Stay Ahead on AI.

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Google is acquiring cloud security startup Wiz for $32B—its biggest deal in history.

By bringing Wiz into the fold, Google hopes to provide cloud customers with AI-driven cybersecurity solutions to combat critical risks—and better compete with Microsoft and Amazon. Will this bold bet pay off?

In today’s tech rundown:

Google acquiring Wiz for $32B
Apple designing a foldable iPhone
BYD’s super-fast charging system
Alphabet’s Starlink competitor ‘Taara’
Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

🔐 Google acquiring Wiz for $32B

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Google is acquiring Israeli cybersecurity startup Wiz for $32B in an all-cash transaction—aiming to bolster its cloud division’s cybersecurity products and take a bigger piece of the cloud security market.

The details:

Wiz specializes in AI-powered cloud security solutions that help businesses identify and mitigate critical vulnerabilities across major cloud platforms.
With this deal, Google will help strengthen the security platform offered by Wiz, although the startup will continue to operate independently across all clouds.
This also marks Google’s largest acquisition to date, surpassing its $12.5B, consumer tech-focused purchase of Motorola Mobility in 2011.
However, it has come through on the second attempt; Google’s first bid for Wiz, reportedly at $23B, collapsed last year due to regulatory concerns.

Why it matters: Google’s acquisition of Wiz underscores its urgency to bolster its cloud security footprint amid the AI boom and compete more aggressively with Microsoft and Amazon. However, the deal’s scale and Alphabet’s market dominance are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny in the coming months.

APPLE

🍎 Apple designing a foldable iPhone

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Apple is reportedly prototyping foldable devices, with plans to release its first foldable iPhone and potentially a foldable iPad by 2026 to compete with Samsung, Google, OnePlus, and Huawei.

The details:

The foldable iPhone is expected to feature a "book-style" design with a 7.8-inch internal display and a 5.5-inch external screen.
Apple will likely use materials like titanium and stainless steel for the hinge to address common issues with foldables, such as creasing and fragility.
The device is also rumored to include high-end hardware—such as ProMotion technology—and come at a price tag well above $2,000.
And that’s not all: The company is also said to be working on a larger foldable, potentially an 18.8-inch MacBook-iPad hybrid that could run macOS.

Why it matters: The foldable rumors come as Apple faces lukewarm iPhone sales due to delays in AI-powered Siri. Analysts believe the launch of foldable devices could rejuvenate the company’s market presence as it would refine a design that has already been tried and tested by competitors.

BYD

🚘 BYD’s super-fast charging system

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD unveiled a groundbreaking fast-charging system that it says charges electric vehicles in five minutes—about the same as it takes to fill up a gas tank.

The details:

The new "Super e-Platform" boasts peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts (kW), allowing vehicles to gain 400 km (249 miles) of range in just five minutes.
This charging rate is twice as fast as Tesla's latest Superchargers, addressing one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption — charging time.
The ultra-fast charging tech includes batteries with 10C charging capability, high-power motors, and silicon carbide power chips.
The company’s Han L sedan and Tang L SUV will be the first models to feature this new technology, with sales starting in April 2025.

Why it matters: BYD’s breakthrough matches the convenience of refueling gasoline vehicles and outpaces competitors like Tesla, effectively eliminating range anxiety and enhancing the practicality of EVs for long-distance travel. The company also plans to build 4,000 ultra-fast charging stations across China, just like Tesla’s Superchargers.

TAARA

⚡️Alphabet’s Starlink competitor ‘Taara’

Image source: Taara/X

The Rundown: Alphabet is spinning off its laser-based internet project, Taara, from its X moonshot incubator — positioning it as a competitor to SpaceX's Starlink by delivering high-speed internet via laser beams instead of satellites.

The details:

Taara uses laser beams to transmit data between fixed points at speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second over distances of 20 kilometers (about 12.5 miles).
The approach aims to provide high-speed internet access to hard-to-reach areas where fiber optic infrastructure is impractical or too expensive to install.
The tech differs from Starlink, which relies on a satellite constellation in low Earth orbit, along with radio frequencies, to connect terminals to satellites.
Taara is now developing a next-gen chip, expected to launch in 2026, with thousands of miniature light emitters to significantly boost bandwidth.

Why it matters: By spinning off from Alphabet, Taara is expected to attract investors to help scale its operations, allowing it to compete with Starlink for internet coverage in rural or remote areas. So far, Taara has provided internet services in more than a dozen countries, including Kenya and India, and has been used at events like Coachella.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Waymo received a 30-day permit to begin mapping roadways at San Francisco International Airport, moving toward its goal of offering robotaxis in the Bay Area.

Intel's new CEO Lip-Bu Tan plans to make broad changes to its chip manufacturing methods and AI strategies in a move to revive the struggling tech giant.

Elon Musk’s xAI acquired AI video startup Hotshot to further train their advanced video generation models and integrate them into Grok.

MIT researchers found that climate change will make space junk—mostly old satellites—pile up to interfere with internet services and national defense.

Food e-commerce startup GrubMarket raised $50M in new equity at a $3.5B valuation as part of its goal to build AI to transform the U.S. food supply chain industry.

Amazon Echo users will soon lose the option to process their Alexa voice recordings locally—meaning those recordings will be sent to the company’s cloud.

Dating app Bumble is adding new safety features, including an ID verification tool that lets users submit a government-issued ID to the system to prove their credibility.

More than 400 Hollywood creatives signed an open letter urging the Trump administration to not relax copyright restrictions as requested by OpenAI and Google.

France's leading publishers and writers filed a lawsuit against Meta for allegedly using “copyright-protected content on a massive scale” to train its AI systems.

Klarna, a Swedish fintech company, filed for an IPO in the U.S., aiming to raise at least $1B at a valuation above $15B.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Wednesday at 4 PM EST to learn how you can apply AI to enhance your advertising and creative production workflows—whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up your content skills—with Tony Pu, Product Marketing Lead at Kling AI.

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

Roblox's open-source 3D generator

Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. One of the biggest gaming platforms in the world just made 3D content creation as simple as a text command — and its 85M daily users are about to build and monetize like never before.

Between Roblox’s new open-source Cube 3D model and other recent AI and coding upgrades, building the game of your dreams is suddenly just a few prompts away.

In today’s AI rundown:

Roblox’s open-source 3D generation AI
Zoom’s AI Companion goes agentic
Turn logos into ready-to-sell product mockups
Google’s AI satellite to spot wildfires early
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ROBLOX

🧊 Roblox releases open-source 3D generation AI

Image source: Roblox

The Rundown: Roblox just announced Cube 3D, a new open-source AI system for generating 3D objects and scenes from text prompts — alongside a slew of other tools and updates for AI-assisted game development.

The details:

Cube 3D generates complete, functional 3D objects from text prompts, training on native 3D data instead of traditional image-based reconstruction.
Developers can generate assets through simple commands like "/generate motorcycle," with image input capabilities also coming in the future.
Cube uses ‘3D tokenization’ to predict and generate shapes the same way language models predict text, enabling future 4D scene generation capabilities.
Roblox also released updates to its Studio content creation suite including improved performance, real-time collaboration features, and monetization tools.

Why it matters: Between ‘vibe-coding’, Gemini’s new native multimodal image capabilities, and open-source tools like Cube 3D, it has never been easier to take a game from idea to reality. With 85M+ daily active users, these AI tools will supercharge both Roblox’s growth and the ability for users to build and monetize on the platform.

TOGETHER WITH DEEPGRAM

🗣️ Speech-to-text API designed for healthcare

The Rundown: Deepgram's Nova-3 Medical delivers unmatched accuracy for clinical environments — helping transform your healthcare applications with transcriptions that get medical terminology right the first time, every time.

With Nova-3 Medical, you can:

Capture medical terminology with 63.7% higher accuracy than alternatives
Customize and fine-tune Nova-3 for medical specialties with Keyterm Prompting
Stay secure and compliant with HIPAA-approved, flexible deployment options

Every word matters in healthcare. Start building with Nova-3 Medical today.

ZOOM

🤖 Zoom’s AI Companion goes agentic

Image source: Zoom

The Rundown: Zoom announced a major upgrade to its AI Companion, introducing new agentic capabilities and skills that allow the assistant to identify and complete tasks across the platform’s ecosystem.

The details:

AI Companion is getting new memory and reasoning capabilities to problem-solve and leverage the correct agentic tools for each task.
Zoom Tasks automatically detects and executes action items from meetings, scheduling follow-ups, or generating documents without user intervention.
Other new features include calendar management, clip generation, writing assistance, voice recording transcriptions, and live notes for meetings.
A new $12/month Custom AI Companion add-on is also launching in April, offering personal AI coaches, AI avatars for video messages, and more.

Why it matters: Zoom pivoted in 2024 to be entirely ‘AI-first’, so it’s no surprise to see it now enter the agentic game with automated workflows and tasks on the platform. CEO Eric Yuan previously shared a vision of AI digital twins that can attend meetings in a user’s place, and April’s launch may be the first step towards that goal.

AI TRAINING

👕 Turn logos into ready-to-sell product mockups

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Recraft's mockup tool to place your brand logos directly onto product images for instant e-commerce and presentation visuals.

Step-by-step:

Sign in to Recraft (free account includes 50 daily credits) and click anywhere on the blank canvas to begin.
Select "Product Photo" and choose a preferred product template (like a t-shirt).
Click "Import Image" to upload your logo to the canvas and click "Remove Background" to make it transparent.
Drag your logo onto the product photo and watch as it automatically adapts to the fabric's contours.

Pro tip: You can try different placements on your product to find the most appealing position before finalizing your mockup.

PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI

🤝 Turn AI passion into a consulting career

The Rundown: Innovating with AI's new program, AI Consultancy Project, transforms AI enthusiasts into professional consultants — tapping into a market projected to reach $54.7B by 2032.

The 6-month program delivers:

Proven frameworks for client acquisition and service delivery
A step-by-step path to six-figure consulting income
Students who land their first AI client in as little as 3 days

GOOGLE

🔥 Google’s AI satellite to spot wildfires early

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google Research and Muon Space just launched the first AI-powered FireSat satellite, designed to provide powerful tools for early wildfire detection — with the ability to spot fires as small as a classroom within minutes of ignition.

The details:

Current wildfire detection relies on infrequently updated, low-resolution imagery that often can't spot fires until they've grown to several acres in size.
Using infrared sensors and AI analysis from space, FireSat can detect fires as small as 5x5 meters — dramatically smaller than current satellite systems.
The satellite is the first of more than 50 planned for the entire FireSat constellation, which will scan nearly all of Earth's surface every 20 minutes.
When fully deployed, the system will create a global historical record of fire behavior to help scientists better understand and model wildfire patterns.

Why it matters: Wildfire seasons continue to intensify worldwide, and early detection can be the difference between a small containment and a catastrophic event. In addition to the wealth of real-time data being fed to emergency responders, FireSat’s data will also advance scientific understanding for more efficient firefighting.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

🤖 Ernie X1 & 4.5 - Baidu’s new deep-thinking and native multimodal models
🧠 Gemini Personalization - Responses based on chats and search history
🗣️ 1B CSM - Sesame’s newly open-sourced text and audio-to-speech model
🧪 Prompt Engineering Studio - Deploy AI prompts across 1600+ models

💼 AI Job Opportunities

💼 UiPath - Commercial Account Executive
🧮 Perplexity AI - Backend Software Engineer, Billing
⚖️ Grammarly - Legal Analyst
🛩️ Shield AI - Production Supervisor, V-BAT

📰 Everything else in AI today

Mistral AI released Small 3.1, a fast, open-source multimodal model with a 128k token context window that outperforms Gemma 3 and GPT-4o Mini across key benchmarks.

xAI acquired generative video startup Hotshot, with the company sunsetting new video creation to integrate and scale up training its models on xAI’s Colossus cluster.

Chinese researchers introduced ReCamMaster, an AI system that can edit the camera angle and movement in a video while preserving details from the original scene.

MagicLab showcased its Magicbot humanoid running continuously outdoors for four minutes, with the robot preparing for an upcoming half marathon in Beijing.

Google is partnering with MediaTek for its next generation of Tensor Processing Units, aiming to reduce reliance on Broadcom while bringing more chip development in-house.

Perplexity shared a new commercial featuring Emmy-winning actor Lee Jung-jae, directly pitting the product against Google Search in a Squid Game-style scenario.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Wednesday at 4 PM EST to learn how to apply AI to enhance advertising and creative production workflows — whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up content skills — with Tony Pu, Product Marketing Lead at Kling AI.

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

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

Robotics

Tesla Optimus is heading to Mars

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Elon Musk just announced that SpaceX will launch Tesla’s Optimus robot to Mars aboard Starship in 2026—paving the way for human landings a few years later.

As SpaceX reportedly develops domes and spacesuits for a future Martian colony, Optimus might get a head start on setting up camp before humans arrive. Wildly ambitious—or is life on Mars closer than we think?

In today’s robotics rundown:

Tesla Optimus heading to Mars
Figure’s high-volume humanoid factory
The world’s strongest robotic arm
China’s grand humanoid marathon
Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

SPACEX

🚀 Tesla Optimus heading to Mars

Image source: Tesla

The Rundown: Elon Musk just announced on X an ambitious plan to send Tesla's Optimus humanoid to Mars by the end of 2026—with the mission slated to be carried out by SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket.

The details:

Optimus will be key to Musk’s Mars colonization vision, as it could capture insights from the planet while serving as a test-bed for future missions.
After sending Optimus, Musk anticipates that human landings on Mars could commence as early as 2029, although he considers 2031 a more likely timeline.
The robot will head to Mars on a full-assembled Starship, which stands nearly 124 meters tall as the largest launch vehicle ever built.
It is designed to be fully reusable, which is essential for long-term space missions aimed at transporting humans and cargo to Mars and back.

Why it matters: Musk has said that his goal is to make it so that anyone can travel to Mars, if they would like, and eventually set up a self-sustaining civilization on the Red Planet. But the road is bumpy: SpaceX must first perfect its launch vehicle to ensure it doesn’t explode, as seen in test flights, before carrying Optimus or human passengers.

FIGURE

🔥 Figure’s high-volume humanoid factory

Image source: Figure AI

The Rundown: California-based robotics major Figure AI unveiled BotQ, its new manufacturing facility dedicated to producing 12,000 humanoids annually, with plans to scale up to 100,000 in the next four years.

The details:

Figure’s engineering teams spent the last eight months designing BotQ with automation and high-volume manufacturing techniques.
The company said it chose to bring the manufacturing of its humanoids in-house to ensure full control over the build process, quality, and efficiency.
It switched from CNC machining to injection molding and diecasting—ensuring parts that once took a week to make now get prepped in 20 seconds.
With this facility, Figure plans to speed up automation by using Figure 02 humanoids to build the next-gen Figure 03 robots.

Why it matters: Figure is employing several strategies—from software infrastructure to partnerships—to create a scalable manufacturing process that could give it a competitive edge. However, rivals are also moving fast—Agility Robotics produces 10,000 Digit humanoids annually, with several already deployed in Amazon facilities.

RISE ROBOTICS

💪🏽 The world’s strongest robotic arm

Image source: Rise Robotics

The Rundown: Rise Robotics’ Superjammer industrial robotic arm is set to claim a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s strongest non-hydraulic robot arm—lifting an astonishing 6,460 lb. (2,930 kg) some 5 meters off the ground.

The details:

Unlike traditional hydraulic systems, the Superjammer uses Rise's proprietary Beltdraulic technology—a belt-and-pulley system powered by electric motors.
This innovative approach eliminates the need for energy-intensive hydraulic fluids, reducing emissions and energy consumption by 65% to 90%.
The system is said to be 3x faster than hydraulics, offering precise control, minimal maintenance, and unmatched durability even in extreme conditions.
The current world record is held by the Fanuc M-2000iA/2300, which hoisted approx. 2,300 kg using electronic gears, belts, and servos.

Why it matters: The Superjammer will showcase its power on March 20 at the Guinness World Records ceremony, marking a breakthrough in heavy machinery and robotics. The game-changer? It’s emissions-free and operates without petroleum-based hydraulic fluids—yet still outperforms conventional hydraulic systems.

BEIJING ROBOT HALF MARATHON

🏃🏻 China’s grand humanoid marathon

Image source: Unitree

The Rundown: China is gearing up to host the world's first-ever robot half-marathon in Beijing on April 13, where humanoids from 20 international companies will compete alongside 12,000 human runners.

The details:

The event is designed to showcase robots’ speed, agility, and performance with the 21 km distance serving as a stress test for robotic hardware.
Race rules are that humanoids must be capable of bipedal walking or running and cannot use wheels or other non-human mobility aids.
The robots can be either semi-autonomous or fully autonomous and will compete on separate lanes secured with barriers to ensure safety.
They can replace batteries or even switch out entirely in a relay format during the race; however, each robot replacement will incur a 10-minute penalty.

Why it matters: While humanoids aren’t typically designed for long-distance running, robots can nab prizes for best gait, most innovative design, and creativity. This event provides a way for companies like Unitree, Star 1, and Tiangong to push the limits of what their humanoids can do on a global stage, with future investors likely looking on.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

eVTOL company Joby Aviation is partnering with Virgin Atlantic to launch electric air taxis in the UK, offering short-haul flights for Virgin customers to and from the airport.

Shenzhen-based UBTECH launched its Tiangong Walker humanoid for research and education at RMB 299,000 ($42,310), with deliveries starting in the coming months.

Japanese researchers are investigating transporting AI-equipped swarm robots to the Moon to explore lava tubes by 2028.

French automaker Renault is testing a new driverless mini-bus in Barcelona after teaming up with autonomous vehicle company WeRide to make the prototype.

U.S. researchers are exploring how AI and a robot called Ruyi can improve caregiving and support for older adults with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Japanese researchers developed a self-contained, wireless microbot dubbed HB-3 that operates with “incredible precision” in tight, dangerous spaces.

Micropolis, a Dubai-based robotics company, raised $15.5M through its NYSE IPO for building autonomous mobile robots, including delivery and police patrol bots.

Polish researchers published a study exploring how humanoid robot supervisors are perceived as authority figures by human staff in the workforce.

Researchers in Munich created a new encyclopedia called the “Tree of Robots” designed to make learning about robotic systems and comparing them easier.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next private workshop this Wednesday at 4 PM EST to learn about how you can apply AI to enhance your advertising and creative production workflows, with Tony Pu, Product Marketing Lead at Kling AI.

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

China releases GPT-4.5 rival at 1% the cost

Grab your free AI Playbook today.

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. China’s AI acceleration is back, with tech giant Baidu launching two powerful AI models at just 1% the price of OpenAI’s GPT-4.5, and half of the price of DeepSeek’s R1.

With impressive performance claims and radically lower costs, we’re likely witnessing the beginning of a global AI price war.

In today’s AI rundown:

China’s Baidu launches ultra-cheap AI models
Judge rejects Musk's bid to block OpenAI's evolution
How to code with AI, directly in your editor
Harvard team creates AI agent for personalized medicine
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

BAIDU

🇨🇳 China’s Baidu launches ultra-cheap AI models

Image source: Baidu

The Rundown: Chinese tech giant Baidu just released two aggressively priced multimodal AI models — ERNIE 4.5, a significant upgrade to their foundational model, and a new deep-think-capable model called Ernie X1.

The details:

ERNIE 4.5 stands out with enhanced “EQ” and language skills as well as improved hallucination prevention, logical reasoning, and coding abilities.
According to Baidu, ERNIE 4.5 outperforms GPT-4.5 across multiple benchmarks while costing just 1% of its price — approximately $0.55 and $2.20 per million input and output tokens.
ERNIE X1, Baidu’s first reasoning model, matches the capabilities of top Chinese competitor DeepSeek's R1 at half the price.
Like DeepSeek’s R1, ERNIE X1 uses a step-by-step "thinking" approach, excelling in complex calculations and tasks like document understanding.

Why it matters: China continues to build intelligence too cheap to meter. With ERNIE 4.5 at 1% the cost of GPT 4.5, and ERNIE X1 matching DeepSeek's R1 at half the price, we're likely witnessing the start of a global AI price war. This strategy could force Western competitors to slash rates, democratizing access to advanced AI worldwide.

TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT

⛏️ The AI gold rush: Are you in or out?

The Rundown: HubSpot’s ‘AI For Business Builders’ free guide shows you how to join the savvy entrepreneurs quietly leveraging artificial intelligence for real business growth — with no P.H.D. needed.

This no-BS guide cuts through the hype, giving you:

A jargon-free breakdown of large language models (the engine behind AI's magic)
Concrete steps to leverage AI for immediate business growth
Real-world examples that turn "prompt engineering" from gibberish into a secret weapon

OPENAI

🧑‍⚖️ Judge rejects Musk's bid to block OpenAI's evolution

Image source: Getty Images / Reuters

The Rundown: A federal judge has denied Elon Musk’s request for a preliminary injunction against OpenAI's structural changes, while fast-tracking the trial and dismissing several of Musk's claims entirely, according to a March 4, 2025 ruling.

The details:

The judge said Musk didn’t have "the high burden” for a preliminary injunction but allowed other aspects of the lawsuit with an expedited trial this fall.
Internal emails cited by OpenAI allegedly show Musk once wanted to merge OpenAI into Tesla as a for-profit entity—contradicting his current legal position.
Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, last year over straying from their original mission of developing AI for the good of humanity, not corporate profits.
OpenAI and Altman have denied the accusations, saying the non-profit is not going—and any restructuring of for-profit subsidiaries will only better support it.

Why it matters: With OpenAI's rumored ~$40B SoftBank investment hanging on its pivot to a for-profit model, this lawsuit could reshape the company's trajectory and its AI models' evolution. Having last raised $6.6B at a $157B valuation, the stakes for both the company and the broader AI landscape could not be higher.

AI TRAINING

💻 How to code with AI, directly in your editor

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn to use ChatGPT's updated macOS app and its "Work with Apps" feature to edit code directly in your preferred development environment.

Step-by-step:

Install the proper extension in your code editor—search for "openai.chatgpt" in the Extensions marketplace (VS Code/Cursor) or sideload the VSIX file for other editors.
Open the ChatGPT app, find the "Work With" panel in the sidebar, and select your code editor from the list.
Open any code file in your editor, and ChatGPT will automatically connect to it.
Ask ChatGPT to explain sections or modify your code by typing natural language requests, review it, and click "Apply" to instantly update your file.

Pro tip: Different ChatGPT models offer varying levels of code expertise - choose based on whether you need quick edits or complex refactoring.

PRESENTED BY FIDDLER

🤖 Making AI agents transparent and trustworthy

The Rundown: Fiddler AI and AWS’s upcoming webinar breaks down how to increase visibility and security for AI agent workflows — helping you drive innovation without sacrificing compliance or trust.

In this live webinar, you'll discover:

How AI observability boosts transparency in agent decision-making processes
Best practices to protect agents from risks using tools like Guardrails
Essential tips for balancing innovation, compliance, and operational security

Register today to attend live or receive the recording afterward.

AI RESEARCH

🧪 Harvard team creates AI agent for personalized medicine

Image source: TxAgent

The Rundown: Researchers from Harvard and MIT just introduced TxAgent, an AI agent that leverages multi-step reasoning and real-time biomedical knowledge retrieval to generate trusted, personalized treatment recommendations for patients.

The details:

TxAgent utilizes 211 specialized tools to analyze drug interactions and contraindications and suggest patient-specific treatments in real time.
It evaluates drugs at molecular, pharmacokinetic, and clinical levels, identifying risks based on comorbidities, ongoing medications, age, and genetic factors.
The system synthesizes evidence from biomedical sources, iteratively reasoning and refining recommendations through structured function calls.
TxAgent's toolkit is available as "ToolUniverse" featuring trusted data sources like openFDA and Open Targets to ensure validated medical insights.

Why it matters: TxAgent signals a major step in personalized medicine, offering doctors an AI-powered assistant for delivering safer, more tailored treatments. With optimized suggestions, this system can also fast-track medical consultations, especially in developing regions where healthcare systems are already strained.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

🚀 OLMo 2 32B - First fully open model that beats GPT-3.5 and GPT-4o mini
🎥 Freepik AI Video Upscaler - Upscale low-quality videos to 4K in one click
🧠 Command A - Cohere’s ultra-fast enterprise AI with 256K context window
💻 BrowserAgent - Create and run AI workflows in browser with no API costs

💼 AI Job Opportunities

✍️ The Rundown - Course Copywriter/Designer
📈 Findem - PLG Senior Product Marketing Manager
🎨 Sanctuary AI - Technical Artist, Simulation
⚡ C3 AI - AI Engagement Director (Energy)

📰 Everything else in AI today

Google’s new Gemini 2.0 Flash model is reportedly being used by people to remove watermarks from images, including those from platforms like Getty.

Humanoid robot maker Figure announced the launch of BotQ, a new manufacturing facility capable of producing 12,000 humanoids a year—with plans to scale up to 100,000.

Patronus AI launched the industry’s first multimodal LLM-as-a-judge, a tool designed to help developers detect and mitigate reliability issues in multimodal AI apps.

Pika Labs released 16 new effects for its AI video platform, enabling users to morph images into different character videos.

Sesame, which recently went viral for its realistic AI voice tech demo, open-sourced its Conversation Speech Model (CSM-1B) for text-to-speech tasks.

Vogent AI launched voice agents that design and improve themselves, learning from real failure cases and requiring no prompt engineering.

Y Combinator CEO reported that nearly a quarter of their current startups now have 95% of their code written by AI, enabling small teams to reach $10M in revenue with dramatically fewer engineers.

OpenAI's CPO Kevin Weil just predicted 2025 is the year AI will permanently surpass humans at programming, calling it a "democratizing effect" that will allow anyone to create software.

COMMUNITY

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

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See you soon,

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

OpenAI's regulatory power play

Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI just revealed its vision for AI governance — seeking copyright exemptions for themselves while pushing to restrict Chinese open-source rivals like DeepSeek.

As the $500B Stargate architect flexes its growing influence in Washington, has OpenAI's political strategy become as calculated as its AGI roadmap?

In today’s AI rundown:

OpenAI pushes for federal shield in AI Action Plan
Cohere’s new efficient enterprise AI model
Turn your health data into personalized insights
Gemini taps into Google history with personalization
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🏛️ OpenAI pushes for federal shield in AI Action Plan

Image source: Getty Images

The Rundown: OpenAI just published its 15-page submission for the White House’s request for public input towards the AI Action Plan, seeking to shield AI companies from state regulations in exchange for federal oversight.

The details:

OpenAI warns that the 781 state-level AI bills introduced this year could hinder American innovation and competitiveness against China's AI ambitions.
The proposal includes additional calls for infrastructure investment, copyright reform, and expanding access to government datasets for AI development.
They notably called out China’s “unfettered access to data”, calling the race for AI ‘effectively over’ if fair use copyright laws are not applied in the U.S.
OpenAI also pushed for the U.S government to ban models like DeepSeek due to security risks, calling the lab “state-controlled”.

Why it matters: Between its $500B Stargate Project and growing influence in Washington, OpenAI's regulatory ambitions now rival its technical ones. But the push for state law exemptions while advocating to restrict open-source rivals comes at an awkward time given heavy criticism over closed-source models and copyright battles.

TOGETHER WITH TURING

🤝 Join the Generative AI Gathering at GTC

The Rundown: Attending GTC next week or Bay Area based? Turing and Fireworks AI invite you to join the Generative AI Gathering in San Jose on Wednesday, March 19, from 5-7 PM PT.

Attend and enjoy:

Global networking with leaders from the AI/LLM communities
Discussions ranging from AI-assisted software development to the future of LLM training
An evening of creative cocktails and fabulous food with your peers

Space is limited — RSVP now.

COHERE

🚀 Cohere’s new efficient enterprise AI model

Image source: Cohere

The Rundown: Cohere just unveiled Command A, a new enterprise-focused AI model that matches top competitors' performance while running on just two GPUs — also featuring strong multilingual capabilities and a large context window.

The details:

Command A achieves 156 tokens per second, running 1.75x faster than GPT-4o and 2.4x faster than DeepSeek-V3 while requiring just two GPUs.
Cohere’s model also matches or surpasses GPT-4o and DeepSeek-V3 across human evaluations for business, STEM, coding, and agentic tasks.
The model features a 256k context window, support for 23 languages, and specialized enterprise features like advanced RAG capabilities.
Command A will also integrate into Cohere’s North platform, allowing enterprises to securely deploy agents with their own internal databases.

Why it matters: Much of the AI space is chasing higher benchmarks, but Cohere's efficiency push could be ripe for enterprise adoption. The ability to run competitive, agentic AI capabilities on minimal hardware not only cuts costs but also makes private deployments more practical for companies concerned about data security.

AI TRAINING

🩺 Turn your health data into personalized insights

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Perplexity Spaces to create a personalized AI health assistant by uploading your health documents and setting custom instructions.

Step-by-step:

Visit Perplexity, click on "Spaces" in the left bar, and select "Create a Space."
Name your health space, add a description, and set custom AI instructions to guide how the AI interprets your questions and what context it prioritizes when generating responses.
Upload your health documents including medical records, medication lists, and wellness tracking data (do not include sensitive data you don’t want to share).
Start asking health questions that leverage your personal data for truly customized insights.

Note: While your personalized health assistant can provide valuable insights, it should never replace professional medical advice. Consult healthcare providers if any significant findings emerge from your analysis.

PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI

🤝 Turn AI passion into a consulting career

The Rundown: Innovating with AI's new program, AI Consultancy Project, transforms AI enthusiasts into professional consultants — tapping into a market projected to reach $54.7B by 2032.

The 6-month program delivers:

Proven frameworks for client acquisition and service delivery
A step-by-step path to six-figure consulting income
Students who land their first AI client in as little as 3 days

GOOGLE

🤖 Gemini taps into Google history with personalization

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just released new personalization features for its Gemini AI assistant, allowing the AI to tap into users' Search history and eventually other Google apps to deliver more tailored responses and contextually aware conversations.

The details:

The experimental feature uses the Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking model to analyze when personal data could enhance responses.
Google is starting with user’s search history, with plans to expand to apps like Google Photos and YouTube for additional data insights.
Users maintain control through opt-in permissions and the ability to disconnect their history at any time, with the feature restricted to users over 18.
Free users can also now access Gems (custom chatbots) and improved Deep Research capabilities previously limited to Advanced subscribers.

Why it matters: Google is leveraging its massive web of user data to create a more personalized experience — which also comes with the tricky dance of leveraging personal info without violating user trust. But with prominent opt-ins and a user base already used to connecting via apps, Google is well-positioned to pull it off.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

🤖 Gemma 3 - Google’s multimodal, multilingual, 128k context AI model family
⚡️ Gemini 2.0 Flash exp - Upload, create, and edit images directly via text conversations with new native image generation
👁️ R1-Omni - Alibaba’s new open-source multimodal reasoning model that can ‘read’ emotions
🧠 Perplexity MCP - Connect Perplexity’s Sonar model to Claude for real-time web search capabilities

💼 AI Job Opportunities

📢 Luma AI - Recruiter, GTM
🏢 Together AI - Office Coordinator
🤖 Writer - Customer AI Engineer
🤝 OpenAI - Engagement Manager

📰 Everything else in AI today

AI2 released OLMo 2 32B, the first fully open model to outperform GPT-3.5 and GPT-4o mini on academic benchmarks while requiring just a third of the training compute used by comparable models like Qwen 2.5 32B.

Microsoft and Xbox introduced "Copilot for Gaming," an AI-powered assistant designed to help players get into games faster, provide in-game coaching, and enhance social experiences — with early access coming soon to mobile users.

Alibaba launched New Quark, a redesigned version of the company’s AI assistant mobile app now powered by its new Qwen reasoning model.

Google added new support for YouTube in the Gemini API and Google AI Studio, allowing the model to use vision capabilities to interact with video content.

Former OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy predicted that AI will usher in a fundamental shift in web content design, with pages being optimized for LLMs and context windows over human readability.

Insilico Medicine secured $110M funding for its AI-powered drug discovery platform, which includes multimodal foundation models and a fully automated robotic lab with a bipedal humanoid AI Scientist.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 4 PM EST to learn about how to use Manus AI to boost productivity and automate everyday tasks easily with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

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

🤝 Share The Rundown, get rewards

We’ll always keep this newsletter 100% free. To support our work, consider sharing The Rundown with your friends, and we’ll send you more free goodies.

See you soon,

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

Tech

Meta launches X-like Community Notes

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. In the coming days, Meta is set to launch a major overhaul of its content moderation strategy by introducing Community Notes, a crowdsourced feature inspired by X's model.

This move marks a dramatic shift from Meta's previous reliance on third-party fact-checkers across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads — but many are asking, is this the best way to combat misinformation?

In today’s tech rundown:

Meta launches crowdsourced fact-checking
Niantic sells Pokémon GO division for $3.5B
Sesame open-sources its humanlike voice assistant
World-first success for titanium heart
Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

✏️ Meta launches crowdsourced fact-checking

Image source: Meta

The Rundown: Meta is set to begin testing its new Community Notes next week across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, replacing the previous third-party content moderation approach with a crowdsourced model for combatting misinformation.

The details:

Meta first announced its plans to replace fact-checkers with a version of X’s Community Notes in January, saying it would be “less prone to bias.”
The new system will allow users to write and rate notes providing context or identifying misleading information in posts, using X’s open-source algorithm.
The feature will be limited to 500 characters per note and require consensus from contributors with diverse perspectives before publication.
Some 200,000 people in the U.S. have already signed up to become contributors, with Meta planning to test the system before making notes public.

Why it matters: Meta says that Community Notes will enhance transparency and accountability on its platforms, with decisions based on a diverse group of users rather than an outsourced team of fact-checking professionals. However, critics worry that crowdsourcing could easily lead to false information running rampant on its platforms.

NIANTIC

🐸 Niantic sells Pokémon GO division for $3.5B

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: In a major shake-up of the mobile gaming industry, Saudi Arabia-backed mobile gaming giant Scopely just agreed to acquire Pokémon GO maker Niantic's gaming division for a whopping $3.5 billion.

The details:

The deal will see Scopely take control of its popular augmented reality games, including Pokémon GO, Pikmin Bloom, and Monster Hunter Now.
It also includes Niantic's social companion apps Campfire and Wayfarer, along with the entire game development team of over 2,300 employees.
Niantic, based in California, will contribute an additional $350 million in cash, bringing the total value for Niantic equity holders to approximately $3.85 billion.
Niantic's games have over 30 million monthly active users, with annual revenue exceeding $1 billion in 2024.

Why it matters: Niantic has released a few new games in recent years but hasn’t been able to match the epic success of Pokémon GO. Niantic says the sale will allow it to refocus on advancing its AI-powered geospatial and AR tech through a new standalone entity called Niantic Spatial, led by the company’s CEO and founder, John Hanke.

SESAME

🗣️ Sesame open-sources its humanlike voice assistant

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Sesame, an AI startup founded by Oculus co-creator Brendan Iribe, just released the base AI model powering its remarkably humanlike voice assistant, Maya, which mimics how humans naturally speak and can detect emotions.

The details:

The model, now available under an Apache 2.0 license via GitHub and Hugging Face, combines Meta's Llama language model with an audio decoder.
It uses Residual Vector Quantization (RVQ), a multi-stage audio compression technique, to convert audio signals into compact digital tokens, or codes.
Maya can engage in natural conversations with human-like emphasis and micro-pauses and can remember past interactions and detect emotions.
While Maya is English-only, Sesame aims to expand the AI’s capabilities to support over 20 languages in the coming months.

Why it matters: Sesame’s open-source model is a step toward democratizing access to advanced voice AI tech, potentially accelerating innovation in the field. But critics warn that its lack of built-in safeguards and reliance on an “honor system” raises concerns about voice cloning, deepfakes, and the spread of misinformation.

BIVACOR

❤️ World-first success for titanium heart

Image source: BiVACOR

The Rundown: In a groundbreaking medical achievement, an Australian man in his 40s lived for 100 days with an artificial titanium heart while he awaited a donor transplant, the longest period to date for anyone with the new technology.

The details:

The patient received the Australian-designed BiVACOR heart, which promises to become the world’s first permanent artificial heart replacement.
The patient was the first person to leave the hospital with the device, which kept him alive for 105 days until a heart donor became available in early March.
The BiVACOR uses advanced magnetic levitation technology and has only one moving part, potentially reducing complications and improving durability.
Existing heart replacements substitute the left side of the heart, but this tech replaces both sides, which could help patients with whole-heart failure.

Why it matters: The BiVACOR started early human testing last year, using the device as a stopgap to keep patients alive until donor hearts can be found. The goal is that, once it has proven itself, it can get regulatory approval to serve as a permanent heart replacement and perhaps eliminate the need for live-organ transplants altogether.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Amazon, Google, and Meta said that they support efforts to at least triple nuclear energy worldwide by 2050, joining a pledge signed by more than 20 governments.

Sonos, best known for its speakers, has reportedly halted its plans to launch a video streaming device this year.

Facebook is rolling out the ability for content creators to earn money for views on public stories, with the new option available globally via its monetization program.

SpaceX is expected to finally launch the Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station today to rescue stranded astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.

Oracle Corp., led by Larry Ellison, has emerged as the leading contender to help manage TikTok in the U.S., according to sources cited by The Information.

Food delivery startup Wonder is acquiring media company Tastemade for $90M in its mission to create a mealtime “super app” for takeout, delivery, and meal kits.

Apple is reportedly planning to bring live translation to Airpods, letting users translate conversations in real time similar to Google’s Pixel Buds.

Spotify just announced the launch of its new publishing program that allows independent authors to submit short-form stories they’d like to turn into audiobooks.

SoftBank has reportedly confirmed that it is paying $676 million to convert a Sharp factory in Japan used to build LCD panels into an AI data center.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 4 PM EST to learn about how to use Manus AI to boost productivity and automate everyday tasks easily, with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

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

OpenAI's regulatory power play

Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI just revealed its vision for AI governance — seeking copyright exemptions for themselves while pushing to restrict Chinese open-source rivals like DeepSeek.

As the $500B Stargate architect flexes its growing influence in Washington, has OpenAI's political strategy become as calculated as its AGI roadmap?

In today’s AI rundown:

OpenAI pushes for federal shield in AI Action Plan
Cohere’s new efficient enterprise AI model
Turn your health data into personalized insights
Gemini taps into Google history with personalization
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🏛️ OpenAI pushes for federal shield in AI Action Plan

Image source: Getty Images

The details:

OpenAI warns that the 781 state-level AI bills introduced this year could hinder American innovation and competitiveness against China's AI ambitions.
The proposal includes additional calls for infrastructure investment, copyright reform, and expanding access to government datasets for AI development.
They notably called out China’s “unfettered access to data”, calling the race for AI ‘effectively over’ if fair use copyright laws are not applied in the U.S.
OpenAI also pushed for the U.S government to ban models like DeepSeek due to security risks, calling the lab “state-controlled”.

TOGETHER WITH TURING

🤝 Join the Generative AI Gathering at GTC

The Rundown: Attending GTC next week or Bay Area based? Turing and Fireworks AI invite you to join the Generative AI Gathering in San Jose on Wednesday, March 19, from 5-7 PM PT.

Attend and enjoy:

Global networking with leaders from the AI/LLM communities
Discussions ranging from AI-assisted software development to the future of LLM training
An evening of creative cocktails and fabulous food with your peers

Space is limited — RSVP now.

COHERE

🚀 Cohere’s new efficient enterprise AI model

Image source: Cohere

The details:

Command A achieves 156 tokens per second, running 1.75x faster than GPT-4o and 2.4x faster than DeepSeek-V3 while requiring just two GPUs.
Cohere’s model also matches or surpasses GPT-4o and DeepSeek-V3 across human evaluations for business, STEM, coding, and agentic tasks.
The model features a 256k context window, support for 23 languages, and specialized enterprise features like advanced RAG capabilities.
Command A will also integrate into Cohere’s North platform, allowing enterprises to securely deploy agents with their own internal databases.

AI TRAINING

🩺 Turn your health data into personalized insights

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Perplexity Spaces to create a personalized AI health assistant by uploading your health documents and setting custom instructions.

Step-by-step:

Visit Perplexity, click on "Spaces" in the left bar, and select "Create a Space."
Name your health space, add a description, and set custom AI instructions to guide how the AI interprets your questions and what context it prioritizes when generating responses.
Upload your health documents including medical records, medication lists, and wellness tracking data (do not include sensitive data you don’t want to share).
Start asking health questions that leverage your personal data for truly customized insights.

PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI

🤝 Turn AI passion into a consulting career

The Rundown: Innovating with AI's new program, AI Consultancy Project, transforms AI enthusiasts into professional consultants — tapping into a market projected to reach $54.7B by 2032.

The 6-month program delivers:

Proven frameworks for client acquisition and service delivery
A step-by-step path to six-figure consulting income
Students who land their first AI client in as little as 3 days

GOOGLE

🤖 Gemini taps into Google history with personalization

Image source: Google

The details:

The experimental feature uses the Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking model to analyze when personal data could enhance responses.
Google is starting with user’s search history, with plans to expand to apps like Google Photos and YouTube for additional data insights.
Users maintain control through opt-in permissions and the ability to disconnect their history at any time, with the feature restricted to users over 18.
Free users can also now access Gems (custom chatbots) and improved Deep Research capabilities previously limited to Advanced subscribers.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

🤖 Gemma 3 - Google’s multimodal, multilingual, 128k context AI model family
⚡️ Gemini 2.0 Flash exp - Upload, create, and edit images directly via text conversations with new native image generation
👁️ R1-Omni - Alibaba’s new open-source multimodal reasoning model that can ‘read’ emotions
🧠 Perplexity MCP - Connect Perplexity’s Sonar model to Claude for real-time web search capabilities

💼 AI Job Opportunities

📢 Luma AI - Recruiter, GTM
🏢 Together AI - Office Coordinator
🤖 Writer - Customer AI Engineer
🤝 OpenAI - Engagement Manager

📰 Everything else in AI today

Alibaba launched New Quark, a redesigned version of the company’s AI assistant mobile app now powered by its new Qwen reasoning model.

Google added new support for YouTube in the Gemini API and Google AI Studio, allowing the model to use vision capabilities to interact with video content.

Former OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy predicted that AI will usher in a fundamental shift in web content design, with pages being optimized for LLMs and context windows over human readability.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 4 PM EST to learn about how to use Manus AI to boost productivity and automate everyday tasks easily with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

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

🤝 Share The Rundown, get rewards

We’ll always keep this newsletter 100% free. To support our work, consider sharing The Rundown with your friends, and we’ll send you more free goodies.

See you soon,

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

Robotics

Google's new AI for robots