonshot AI launched Kimi-Dev-72B, an open-source coding model that achieves SOTA results on software tasks, surpassing rivals like DeepSeek R1, V3, and Devstral.

OpenAI added support for Anthropic’s open Model Context Protocol inside ChatGPT, allowing users to connect external tools to the platform.

TikTok released new updates to its Symphony AI suite, including image-to-video, text-to-video, and AI avatar marketing for advertising content.

Reddit debuted Reddit Insights and Conversation Summary Add-Ons for real-time analytics and auto-curated social listening for brands on the platform.

Google is reportedly planning to end its relationship with Scale AI following Meta’s investment, with Microsoft, xAI, and OpenAI also looking to shift away from the startup.

“Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton said “mundane intellectual labor” is most at risk of AI displacement, with “physical manipulation” jobs being safer in the near term.

Google DeepMind partnered with creative studio Primordial Soup on “ANCESTRA,” a short premiering at the Tribeca Festival that uses Veo alongside live-action scenes.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 3 PM EST with Keanan Koppenaver, Technical PMM at Retool. By the end of the workshop, you’ll know how to supercharge and automate your prospect follow ups with ai agents.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Meta just dropped a next-gen “world model” — an AI built to transform how robots and self-driving cars perceive, predict, and act in the real world.

World models are hot right now, as researchers move beyond language-based training to give machines true physical understanding. Could this be the breakthrough that unlocks superintelligent robotics?

In today’s robotics rundown:

• Meta unveils ‘world model’ for robotics

• Skild hits $4.5B with Nvidia & Samsung’s backing

• Gecko Robotics tops $1.25B for inspection bots

• China’s RoboBrain 2.0 for smarter robots

• Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

🤖 Meta unveils ‘world model’ for robotics

Image source: Meta

The Rundown: Meta just pulled back the curtain on V-JEPA 2 — a 1.2-billion-parameter “world model” designed to give advanced robots and self-driving cars a kind of common sense about the physical world.

The details:

• Unlike language models, V-JEPA 2, pretrained on over a million hours of unlabeled video and images, creates internal simulations of the physical world.

• The simulations allow the AI to reason about motion, interactions, and outcomes in real time — and predict results with human-like logic.

• In a second training phase, V-JEPA 2 was fine-tuned on 62 hours of robot interaction data, enabling it to make action-conditioned predictions.

• The whole system gives robots the ability to plan and execute tasks with unfamiliar objects in new environments — requiring no prior training or demos.

Why it matters: Robots powered by V-JEPA 2 can be dropped into unfamiliar situations and still plan, adapt, and execute tasks without retraining for each scenario. Building world models is touted as the next big thing in AI, with AI researcher Fei-Fei Lee’s World Labs, Odyssey, and Google’s DeepMind also being in the race.

SKILD AI

🤑 Skild hits $4.5B with Nvidia & Samsung’s backing

Image source: Skild AI

The Rundown: Robotics software startup Skild AI just nabbed $35M from Samsung and Nvidia — with $10M from Samsung and $25M from Nvidia — as part of a larger Series B round valuing the company at a staggering $4.5B.

The details:

• The investment has been led by SoftBank’s $100M commitment, with South Korean powerhouses like LG, Hanwha, and Mirae Asset also joining the fray.

• Skild AI’s flagship product is “Skild Brain” — a foundational model designed to give robots capabilities in manipulation, navigation, and locomotion.

• The company’s ultimate vision is to create robotic intelligence that can handle everything from complex industrial tasks to household chores.

• Skild’s platform stands out for its horizontal approach, enabling robots to perform a vast range of tasks across industries without extensive retraining.

Why it matters: As the global race for consumer and industrial robotics heats up —with Tesla, Amazon, Figure, and Google all doubling down — Skild’s breakthrough in scalable, adaptable robotics is positioning it at the forefront of a market poised to transform everything from healthcare and construction to logistics and beyond.

GECKO ROBOTICS

🦄 Gecko Robotics tops $1.25B for inspection bots

Image source: Gecko Robotics

The Rundown: Gecko Robotics, a Pittsburgh-based pioneer in AI-driven robotics for infrastructure maintenance, officially joined the unicorn club with a $125M Series D round of funding — taking its valuation to $1.25B.

The details:

• Gecko’s Cantilever operating system allows robots to autonomously inspect and analyze power plants, oil refineries, and military vessels.

• The company has a $100M deal with NAES to modernize U.S. power plants and a partnership with L3Harris to roll out XR solutions for aircraft maintenance.

• It claims its robots slash labor costs by 85% and shrink U.S. Navy ship inspection timelines by months — all while improving safety.

• The fresh capital infusion will turbocharge Gecko’s expansion into defense, energy, and manufacturing industries.

Why it matters: Founded in a college dorm by Jake Loosararian, Gecko Robotics now deploys a fleet of agile robots — climbing, flying, and swimming — to capture precision data from warships to power plants. Alongside rivals like Intellibot, Gecko is one to watch in a fast-growing sector where robotics is transforming safety and efficiency.

CHINESE ROBOTICS

🧠 China’s RoboBrain 2.0 for smarter robots

Image source: BAAI/X

The Rundown: The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI), a nonprofit research lab, unveiled RoboBrain 2.0, a cutting-edge open-source AI model designed to act as the “brain” for humanoids and advanced robots.

The details:

• RoboBrain 2.0 is engineered to serve as the cognitive core for humanoids, offering major improvements in spatial intelligence and task planning.

• Compared to its predecessor, released three months earlier, this new model delivers a 17% increase in processing speed and a 74% boost in accuracy.

• BAAI is already collaborating with some 20 Chinese robotics firms to accelerate innovation and adoption of advanced robotics across varied industries.

• RoboBrain 2.0 is part of BAAI’s broader Wujie model series, which also includes cloud-based platform RoboOS 2.0 and multimodel system Emu3.

Why it matters: BAAI director Wang Zhongyuan described RoboBrain 2.0 as the world’s most powerful open-source AI model for robotics, with execs from Baidu, Huawei, and Tencent attending the launch. Despite being placed on the U.S. Entity List, BAAI is forging ahead with new partnerships to boost talent and tech exchange.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Boston Dynamics’ robots took the stage on America’s Got Talent in a synchronized dance routine set to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” — but to mixed reviews.

Tesla is suing a former engineer, alleging he stole trade secrets from its Optimus humanoid project to launch a startup specializing in robotic hands.

Beijing is set to open the world's first “4S store” dedicated to the sales and service of humanoids, more than a month ahead of the 2025 World Robot Conference.

Shenzhen-based Lumos Robotics posted a video of its LUS 2 humanoid going from lying flat on the floor to standing up in just one second.

Goldman Sachs says widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles could eventually reduce the number of road accidents, but might not lead to cheaper auto insurance.

Scale CEO Alexandr Wang said on a podcast that humans could one day be able “to downlink” their consciousness into a humanoid and experience the world via its body.

Drones and robot dogs marched alongside military vehicles in a parade in Washington, D.C., for the 250^th anniversary of the U.S. Army.

A research team has developed SMURF — Soft Miniaturized Underground Robotic Finder — with a smell sensor to search for humans in rescue missions.

Sojo Industries, a leader in advanced robotics and mobile manufacturing, announced this week that it has raised $40M in new funding.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Tuesday, June 17th at 3 PM EST with Keanan Koppenaver, Technical PMM at Retool. By the end of the workshop, you’ll know how to supercharge and automate your prospect follow-ups with AI agents.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The path to superintelligence just got a bit clearer, with MIT researchers teaching AI to self-improve without human help.

As models eventually learn to rewrite their own code, training data, and capabilities at scale, is this the first baby step towards the exponential intelligence explosion that experts both crave and fear?

In today’s AI rundown:

• MIT researchers teach AI to self-improve

• AI develops human-like object understanding

• Decode video success patterns for better content

• UK study reveals AI's hidden impact on children

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI RESEARCH

📶 MIT researchers teach AI to self-improve

Image source: MIT

The Rundown: MIT researchers just developed Self-Adapting LLMs (SEAL), a framework that enables large language models to teach and improve on their own by creating their training data and instructions for self-updates.

The details:

• SEAL allows models to generate their own "self-edits" — instructions for creating synthetic data and setting parameters to update their own weights.

• It learns through trial-and-error via a reinforcement learning loop, rewarding the model for generating self-edits that lead to better performance.

• In knowledge tasks, the AI learned more effectively from its own notes than from learning materials generated by the much larger GPT-4.1.

• The system also dramatically improved at puzzle-solving tasks, jumping from 0% with standard methods to 72.5% after learning how to train itself effectively.

Why it matters: Self-improving AI is frequently mentioned as a potential lead-in to the leap toward superintelligence. While SEAL (and other research frameworks like Sakana’s DGM) aren’t there yet, they point to a scary but exciting future where models can continue upgrading (exponentially) on their own, going beyond human design.

TOGETHER WITH BASETEN

🚀 Enterprise grade infrastructure for everyone

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With Baseten’s MCM system, you’ll experience:

• Cloud agnostic infrastructure with no GPU scarcity bottlenecks

• Out-of-the-box worldwide scale with 99.99% uptime

• Performance optimized infra by use case

• Systems that satisfy data residency and sovereignty requirements

Deploy on Baseten’s MCM infrastructure today.

AI RESEARCH

🧠 AI develops human-like object understanding

Image source: Institute of Automation, CAS

The Rundown: New research from Chinese scientists just revealed that AI models are spontaneously developing internal 'maps' of the world that closely mirror human conceptual understanding, making a leap from simple recognition to machine cognition.

The details:

• AI models were tested on 4.7M "odd-one-out" decisions across nearly 2,000 common objects, studying how they organize and understand the world.

• The AI naturally developed 66 core ways of thinking about objects, closely matching how humans mentally categorize things like animals, tools, and food.

• The AI’s conceptual map showed a strong alignment with human brain activity patterns, particularly in regions responsible for processing object categories.

• Rather than just memorizing patterns, the research showed that AI models build genuine internal concepts and meanings for objects.

Why it matters: While there is still a large subset of the AI world that believes that models are just “stochastic parrots”, we’re continuing to see more and more evidence of the tech showing hints of genuine reasoning and conceptual understanding — and that machine intelligence may work in similar ways to humans after all.

AI TRAINING

 📈 Decode video success patterns for better content

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Perplexity's new Labs feature to analyze viral YouTube videos and successful channels to uncover hidden patterns, content strategies, and audience engagement tactics that drive massive viewership.

Step-by-step:

1. Access Perplexity Pro and click the lightbulb icon to activate Labs mode for advanced research capabilities

2. Create a comprehensive prompt: “Analyze viral YouTube videos and successful channels in AI to identify...”

3. Wait 8-12 minutes while the AI analyzes top videos, channel metrics, and engagement patterns across successful creators

4. Review detailed insights and ask follow-up questions for deeper analysis

Pro tip: Frame your initial prompt to focus on specific metrics you want to improve. The more targeted your research request, the more actionable your insights will be.

PRESENTED BY ENEY

🤖 Meet your Mac's new AI companion

The Rundown: After 17 years of crafting trusted Mac software, MacPaw is pioneering something entirely new — Eney, an AI computer being that bridges the gap between you and your digital tasks through natural conversation.

Eney's capabilities include:

• Intuitive assistance using natural language with no app switching or complex commands

• Real Mac actions like system optimization, image editing, meeting transcriptions, and more

• Proactive intelligence that learns your patterns and suggests relevant actions

Join Eney's closed beta and help shape the future of Mac companions.

AI & CHILDREN

🧒 UK study reveals AI's hidden impact on children

Image source: The Alan Turing Institute

The Rundown: New research from The Alan Turing Institute uncovered a digital divide in children's AI use, with 22% of UK kids aged 8-12 already using AI — but with private school students nearly 3x more likely to have access than their state school peers.

The details:

• Private school kids showed 52% usage rates compared to just 18% in state schools, also reporting more frequent use and greater teacher awareness of AI.

• Environmental concerns emerged as an unexpected factor, with some children refusing to use AI after learning about its energy and water consumption.

• The study found children primarily use AI for creativity and learning, with high reports of children feeling the tool helps them communicate better.

• The research also included teachers, with 66% reporting AI use primarily for lesson planning, creating presentations, and designing homework.

Why it matters: This generation of kids is going to grow up with AI just as the previous one did with the Internet. While the benefits to creativity and communication were clear, so was the divide in public vs. private schools — with access and adoption potentially widening the educational gap for more privileged students.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🗣️ AssemblyAI -  Build a voice agent with fast and accurate real-time speech-to-text*

• 🎥 Seedance 1.0 - ByteDance’s new leaderboard-topping video model

• 💬 Chat Mode - Runway’s new conversational interface for generating content

• 👁️ Copilot Vision - AI companion that can see your PC in real time

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💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🤝 The Rundown - Partnerships Manager

• 🧳 Glean - Consulting Partner Manager

• 🧑‍💻 Perplexity AI - Full-Stack Engineer, Comet

• 🧠 Runway - Applied Research Lead, Language

📰 Everything else in AI today

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated that he “pretty much disagrees with almost everything” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said regarding AI and job automation.

A paper co-authored by Claude 4 Opus critiqued Apple researchers’ recent viral paper that argued LLMs can’t reason, finding flaws in the study’s design.

OpenAI rolled out updates to its Projects feature, with new support for deep research and voice mode alongside improved memory functionality.

AstraZeneca signed a $5.3B AI research deal with China’s CSPC, aiming to use AI to develop new oral medications for chronic diseases.

A new report from the New York Times detailed cases of ChatGPT use reinforcing and fueling user issues like delusions, conspiratorial beliefs, and mental health crises.

Tencent’s Hunyuan released Hunyuan 3D 2.1, an open-source model for generating 3D assets with cinematic textures and realism.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Tuesday, June 17th at 3 PM EST with Keanan Koppenaver, Technical PMM at Retool. By the end of the workshop, you’ll know how to supercharge and automate your prospect follow-ups with AI agents.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Meta just inked a nearly $15B deal to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI — bringing on 28-year-old CEO Alexandr Wang to lead its AI reboot after the underwhelming Llama 4 launch.

As OpenAI and Google pull ahead, Meta’s bold move raises the stakes — but could this power play turn Scale from a trusted industry supplier into just another Meta satellite?

In today’s tech rundown:

• Meta’s $15B power move to poach Scale’s CEO

• Lab-grown salmon gets FDA nod

• Archer nabs $850M after Trump’s executive order

• Snap to launch lightweight AR glasses next year

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

💰 Meta’s $15B power move to poach Scale’s CEO

Image source: Diabrot/Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Meta just finalized a deal reportedly worth $14.3B for a 49% stake in San Francisco-based Scale AI — bringing on its 28-year-old CEO Alexandr Wang to lead Meta’s AI overhaul.

The details:

• While the official number behind the deal remains unclear, Scale notes that Meta has made “a significant” investment, valuing the company at $29B. 

• Used by Meta’s major AI rivals, Scale AI specializes in providing the human labor and tech required to label data — a critical step in training AI models.

• Scale’s 28-year-old founder and CEO will join Meta to lead its new “superintelligence” research initiative, bringing along some Scale staff.

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hand-picked some 50 researchers for the lab, offering huge salary packages to draw in top talent from OpenAI and Google.

Why it matters: Meta’s underwhelming Llama 4 launch has spurred this aggressive talent acquisition and major investment to reboot its AI strategy. The deal looks to boost Meta’s capabilities but sparks questions about Scale’s future and whether other AI giants will keep partnering with a company so closely tied to Meta.

WILDTYPE

🍣 Lab-grown salmon gets FDA nod

Image source: Wildtype

The Rundown: A lab-grown salmon from food tech startup Wildtype has become the first cell-cultivated seafood to receive FDA approval for public consumption, with the cultivated salmon now available to order from a restaurant in Portland, Oregon.

The details:

• The cultivated salmon is now available at Portland’s Kann restaurant, with plans to expand to four more restaurants over the next four months.

• Wildtype harvests living cells from Pacific coho salmon and grows them in bioreactors under controlled conditions that mimic a wild fish’s environment.

• After four to six weeks of processing, the final product is a sushi-grade “saku” block, a premium cut typically used for raw sushi and sashimi.

• Wildtype’s salmon is free from mercury, antibiotics, parasites, and microplastics, while still loaded with healthy omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

Why it matters: Wildtype’s closed production system reduces pressure on fish farms, mitigates overfishing, and eliminates bycatch and animal cruelty, as Upside Foods and Good Meat do for meat and chicken. The company’s pilot facility in San Francisco can produce up to 50K pounds of seafood annually, with plans to scale further.

ARCHER AVIATION

🚁 Archer nabs $850M after Trump’s executive order

Image source: Archer Aviation

The Rundown: Archer Aviation, the electric air taxi innovator, just landed an $850M funding windfall — fueled by a trio of executive orders from President Trump aimed at propelling the U.S. to the forefront of next-gen aviation.

The details:

• Trump’s executive orders target the removal of regulatory barriers for electric air taxis, urban drone operations, and supersonic commercial aircraft.

• Trump is also establishing a pilot program to accelerate the adoption of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) tech used by Joby and Archer.

• Archer, now flush with nearly $2B, is set to be the official air taxi provider for the 2028 LA Olympics.

• The company has also inked a partnership with United Airlines to build a New York City air taxi network.

Why it matters: The FAA is now tasked to repeal a 1973 ban on supersonic overland flights (provided new tech keeps noise in check), opening up new opportunities for flying cars, supersonic jets, and advanced drones in the U.S. For its part, rival Joby’s stock soared 10% as the news hit, with Archer’s rising 8%.   

SNAP

🕶️ Snap to launch lightweight AR glasses next year

Image source: Snap

The Rundown: Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is making a bold play to leapfrog Big Tech rivals by launching its next-gen augmented reality smart glasses, called “Specs,” ahead of Meta, Google, and Apple’s competing offerings.

The details:

• CEO Evan Spiegel announced this week that Snap’s Specs are set for a 2026 consumer release with a sleek design packed with AI and AR features.

• The glasses will run Snap’s proprietary Snap OS and feature deep integrations with AI models from both OpenAI and Google.

• Snap’s library of over 4M AR Lenses will be fully compatible, allowing users to access 3D effects, games, and utilities directly through their eyewear.

• With a decade of AR development and more than $3B invested, Snap is betting that Specs can finally deliver on the promise of mainstream AR glasses.

Why it matters: Snap’s Specs aim to beat Meta’s Orion and Google’s AI glasses to launch. If Snap delivers, these lightweight AR smart glasses — with built-in AI assistance and millions of AR Lenses — could push everyday computing beyond the smartphone and into a new era of always-on, wearable tech.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Meta announced a partnership with startup XGS Energy to develop a 150-megawatt geothermal power plant in New Mexico.

Apple has set an internal goal of releasing its long-delayed, AI-enhanced version of Siri in spring 2026, Bloomberg reports.

Uber is set to debut self-driving taxis in London next year, coinciding with England’s launch of trials for new driverless vehicle services.

Chime debuted on Nasdaq this week, valuing the red-hot fintech company at $18.4B with stock opening at $43, compared to the IPO price of $27 per share.

Chinese tech giant Tencent is reportedly in early talks to acquire South Korean videogame developer Nexon Co. in a deal that could value Nexon at $15B.

Elon Musk’s The Boring Company reportedly began talks with Tennessee officials to construct a tunnel connecting downtown Nashville to its international airport.

Nothing will make its new Phone 3 smartphone available for general sale in the U.S., marking a major expansion for the London-based company.

Memory chip maker Micron said it will invest $200B in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and research by 2030, in an initiative backed by Trump.

Anker is recalling its PowerCore 10000 (model A1263) power bank after discovering a potential defect in its lithium-ion battery that may present a fire safety risk.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll know how to get significantly more value out of whichever model you use, whether it’s o3 or o3-Pro.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The future of advertising just crashed the NBA Finals, with an “unhinged” commercial created in just two days airing on ABC.

Kalshi’s spot just proved that AI can go from prompt to primetime in just 48 hours (and a 95% cost reduction) — but will brands be willing to embrace the chaos, or wait for more polished creations?

P.S.: Our next live workshop is today at 4 PM EST, where you’ll learn how to prompt and get the most value out of OpenAI’s advanced o3 and o3-Pro models. RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Kalshi’s AI ad runs during NBA Finals

• OpenAI, Mattel partner on AI toys

• Conduct competitive analysis with Claude

• ByteDance’s new video AI climbs leaderboards

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI RESEARCH

🎬 Kalshi’s AI ad runs during NBA Finals

Image source: Kalshi

The Rundown: Prediction market Kalshi aired one of the first instances of an AI-generated commercial during Game 3 of the NBA Finals, running an “unhinged” 30-second spot created with clips created using Google's Veo 3 video model on ABC.

The details:

• AI filmmaker PJ Accetturo created the ad in just 2 days, using 300-400 Veo 3 generations to create 15 clips.

• He detailed his workflow in a post on X, using Gemini and ChatGPT to help with ideation, script creation, and craft prompts for each shot.

• The commercial leveraged Veo 3's new speaking capabilities, though Accetturo noted challenges with unexpected subtitles and inconsistent character voices.

• Accetturo estimated the cost at about 95% less than traditional production, and said that “high-dopamine Veo 3 videos will be the ad trend of 2025.”

Why it matters: This feels like a major moment for AI in advertising on a big-time stage — and while its unpolished, chaotic aesthetic won’t work for every brand, the time and cost element will be hard to resist for many advertisers. The “style” is also unlikely to be an issue for long, with video models only getting better with each new release.

TOGETHER WITH SANA

🎙️ Conversations at the edge of AI

The Rundown: Sana Agents lets every team spin up intelligent, no-code AI agents in minutes — and now its new Strange Loop podcast digs into the edge of AI and human knowledge to keep leaders ahead of the curve.

In the debut episode, Sana CEO Joel Hellermark joins Wharton’s Ethan Mollick to:

• Unpack myths about AGI

• Discuss the coming impact of real-world automation

• Break down how to scale an AI-first company

Listen to Episode 1 here.

OPENAI & MATTEL

🧸 OpenAI, Mattel partner on AI toys

Image source: GPT 4o / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI and Mattel just announced a new strategic partnership to create AI-powered toys and experiences, bringing the tech to franchise brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels, American Girl, and more.

The details:

• The collaboration will integrate OpenAI's tech into Mattel's product development, with the first AI-powered product expected later this year.

• The deal covers physical toys and digital experiences across Mattel's portfolio, featuring hundreds of iconic brands and game titles.

• Mattel employees will also gain access to ChatGPT Enterprise to enhance creative ideation and streamline business operations across the company.

• Both companies emphasized safety and age-appropriate design, with Mattel maintaining full control over its IP and final products.

Why it matters: Toys are about to get a lot more personalized and intelligent with an AI infusion, bringing new interactive capabilities like never before. But having children interact with AI in any fashion is likely to ruffle some feathers and raise questions about development, privacy, and whether the tech belongs in the playroom.

AI TRAINING

📊 Conduct competitive analysis with Claude

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Claude's Research mode to automatically create research plans, gather data from hundreds of sources, and generate downloadable PDF reports for complete market analysis.

Step-by-step:

• Head over to Claude and select the Research button

• Create a comprehensive prompt: “Research the [industry] market landscape, analyze top 5 competitors, investigate pricing strategies, partnerships, and identify 3 key opportunities”

• Watch Research mode automatically gather data from 50+ authoritative sources and generate a detailed report

• Download your complete research as a PDF or Markdown

Pro tip: The more comprehensive your initial prompt, the better the automated research plan and final report will be.

PRESENTED BY AIRIA

💼 The AI Platform for Enterprises

The Rundown: Airia is an enterprise platform that simplifies the creation, orchestration, and deployment of AI agents—so businesses can automate workflows, integrate systems, and unlock real value from AI without the complexity.

Airia allows you to:

• Seamlessly route between any model or system and connect to 50+ enterprise tools

• Build AI agents fast with a no-code builder to design and launch in minutes

• Enterprise-grade control to enforce policies, manage spend, and stay compliant

Book a Demo today.

BYTEDANCE

🎥 ByteDance’s new video AI climbs leaderboards

Image source: ByteDance

The Rundown: ByteDance just released Seedance 1.0, a new video generation model that ranks first on benchmarks for both text-to-video and image-to-video tasks, outperforming SOTA options from Google, Kuaishou, and OpenAI.

The details:

• Seedance 1.0 moves to the top of the Artificial Analysis video leaderboards, moving ahead of top models including Veo 3, Kling 2.0, and Sora.

• The model generates 5-second, 1080p videos in 40 under a minute, with multi-shot storytelling, character consistency, and smooth transitions.

• Bytedance also created SeedVideoBench, a benchmark that shows its model ahead of competitors in motion quality, prompt adherence, and aesthetics.

• The company plans to fold Seedance into its Doubao chatbot and video platform Jimeng later this year.

Why it matters: Despite the impressiveness of Veo 3, it’s already been surpassed on the leaderboard — with Chinese labs continuing to push the frontier for AI video models. But with Google’s Veo 3 viral audio capabilities setting a new expectation for consumers, it makes it hard to go back to still “silent” models.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🌐 Dia - The Browser Company’s new AI-first web browser

• 🎥 Meta AI - New video editing capabilities for short-form content

• 🏄 Windsurf Browser - Integrated with coding assistant for in-context support

• 💬 Manus Chat Mode - Free, unlimited AI chat with instant answers

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🧩 Siena - Implementation Manager

• 💻 Notable - Software Engineer

• 🚀 Descript - Engineering Manager, Growth

• 🔐 OpenAI - Software Engineer, Cloud IAM

📰 Everything else in AI today

Bytedance researchers introduced Seaweed APT2, a new model for real-time, interactive video generations — able to stream 24 fps videos at up to 5 minutes long.

Microsoft rolled out Copilot Vision with highlights in the U.S., allowing the assistant to see users’ screens and provide in-context insights and guidance.

Google DeepMind launched Weather Lab, an interactive platform showcasing its AI-powered weather forecasts for early, accurate predictions of storm paths and intensity.

Apple is reportedly targeting Spring 2026 for its AI-powered upgrades to Siri, which would come almost two years after its introduction at WWDC 2024.

Runway released Chat Mode, a new conversational interface to create images, videos, and more using natural language.

AMD introduced its next-gen Instinct MI400 chips in a presentation alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, positioning itself as a lower-cost alternative to Nvidia.

Los Alamos, Meta, and Berkeley Lab released Open Molecules 2025 with 100M+ molecular simulations for training AI for chemistry, drug discovery, and more.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll know how to get significantly more value out of whichever model you use, whether it’s o3 or o3-Pro.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Robotics startup 1X just dropped a breakthrough AI model, giving its home humanoid, NEO, the smarts to tackle daily chores with striking autonomy.

NEO now breezes through tasks — from doing laundry to watering plants — with seamless, almost human-like precision. Will this beige knit-wearing bot leapfrog the competition and be among the first to move into our homes?

In today’s robotics rundown:

• NEO now thinks and moves more like humans

• Altman-backed delivery bot startup grabs $80M

• NVIDIA unveils new robotics tools at Paris GTC

• XRobotics nabs $2.5M for pizza-making bot

• Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

1X

🤖 NEO now thinks and moves more like a human

Image source: 1X

The Rundown: Norwegian robotics startup 1X just unveiled its latest reinforcement learning controller designed to help its home humanoid, NEO, smoothly move, perceive, and interact in real-world home environments.

The details:

• At the heart of this leap is Redwood, 1X’s proprietary model, which merges language control, locomotion, and whole body manipulation into one system.

• Redwood is trained on data from real-world sessions with 1X’s EVE and NEO robots, covering both teleoperation and autonomous household activities.

• It learns from both successes and failures, enabling behaviors like grasping unseen objects, retrying after failures, and using both hands to do chores.

• The system also runs entirely on NEO’s onboard GPU, eliminating the need for constant cloud connectivity and ensuring privacy for home use.

Why it matters: Unlike traditional models that treat movement and object handling as separate skills, Redwood enables NEO to do it all with a fluidity nearly matching human motion. Early in-home trials are already putting this next-level agility to the test, with the company planning to produce 100K units by 2027 — and millions by 2028.

TOGETHER WITH SPEECHMATICS

🎙️ The voice AI that protects conversations that matter

Image source: Speechmatics

The Rundown: Most Voice AI Agents send speech data to the cloud — yours doesn't have to. Speechmatics lets you deploy directly on-device, on-prem, or in-cloud, safeguarding patient confidentiality and customer trust without sacrificing performance.

Speechmatics’ enterprise-grade capabilities include:

• Deployment flexibility across on-device, on-premises, hybrid, or cloud environments

• Proven accuracy across 55+ languages with multilingual conversation handling

• Infrastructure that handles 500+ years of audio monthly for governments and Fortune 500 companies

Try Speechmatics at no cost today.

COCO ROBOTICS

🔥 Altman-backed delivery bot startup grabs $80M

Image source: Coco Robotics

The Rundown: Los Angeles-based Coco Robotics, a startup building last-mile delivery robots and backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, just raised $80M in funding — bringing its total investment to over $120M and paving the way for major growth plans.

The details:

• The company operates a fleet of approximately 1,300 zero-emission, cooler-sized robots across major cities including L.A., Chicago, Miami, and Helsinki.

• Since its inception in 2020, Coco says it has completed more than 500K deliveries, partnering with platforms like Uber Eats and DoorDash.

• Coco has a strategic collaboration with OpenAI, leveraging AI models to enhance robot navigation, obstacle avoidance, and real-time decision-making.

• The company’s robots are designed for high-volume operations, with each capable of carrying up to 90L of goods and operating in urban environments.

Why it matters: Coco Robotics is battling heavyweights like Nuro, Serve Robotics, and Starship Technologies in the fast-moving last-mile delivery race. With Altman’s backing and a fresh $80M boost, the startup is now looking to charge ahead — targeting 10K robots on the streets by 2026 and eyeing bold new markets.

NVIDIA

🧠 NVIDIA unveils new robotics tools at Paris GTC

Image source: NVIDIA

The Rundown: At GTC Paris 2025, NVIDIA unveiled a suite of new tools and platforms to accelerate AI-driven robots across Europe and beyond, in addition to the announcement of a massive facility in Germany set to house 10K GPUs.

The details:

• A standout is the launch of Isaac GR00T N1.5, an open foundation model for humanoid robot reasoning, for download on Hugging Face.

• Isaac Sim 5.0 and Isaac Lab 2.2, robotics simulation and learning frameworks optimized for NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 systems, are now available on GitHub.

• The company also expanded its Halos safety system to robotics, offering safety extension for the IGX platform and an AI agent for monitoring robot ops.

• The facility with 10K GPUs (including DGX B200 and RTX PRO servers) will enable manufacturers to optimize factory layouts and robotic fleets.

Why it matters: This week, NVIDIA announced a wave of new partnerships with European countries and companies, covering everything from infrastructure to software, as it works to cement its role at the heart of global AI. In robotics, European heavyweights like Agile Robots have already started tapping NVIDIA’s technologies.

XROBOTICS

🍕 XRobotics nabs $2.5M for pizza-making bot

Image source: XRobotics

The Rundown: San Francisco’s XRobotics raised $2.5M in seed funding for xPizza Cube, a compact, countertop robot that can assemble perfect, precision pizzas at a rate of up to 100 per hour, slashing labor demands by up to 80%.

The details:

• The company says that advanced machine learning ensures perfect sauce swirls, even cheese distribution, and precise pepperoni placement every time.

• It easily adjusts for different pizza sizes and styles — from classic round pies to Detroit and Chicago deep dish, allowing restaurants to expand their offerings.

• The xPizza Cube is available for a monthly lease of $1,300 over three years, making it accessible for both small pizzerias and larger chains.

• XRobotics’ robots are reportedly producing an impressive 25K pizzas per month across an undisclosed number of locations.

Why it matters: Compared to pizza robotics startup Zume, which closed shop in 2023 after raising $420M, XRobotics says it aims to help pizza makers save time and tedious labor rather than replace staff entirely. With this fresh round of funding, XRobotics is planning to bring its pizza-making tech beyond the U.S. to Canada and Mexico.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Bank of America Securities analysts predict that robotics for deliveries by retailers like Amazon could replace workers, driving $7.1B in annual savings by 2032. 

Walmart is expanding its U.S. drone-delivery program to five new cities—Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa—extending the service to about 100 stores.

AI startup Physical Intelligence unveiled Real-Time Chunking (RTC), a technique that allows robots to plan upcoming actions while carrying out current ones.

MIT researchers developed a machine learning-based adaptive control algorithm that helps drones stick to their intended paths, even when hit by unpredictable winds.

The UK’s NHS announced that robot-assisted surgery will become “the default” for 90% of many operations by 2035, slashing wait times by 2029.

Australian roboticists published new findings that showed mixed reactions to humans interacting with LLM-enabled humanoids.

Researchers unveiled a biometric robotic hand, the F-TAC Hand, featuring high-res tactile sensors covering 70% of its surface, enabling human-like adaptive grasping.

Shenzhen-based AI2 Robotics joined forces with Chinese automaker Dongfeng Liuzhou to deploy A12’s humanoids in factories to handle inspections and assembly.

A team of 432 “walking” robots relocated a 7,500-ton historic Shikumen building in Shanghai back to its original site, gently moving the structure 10 meters a day.

New York University and UC Berkeley launched EgoZero, a novel system designed to capture human demos with Project Aria smart glasses for robot training.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, June 13th at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll know how to get significantly more value out of whichever model you use, whether it’s o3 or o3-Pro.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The Mouse just lawyered up — and unlike media outlets that settled for licensing deals, Disney, Marvel, and other major Hollywood studios are choosing the courtroom over compromise.

With Hollywood playing hardball on Midjourney’s reproduction of its IP in outputs and model training, the AI industry’s fair use defense may be about to get its toughest stress test yet.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Disney, Universal sue Midjourney over copyright

• TBC goes all-in on AI with Dia browser

• How to connect Claude to external applications

• Meta's new AI learns real-world physics

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

MIDJOURNEY

👨🏻‍⚖️ Disney, Universal sue Midjourney over copyright

Image source: Legal filing

The Rundown: Hollywood giants, including Disney and Universal, just filed a lawsuit against AI image generation startup Midjourney, alleging that the company’s models are a massive engine for copyright theft.

The details:

• The lawsuit marks Hollywood's first major legal action against AI companies, with Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Universal, and others joining forces.

• The group claims that Midjourney built its models by scraping the studios' iconic characters, allowing users to generate endless unauthorized knockoffs.

• Dozens of examples were included in the complaint, featuring side-by-side comparisons of characters like Yoda, Shrek, Spider-Man, and Minions.

• Disney’s legal counsel said that while the company is ‘bullish’ on the promise of AI, “piracy is piracy.”

Why it matters: While many major media outlets have struck lucrative AI licensing deals for their content, Hollywood studios are playing hardball. This case could have major ramifications for AI companies’ “fair use” claims — potentially setting legal precedents that could impact not just Midjourney but the entire industry.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

💨 The compliance platform that keeps up with AI speed

The Rundown: While you're sprinting toward your next round or first enterprise contract, buyers are demanding security, compliance, and transparency from day one. Vanta bridges that gap with compliance automation built specifically for AI's unique challenges.

How Vanta accelerates AI startups:

• Automated audit readiness that evolves with your models, infrastructure, and customers

• Continuous security monitoring designed for AI’s rapid iteration cycles

• Used by AI innovators like LangChain and Factory, who turned early compliance into deal-closing credibility

Get compliant at AI-speed with Vanta — book a demo and claim $1,000 off.

THE BROWSER COMPANY

🌐 TBC goes all-in on AI with Dia browser

Image source: The Browser Company

The Rundown: The Browser Company released its AI-first Dia browser in beta, featuring an integrated chatbot that can see every tab, take agentic actions, and adapt to user preferences and patterns.

The details:

• Dia integrates its AI directly into the URL bar, allowing users to chat with their open tabs, get summaries, and draft content without leaving their workflow.

• Dia’s chatbot can analyze multiple tabs at once, draft emails based on a user’s writing style, and use days of browsing history for personalized responses.

• It uses a system of “Skills” or specialized AI agents tailored for specific tasks like shopping or coding that remember context from relevant tabs.

• Beta access launched today for existing Arc users on Mac, with all data encrypted locally and wiped from servers immediately after processing.

Why it matters: The web is trending towards AI and agentic capabilities — and the race to create the best “AI-native” browser is officially on. Dia feels directly correct in that AI will evolve to where users are instead of being isolated in platforms, but the likes of Google and OpenAI are undoubtedly coming with powerful solutions of their own.

AI TRAINING

🔗 How to connect Claude to external applications

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Claude's new MCP integration to connect AI directly to thousands of external tools like Google Docs, Slack, WhatsApp, and more via Zapier's MCP server.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Claude Settings and look for “Add integrations” in the “Search and tools” option

2. Visit the Zapier MCP site, create a free account, and add Claude in “New MCP Server”

3. In the Configure tab, click “Add tool” and search for apps like Google Docs, or Slack

4. Copy the Integration URL from the Connect tab, return to Claude, and paste it in “Add integrations”

5. Test it! Ask Claude: "Create a new Google Doc about [topic]" and watch it work across apps

Pro tip: Start with 1-2 essential tools, test thoroughly, then add more apps as needed. You can edit or disable tools anytime.

PRESENTED BY SPEECHMATICS

🎙️ The voice AI that protects conversations that matter

The Rundown: Most Voice AI Agents send speech data to the cloud — yours doesn't have to. Speechmatics lets you deploy directly on-device, on-prem, or in-cloud, safeguarding patient confidentiality and customer trust without sacrificing performance.

Speechmatics’ enterprise-grade capabilities include:

• Deployment flexibility across on-device, on-premises, hybrid, or cloud environments

• Proven accuracy across 55+ languages with multilingual conversation handling

• Infrastructure that handles 500+ years of audio monthly for governments and Fortune 500 companies

Try Speechmatics at no cost today.

META

🎢 Meta's new AI learns real-world physics

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Meta released V-JEPA 2, a “world model” that gives AI systems the ability to understand physics and predict real-world outcomes — enabling robots to navigate unfamiliar environments and manipulate objects they've never seen before.

The details:

• The 1.2B parameter model was trained on 1M+ hours of video, learning how objects move, interact, and respond to actions in the physical world.

• V-JEPA 2 achieved 65-80% success rates in picking and placing unfamiliar objects in new environments, using visual goals to plan multi-step tasks.

• Meta claims the model runs 30x faster than Nvidia's competing Cosmos model while achieving SOTA performance on video understanding benchmarks.

• The company also released three new benchmarks revealing that while humans score 85-95% on physical reasoning tasks, current AI models struggle.

Why it matters: Grounding AI in physical reality instead of text-based reasoning is an important development as both AI agents and robots become more and more utilized in real-world tasks. Meta's approach can help AI adapt to the messy, unpredictable real-world environments on the fly without requiring massive task-specific training datasets.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 o3-pro - OpenAI’s new top reasoning model that thinks deeper

• 🧠 Magistral - Mistral’s first open-source reasoning model family

• 🎥 Astra - Topaz Labs’ new AI video upscaler

• 🎆 Krea 1 - Krea’s first image model, featuring advanced control and quality

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🎨 The Rundown - Designer (Brand & Platform)

• ⚡ xAI - Electric Engineer

• 🛡️ Horizon3 - Attack Engineer

• ✍️ Abridge - Technical Writer

📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that the company’s first open-weight model, expected in June, will take “a little more time” but be “very, very worth the wait.”

Apple execs defended their AI efforts in an interview with the WSJ, saying the company made the right call to not ship AI Siri that didn’t meet quality standards.

Meta announced new AI video editing capabilities in its Meta AI app, allowing users to quickly change outfits, locations, lighting, and more with preset prompts.

Mistral launched Mistral Compute, an AI stack offering GPU access, orchestration, and model training services, positioning itself as an alternative to cloud giants.

Windsurf unveiled the Windsurf Browser, giving its Cascade agentic coding assistant full awareness of web activity for in-context support.

Starbucks is piloting Green Dot Assist, a new AI tool to help baristas answer questions and access guidance in real-time.

Midjourney launched video ranking, allowing users to explore and rate outputs from its soon-to-be-released video model.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, June 13th, at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll know how to get significantly more value out of whichever model you use, whether it’s o3 or o3-Pro.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI just dropped o3-pro, the company’s new top reasoning model — coming alongside a massive price cut that shows intelligence is becoming cheaper than ever, even as capabilities soar.

With early testers calling the release "much smarter" and CEO Sam Altman writing that humanity has “passed the AI event horizon,” the optimism coming out of the AI leader feels higher than ever.

In today’s AI rundown:

• OpenAI’s o3-pro with massive price cuts

• Meta’s ‘superintelligence’ lab with Scale AI founder

• How to create AI videos for free using OpenAI's Sora

• OpenAI CEO says AI takeoff has started

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🚀 OpenAI drops o3-pro with massive price cuts

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI released o3-pro, an upgraded version of its reasoning model that outperforms competitors on key benchmarks — while simultaneously reducing its o3 prices by 80% in a direct challenge to Google and Anthropic’s top models.

The details:

• o3-Pro is designed to "think longer," boosting reliability and performance in technical fields like math, science, and programming.

• The model outperforms top rivals on PhD-level math and science tasks, with evaluators preferring o3-pro across all tested categories.

• It can also use tools like web search and data analysis, but is slower and lacks support for features like image generation and Canvas.

• ChatGPT Pro and Team users gain immediate access, with Enterprise and Edu customers receiving the model next week.

Why it matters: According to tester Ben Hylak, o3-pro feels “much smarter” than its predecessor and “very different” from other frontier models. But the most mind-blowing part of this release may be the pricing — coming in at a fraction of older models despite a gigantic leap in intelligence and capability.

TOGETHER WITH AUGMENT CODE

🤖 The Remote Agent for professional devs

The Rundown Augment Code's powerful AI coding agent meets professional software developers exactly where they are, delivering deep context and production-ready capabilities. And now Augment Code Remote Agents are available in VS Code to help your team clear out its backlog.

While you and your team build what’s next, Remote Agent can:

• Tackle technical debt

• Refactor code

• Update tests and docs

Sign up today and let Augment Code transform how your team works.

META

🧠 Meta’s ‘superintelligence’ lab with Scale AI founder

Image source: Getty Images / Reuters

The Rundown: Meta is reportedly shaking up its AI division with a new “superintelligence lab” hand picked by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with a multi-billion dollar deal to bring Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and other top talent onboard.

The details:

• Wang will lead Meta's new group alongside other Scale AI technical talent, with the 28-year-old founder taking a top position in Zuckerberg's AI hierarchy.

• The $15B deal sends cash to Scale's existing shareholders while allowing Meta to sidestep regulatory acquisition concerns with a 49% stake in the company.

• Zuckerberg has personally recruited nearly 50 researchers for the lab, offering as high as nine-figure packages to poach talent from OpenAI and Google.

• The move follows Zuckerberg’s reported frustration with the performance of Meta’s Llama 4 model and a desire to accelerate past competitors.

Why it matters: After drama and disappointment surrounding the recent Llama 4 release, Zuck is taking matters into his own hands — and isn’t afraid of shaking up his existing staff and breaking the bank to do it. Meta has the resources, but a dramatic pivot might be what’s truly necessary to catch up to its powerhouse AI rivals.

AI TRAINING

🎬 How to create AI videos for free using OpenAI's Sora

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use OpenAI’s powerful Sora video generator through Microsoft’s Bing mobile app to create professional-quality videos — instantly and without any cost.

Step-by-step:

1. Download the Microsoft Bing app and select the mini-apps icon in the bottom right corner.

2. Access the “Video Creator” feature from the available mini-apps

3. Write a detailed prompt describing your desired video scene

4. Generate your 5-second, 9:16 format video and download via the three dots menu

Pro tip: Create multiple variations of the same concept by slightly adjusting your prompts.

PRESENTED BY ANGELQ

🧠 Give your child a smart start to AI this summer

The Rundown Meet AngelQ: the first AI-powered super browser made just for kids. Designed to turn summer screen time into a launchpad for learning—with built-in safety every step of the way.

AngelQ’s safe, age-appropriate platform:

• Teaches kids how to use AI the right way — responsibly and confidently

• Acts as a protected space for exploring, searching, and discovering

• Helps children build real tech skills they’ll carry into the future

• Is designed to grow with kids as they progress

Give your child a smart start to AI with a free year of AngelQ by using code RUNDOWN365.

SAM ALTMAN

💫 OpenAI CEO says AI takeoff has started

Image source: o3 / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a new blog post titled “The Gentle Singularity,” claiming humanity has passed the AI event horizon — predicting superintelligence will reshape society, but its changes will remain manageable.

The details:

• Altman frames the takeoff as a “gentle singularity,” where society adapts to exponential progress as once-amazing capabilities quickly become routine.

• His timeline includes the AI creating new ideas in 2026, robots functioning in the real world in 2027, and an explosion of creation across industries.

• In the 2030s, he projects that both intelligence and energy will become abundant, with the cost of AI eventually approaching the cost of electricity.

• Altman’s path forward involves first solving AI alignment, then ensuring superintelligence is cheap, distributed, and not controlled by a single entity.

Why it matters: Despite AI frequently being painted in doomsday scenarios, the man at the center of it all envisions a quite different outlook. Users already quickly adapt to each new wave of intelligence, moving on from one release to shouting for the next — and Altman sees that continuing even as we cross a new threshold of tech advances.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 📚 Exa Research Pro - New SOTA agentic tool for web research

• 🍎 Foundation Models - Build on Apple’s on-device Apple Intelligence model

• ⚙️ Xcode 26 - Apple’s coding tool, with new access to AI models

• 🗂️ Common Pile v0.1 - 8TB dataset of public and licensed text for AI training

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🔁 The Rundown - Strategic Partnerships (AI University)

• 🧑‍🏫 Parloa - Senior Product Trainer

• 🌟 Synthesia - Director, Customer Success

• 🌍 Palantir Technologies - Global Mobility Specialist

📰 Everything else in AI today

Mistral released Magistral, its open-source reasoning family with quick responses and multi-language support, though STEM and coding benchmarks lag behind top rivals.

OpenAI finalized a deal with Google Cloud for additional compute, diversifying beyond Microsoft as Google expands its cloud business to include its biggest AI competitor.

Google added a new Veo 3 Fast version of its viral video generation model in Gemini and Flow, allowing for expanded access with 2x the speed.

KREA AI unveiled Krea 1, the company’s first in-house image model — launching in free beta with enhanced aesthetic control, artistic knowledge, and image quality.

Enterprise AI startup Glean raised $150M in new funding at a $7.2B valuation, driven by adoption from Fortune 500 companies and its Glean Agents platform.

SAG-AFTRA and major video game companies reportedly reached a tentative deal to end a nearly year-long strike by actors over AI and compensation protections.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Watch our last live workshop

Check out our last workshop with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to incorporate Flux Kontext into your creative workflows for consistent, high-quality results.

Watch here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team