Get the latest AI news, understand why it matters, and learn how to apply it in your work — all in just 5 minutes a day. Join over 2,000,000+ subscribers.
Mistral cracks AI document analysis
Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. French startup Mistral just turned AI document processing on its head — with a new model that makes complex data extraction as simple as an API call.
With speeds of up to 2000 pages per minute and the ability to handle multilingual texts, images, charts, and more, is this the tech that finally converts static archives into the AI-powered gold mines of tomorrow?
P.S. Our next workshop is today at 3:30 PM EST! Join to learn how to use the latest AI tools to take your vibe coding to the next level. RSVP here.
In today’s AI rundown:
Mistral OCR’s AI-ready document processing
China’s ‘fully autonomous’ Manus AI agent
Design landing page mockups with AI
AI avatars getting emotional intelligence
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
MISTRAL
📜 Mistral OCR’s AI-ready document processing
Image source: Mistral
The Rundown: Mistral AI just launched Mistral OCR, a powerful new API designed to extract and comprehend detailed information from complex documents with exceptional speed and accuracy.
The details:
The API can accurately analyze docs with images, equations, tables, and advanced formatting, converting them to markdown outputs for AI processing.
OCR can process up to 2000 pages per minute and supports multilingual analysis across thousands of languages, including Hindi and Arabic.
Benchmark tests place Mistral OCR well ahead of rivals like Google's Document AI, Azure OCR, and GPT-4o across different document analysis categories.
Users can also deploy the OCR technology on-premises, which is ideal for organizations handling classified or sensitive datasets.
Why it matters: With so much of the world’s data still trapped in complex documents, unlocking it efficiently is crucial. Mistral OCR capabilities could supercharge archive-heavy industries like financial analytics, legal discovery, historical preservation, and more — transforming static information into dynamic, AI-ready knowledge bases.
TOGETHER WITH TURING
📈 Get more from your LLMs
The Rundown: When LLMs fail, it is rarely about the model’s raw power. Turing’s “Maximizing Your LLM ROI” whitepaper shows how the real culprits — misaligned training, poor evaluation, and optimization gaps — can quietly sabotage ROI.
Inside, you’ll learn how to:
Reduce hidden inefficiencies that drive up LLM costs
Strengthen evaluation techniques for higher accuracy and reliability
Build an AI strategy that maximizes performance and business value
MANUS AI
🤖 China’s ‘fully autonomous’ Manus AI agent
Image source: Manus
The Rundown: A Chinese startup just introduced Manus, calling it the world’s first fully autonomous AI agent — capable of handling real-world tasks independently and achieving new SOTA performance on agentic benchmarks.
The details:
In the demo, Manus can be seen handling tasks like resume screening and property research, accessing its own independent computer instance.
The agent also shows skills like web browsing, coding, and creating visuals while reportedly being able to handle tasks on sites like Upwork and Fiverr.
It outperformed leading general-purpose assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini on the GAIA benchmark, a comprehensive evaluation of AI performance.
Manus currently operates on an invite-only basis — with the team committing to open-source the models behind the agent later this year.
Why it matters: We’re at the point of acceleration where relatively unknown labs are dropping (reportedly) state-of-the-art level agentic tools. While the early iterations of agents handled more simple tasks that needed human handholding, we’re quickly approaching the next step of more autonomous complex workflows.
AI TRAINING
🖥️ Design landing page mockups with AI
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Ideogram’s new 2a image generation model to create professional-looking landing page mockups for your business using just text — no design skills required.
Step-by-step:
Sign up for a free Ideogram account and navigate to the creation interface.
Write a detailed prompt describing your landing page layout, including text elements, color scheme, and visual style.
Customize settings: select 16:9 aspect ratio for desktop views and choose "Design" style for professional results.
Click "Generate" to create multiple variations and then download or further refine your favorite design.
Pro tip: You can take your mockup to the next level by uploading it to AI coding assistants like Windsurf or Cursor and asking them to "code this landing page," instantly turning your design into functional code.
PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI
💼 Start your career as an AI Consultant
The Rundown: Innovating with AI’s new program, AI Consultancy Project, equips AI enthusiasts with all the resources they need to capitalize on the booming AI consulting market – which is set to grow 8x to $54.7B by 2032.
The program offers:
Tools and framework to find clients and deliver top-notch services
A 6-month roadmap to build a 6-figure AI consulting business
Student landing their first AI client in as little as 3 days
Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.
TAVUS
🎭 AI avatars getting emotional intelligence
Image source: Tavus
The Rundown: Digital twin developer Tavus just unveiled a major upgrade to its Conversational Video Interface (CVI) platform, launching three new AI models that work together to make video interactions with AI feel more humanlike and personalized.
The details:
Phoenix-3 handles full-face animation, creating natural facial expressions for avatars, including eye movements, eyebrows, and subtle micro-expressions.
Raven-0 acts as the AI avatar's eyes, analyzing cues like body language and facial expressions in real time to respond more naturally to human emotions.
Sparrow-0 handles conversation timing, eliminating awkward pauses and interruptions by understanding when to speak and when to listen.
The company showcased the tech through “Charlie,” a demo AI avatar that can hold conversations while searching the web, analyzing screens, and more.
Why it matters: While many scoffed at Sam Altman’s proof-of-personhood startup, tech like this is showing how hard it is about to be to identify AI from humans online. The days of AI customer service reps and digital avatars feeling robotic and scripted in their interactions are coming to an end very soon.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
🔎 Google Search AI Mode - Get well-reasoned answers to tough questions
🧠 QwQ-32B - Qwen’s cheap, efficient, and open-source reasoning model
⚙️ Windsurf Wave 4 - Agentic coding with Previews, tab-to-import, and more
🎬 Ray2 - Powerful video AI with features like KeyFrames, Extend, and Loop
💼 AI Job Opportunities
🧮 Faculty - Financial Accountant/Finance Manager
💰 OpenAI - Compensation Partner, Go To Market & Sales
🗂️ Harvey - Executive Assistant
🔬 Hippocratic AI - Senior Applied Scientist
📰 Everything else in AI today
Google co-founder Larry Page is starting a new AI company called Dynatomics, which will leverage LLMs to create factory-ready designs for a variety of products.
Tencent open-sourced HunyuanVideo-l2V, a new high-quality image-to-video model with custom special effects, audio, and lip-syncing capabilities.
Anthropic submitted new AI Action Plan recommendations to the White House, calling for enhanced national security testing, stricter export, and infra expansion.
OpenAI released an update bringing IDE integration to ChatGPT for macOS, allowing Plus, Pro, and Team users to edit code directly within development environments.
Privacy browser DuckDuckGo rolled out new AI features, including expanded anonymized access to leading chatbots and AI-assisted search answers.
Former OpenAI policy head Miles Brundage criticized the company’s new safety document, saying it causes a “dangerous mentality for advanced AI systems.”
Convergence AI unveiled Template Hub, a community-driven marketplace allowing users to create, share, and deploy task-specific AI agents in a single click.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop this Friday at 3:30 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. You'll learn how to use the latest AI tools to take your coding to the next level, and how we're leveraging AI-powered coding at The Rundown.
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
OpenAI's $20,000 AI agents
Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI is reportedly set to put a massive price on AI expertise—with plans to launch specialized agent subscriptions costing as much as senior executive salaries.
But, with investors already placing multibillion-dollar bets, Sam Altman’s prediction of seeing AI agents “joining the workforce” this year may be quickly coming to fruition.
In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI launching premium AI agents
Google Search adding new ‘AI Mode’
Connecting Claude Projects with GitHub repos
Alibaba’s cheap and efficient QwQ-32B AI
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
🤖 OpenAI launching premium AI agents
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: OpenAI is reportedly preparing to launch a suite of specialized AI agents with price tags ranging from $2,000 to $20,000 a month for skills like knowledge work and Ph.D.-level research.
The details:
OpenAI is planning three agent tiers: business professionals ($2k/mo), advanced software devs ($10k/mo), and PhD-level researchers ($20k/mo).
Investor SoftBank has already reportedly committed $3B to these agent products for 2025 alone.
The agentic offerings are expected to generate up to 25% of OpenAI's long-term revenue as the company expands beyond its current offerings.
In January, CEO Sam Altman predicted that 2025 would see the first AI agents “join the workforce and materially change the output of companies.”
Why it matters: With price tags rivaling senior employee salaries, OpenAI is betting big that specialized AI agents can deliver enough value to justify the enterprise-level subscription. The move could set new precedents for AI agent pricing while revealing just how much companies are willing to pay for automated expertise.
TOGETHER WITH SANA
🤝 AI agents that understand your business
The Rundown: Sana's unified agent platform brings AI capabilities to your company with a single interface that connects seamlessly to your existing data ecosystem — no need for complex implementation.
Sana's platform enables you to:
Turn manual processes into automated workflows in minutes
Create meeting assistants that capture insights and action items
Develop agents that work across multiple applications seamlessly
Search across every app and deploy agents for deep research
🔎 Google Search adding new ‘AI Mode’
Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google just launched AI Mode, a Search Labs experiment that turns traditional search into a conversational experience powered by a custom Gemini 2.0, along with updates to AI Overviews.
The details:
AI Mode uses a "query fan-out" technique, launching simultaneous searches across diverse sources to assemble detailed answers with relevant sourcing.
Users can continue their search by asking follow-up questions directly in AI Mode, receiving well-reasoned responses with curated links to explore further.
Google also upgraded AI Overviews with Gemini 2.0, improving responses to more challenging topics like coding, advanced math, and multimodal queries.
The company also said it is expanding access to AI Overviews to teens and removing sign-in requirements.
Why it matters: Search continues to evolve in the AI era, and Google faces serious pressure from rivals like Perplexity, Grok, and ChatGPT. The new AI Mode looks to create a bridge between familiar search interactions and advanced, conversational AI — resulting in a potentially more comfortable (yet powerful) web experience.
AI TRAINING
💻 Connecting Claude Projects with GitHub repos
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how you can use Claude's GitHub integration to connect repositories directly to your AI assistant for comprehensive code understanding and support.
Step-by-step:
Set up a Claude project named “Code Assistant: [Repo Name]" with description: “Workspace to analyze and improve [Repository Name] codebase.”
Select "GitHub" from the “Add Content” menu and authorize the Claude GitHub app when prompted.
Choose your repository and select specific files you’ll need help with.
Start asking questions about your code – Claude can explain functions, suggest improvements, and even help with debugging.
Pro tip: You can also use the "Sync now" button to update your project whenever your repository changes, ensuring Claude always works with your latest codebase.
PRESENTED BY AIRCOVER
🎯 Turn every rep into a top performer with AI
The Rundown: Aircover’s enterprise-grade AI Agents turn every rep into a top performer with real-time coaching, next-gen conversation intelligence, and automated workflows.
GTM teams in the Fortune 1000 have seen:
40% more deals move past Stage 1 with better discovery
Elimination of 90% of busywork with instant insights, CRM updates, and price quotes
4x higher win rates with reps enabled to answer technical and competitive questions on day one
Explore Aircover and start closing more deals today.
ALIBABA
🧠 Alibaba’s cheap and efficient QwQ-32B AI
Image source: Qwen
The Rundown: Alibaba’s Qwen team released QwQ-32B, a new AI reasoning model that leverages reinforcement learning to match or surpass the performance of larger competitors like DeepSeek-R1 at a fraction of the cost.
The details:
QwQ-32B uses reinforcement learning at scale, significantly boosting performance on advanced math, coding, and reasoning-based tasks.
The model is roughly 20x smaller than DeepSeek-R1 yet delivers comparable or superior performance across key benchmarks.
It is priced at just $0.20 per million input and output tokens, a roughly 90% reduction compared to similar performing models like R1 and o1-mini.
Qwen has open-sourced the model under the Apache 2.0 license, with availability on Hugging Face and Alibaba Cloud's ModelScope platform.
Why it matters: China’s open-source models continue to accelerate — with this latest launch from Qwen showing off some major performance gains despite shrinking size (near-frontier intelligence on-device is here) and cost. Clever training approaches are still proving their worth over raw model size as labs continue to push closer to AGI.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
👁️ Aya Vision - Cohere’s new SOTA multilingual visual model
🗣️ Sesame - Conversational speech model for natural, engaging conversations
🎵 DiffRhythm - Generate complete 4-min songs w/ vocals in just 10 seconds
🎬 ReframeAnything - Resize any video in one click
📰 Everything else in AI today
Social media platform Digg is being revived by former founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, with AI-enhanced moderation and UX.
OpenAI rolled out its GPT-4.5-Preview model to all Plus users after launching last week exclusively to Pro and developers via API.
A federal judge officially denied Elon Musk's request to block OpenAI's transition from nonprofit to for-profit status but allowed other aspects of his lawsuit to proceed.
Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton won the 2024 Turing Award for pioneering reinforcement learning in the 1980s and warned against rapid AI deployment.
Scale AI secured a multimillion-dollar contract from the U.S. DoD for “Thunderforge,” a program that will deploy AI agents for military planning and operations.
Codeium released Windsurf Wave 4, introducing new features like AI-powered previews for rapid app iteration, tab-to-import functionality, and suggested actions.
Luma Labs introduced three new features to its Ray2 video model, with Keyframes, Extend, and Loop offering more control over generations.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop this Friday at 3:30 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. You'll learn how to use the latest AI tools to take your coding to the next level, and how we're leveraging AI-powered coding at The Rundown.
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
Sanctuary's touchy-feely humanoid
Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise
Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Sanctuary AI has unveiled a new tactile sensor that gives robots a “delicate but durable sense of touch.”
With this advancement, the company’s Phoenix humanoid can now feel and interact with objects much like humans—bringing us closer to a future where machines can perform nearly any task we can.
In today’s robotics rundown:
Sanctuary AI’s touch sensors for humanoids
Dexmate’s powerful transformer robot
Hyundai and Avride’s robotaxi push
XoMotion self-balancing exoskeleton
Quick hits on other robotics news
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
SANCTUARY AI
👉🏼 Sanctuary AI’s touch sensors for humanoids
Image source: Sanctuary AI
The Rundown: Canadian robotics company Sanctuary AI just outfitted its eighth-generation humanoid, Phoenix, with new touch sensors that the company says give it a richer sense of touch, critical for achieving human-level dexterity.
The details:
The tactile sensors allow Phoenix to perform complex, touch-driven tasks with precision and accuracy, including blind picking.
They ensure Phoenix can “feel” texture and pressure—in stark difference from other humanoids relying on video to interact with their environments.
Each finger pad on Phoenix has a seven-cell touch sensor sensitive to 5 millinewtons (mN)—humans can typically feel levels closer to 3 mN.
Eventually, Sanctuary hopes Phoenix will use these abilities to support industries requiring dexterous handwork—like logistics and auto manufacturing.
Why it matters: While other robotics companies focus on vision-language action and bipedal walking, Sanctuary believes that a human-like touch is the key to creating robots that can perform as effectively as humans in any environment. The other company moving in this direction is California-based Proception.
DEXMATE
🤖 Dexmate’s powerful transformer robot
Image source: Dexmate AI
The Rundown: US-based robotics company Dexmate AI launched Vega, a robot with a unique transformer-like design featuring high-payload arms and a body that folds down to fit into the back of an SUV—like a true transformer.
The details:
Priced at $89,999, Vega uses high-payload arms with dexterous hands to lift objects weighing more than 30 lbs—suitable for light logistical use cases.
However, the real deal is the foldable torso: the robot can extend to 2.2m for high-reaching tasks and fold whenever needed, going as low as 0.66m.
It has a wheeled base and advanced sensors, including RGBD/RGB cameras, LiDAR, IMUs, and ultrasonic sensors, to move omnidirectionally.
Plus, there is support for 36 degrees of freedom and advanced processing with Nvidia's AGX Orin edge computing system.
Why it matters: Vega enters the rapidly evolving robotics landscape as a bold competitor. While its payload capacity doesn’t match industrial robots from KUKA or Fetch, its combination of mobility, versatility, and dexterity sets it apart in the market for general-purpose robots with high-payload arms.
AVRIDE
🚘 Hyundai and Avride’s robotaxi push
Image source: AVRIDE
The Rundown: Hyundai Motor Company partnered with Avride, an autonomous driving technology startup, to accelerate the development of a self-driving robotaxi fleet—while also exploring robotic delivery services for the future.
The details:
Avride will expand its fleet of Hyundai IONIQ 5 vehicles, integrating its self-driving technology into units assembled at Hyundai’s new plant in Georgia.
These vehicles are expected to debut in Dallas later this year, exclusively through Avride’s robotaxi service on Uber.
The plan is to expand the fleet to 100 cars by the end of 2025 while exploring other areas of collaboration, including delivery services via Avride robots.
Hyundai has been working with Avride since 2019 and has also set up a joint venture with auto supplier Aptiv for deploying autonomous vehicles.
Why it matters: Hyundai and Avride’s aggressive timeline, combined with the dual focus on robotaxis and robot delivery, could rapidly scale the tech—taking it to the masses. The work can further benefit from Hyundai’s multiple AV partnerships, including its joint venture with Aptiv.
HUMAN IN MOTION ROBOTICS
🚶🏽♀️XoMotion self-balancing exoskeleton
Image source: Human in Motion
The Rundown: Vancouver-based Human in Motion Robotics developed XoMotion, a cutting-edge, self-balancing exoskeleton designed to help people with spinal cord injuries walk again—the company will begin FDA clinical trials in April.
The details:
XoMotion ensures hands-free, omnidirectional bipedal mobility without the need for crutches or walkers, setting it apart from many other exoskeletons.
The device uses 12 actuators at the joints for natural movement, with an array of sensors for detecting shifting positions and the environment.
It can also perform ambulatory tasks like standing, walking, sidestepping, climbing stairs, and crouching—without requiring the use of hands.
After debuting XoMotion at CES in January, the company will begin its clinical trials in late April, testing a version designed for rehab facilities.
Why it matters: XoMotion is currently restricted to clinical and research settings, but personal use is the ultimate goal—with the hope to transform the lives of people with mobility challenges. Other key players pushing this market forward are Wandercraft and ReWalk.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in robotics today
Waymo launched its robotaxi service in Austin exclusively through Uber, with a similar deal expected to roll out in Atlanta soon.
Indian robotics company Muks Robotics unveiled Spaceo, a heavy-duty humanoid with an adjustable height of up to 8 feet and a payload capacity of up to 440 lbs.
Humanoid developer LimX Dynamics raised 500 million yuan ($69.02M) in a Series A round backed by Alibaba Group.
Researchers in China and Hong Kong developed a new AI learning framework that teaches humanoids to stand up from an idle position, regardless of the terrain.
The market for agricultural robotics is expected to surge from $13.4B in 2023 to around $86.5B by 2033.
U.S. researchers have developed a prosthetic hand that can grip everyday objects while carefully conforming and adjusting its grasp to avoid damaging what it is holding.
U.S. researchers also published findings exploring the feasibility of humanoids working in restaurant kitchens to overcome global shortages and ensure quick turnover.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop on [date] to learn [use case/workshop title] with [workshop host].
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 $20,000 AI agents
Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI is reportedly set to put a massive price on AI expertise—with plans to launch specialized agent subscriptions costing as much as senior executive salaries.
But, with investors already placing multibillion-dollar bets, Sam Altman’s prediction of seeing AI agents “joining the workforce” this year may be quickly coming to fruition.
In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI launching premium AI agents
Google Search adding new ‘AI Mode’
Connecting Claude Projects with GitHub repos
Alibaba’s cheap and efficient QwQ-32B AI
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
🤖 OpenAI launching premium AI agents
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: OpenAI is reportedly preparing to launch a suite of specialized AI agents with price tags ranging from $2,000 to $20,000 a month for skills like knowledge work and Ph.D.-level research.
The details:
OpenAI is planning three agent tiers: business professionals ($2k/mo), advanced software devs ($10k/mo), and PhD-level researchers ($20k/mo).
Investor SoftBank has already reportedly committed $3B to these agent products for 2025 alone.
The agentic offerings are expected to generate up to 25% of OpenAI's long-term revenue as the company expands beyond its current offerings.
In January, CEO Sam Altman predicted that 2025 would see the first AI agents “join the workforce and materially change the output of companies.”
Why it matters: With price tags rivaling senior employee salaries, OpenAI is betting big that specialized AI agents can deliver enough value to justify the enterprise-level subscription. The move could set new precedents for AI agent pricing while revealing just how much companies are willing to pay for automated expertise.
TOGETHER WITH SANA
🤝 AI agents that understand your business
The Rundown: Sana's unified agent platform brings AI capabilities to your company with a single interface that connects seamlessly to your existing data ecosystem — no need for complex implementation.
Sana's platform enables you to:
Turn manual processes into automated workflows in minutes
Create meeting assistants that capture insights and action items
Develop agents that work across multiple applications seamlessly
Search across every app and deploy agents for deep research
🔎 Google Search adding new ‘AI Mode’
Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google just launched AI Mode, a Search Labs experiment that turns traditional search into a conversational experience powered by a custom Gemini 2.0, along with updates to AI Overviews.
The details:
AI Mode uses a "query fan-out" technique, launching simultaneous searches across diverse sources to assemble detailed answers with relevant sourcing.
Users can continue their search by asking follow-up questions directly in AI Mode, receiving well-reasoned responses with curated links to explore further.
Google also upgraded AI Overviews with Gemini 2.0, improving responses to more challenging topics like coding, advanced math, and multimodal queries.
The company also said it is expanding access to AI Overviews to teens and removing sign-in requirements.
Why it matters: Search continues to evolve in the AI era, and Google faces serious pressure from rivals like Perplexity, Grok, and ChatGPT. The new AI Mode looks to create a bridge between familiar search interactions and advanced, conversational AI — resulting in a potentially more comfortable (yet powerful) web experience.
AI TRAINING
💻 Connecting Claude Projects with GitHub repos
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how you can use Claude's GitHub integration to connect repositories directly to your AI assistant for comprehensive code understanding and support.
Step-by-step:
Set up a Claude project named “Code Assistant: [Repo Name]" with description: “Workspace to analyze and improve [Repository Name] codebase.”
Select "GitHub" from the “Add Content” menu and authorize the Claude GitHub app when prompted.
Choose your repository and select specific files you’ll need help with.
Start asking questions about your code – Claude can explain functions, suggest improvements, and even help with debugging.
Pro tip: You can also use the "Sync now" button to update your project whenever your repository changes, ensuring Claude always works with your latest codebase.
PRESENTED BY AIRCOVER
🎯 Turn every rep into a top performer with AI
The Rundown: Aircover’s enterprise-grade AI Agents turn every rep into a top performer with real-time coaching, next-gen conversation intelligence, and automated workflows.
GTM teams in the Fortune 1000 have seen:
40% more deals move past Stage 1 with better discovery
Elimination of 90% of busywork with instant insights, CRM updates, and price quotes
4x higher win rates with reps enabled to answer technical and competitive questions on day one
Explore Aircover and start closing more deals today.
ALIBABA
🧠 Alibaba’s cheap and efficient QwQ-32B AI
Image source: Qwen
The Rundown: Alibaba’s Qwen team released QwQ-32B, a new AI reasoning model that leverages reinforcement learning to match or surpass the performance of larger competitors like DeepSeek-R1 at a fraction of the cost.
The details:
QwQ-32B uses reinforcement learning at scale, significantly boosting performance on advanced math, coding, and reasoning-based tasks.
The model is roughly 20x smaller than DeepSeek-R1 yet delivers comparable or superior performance across key benchmarks.
It is priced at just $0.20 per million input and output tokens, a roughly 90% reduction compared to similar performing models like R1 and o1-mini.
Qwen has open-sourced the model under the Apache 2.0 license, with availability on Hugging Face and Alibaba Cloud's ModelScope platform.
Why it matters: China’s open-source models continue to accelerate — with this latest launch from Qwen showing off some major performance gains despite shrinking size (near-frontier intelligence on-device is here) and cost. Clever training approaches are still proving their worth over raw model size as labs continue to push closer to AGI.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
👁️ Aya Vision - Cohere’s new SOTA multilingual visual model
🗣️ Sesame - Conversational speech model for natural, engaging conversations
🎵 DiffRhythm - Generate complete 4-min songs w/ vocals in just 10 seconds
🎬 ReframeAnything - Resize any video in one click
📰 Everything else in AI today
Social media platform Digg is being revived by former founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, with AI-enhanced moderation and UX.
OpenAI rolled out its GPT-4.5-Preview model to all Plus users after launching last week exclusively to Pro and developers via API.
A federal judge officially denied Elon Musk's request to block OpenAI's transition from nonprofit to for-profit status but allowed other aspects of his lawsuit to proceed.
Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton won the 2024 Turing Award for pioneering reinforcement learning in the 1980s and warned against rapid AI deployment.
Scale AI secured a multimillion-dollar contract from the U.S. DoD for “Thunderforge,” a program that will deploy AI agents for military planning and operations.
Codeium released Windsurf Wave 4, introducing new features like AI-powered previews for rapid app iteration, tab-to-import functionality, and suggested actions.
Luma Labs introduced three new features to its Ray2 video model, with Keyframes, Extend, and Loop offering more control over generations.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop this Friday at 3:30 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. You'll learn how to use the latest AI tools to take your coding to the next level, and how we're leveraging AI-powered coding at The Rundown.
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
Amazon is joining the reasoning race
Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The AI landscape is about to get even more competitive — with Amazon reportedly set to jump into the reasoning race with a powerful hybrid model of its own.
With this new reasoner coming alongside Alexa’s upcoming AI-powered upgrades, could this be the year that finally establishes the retail giant as a true AI powerhouse?
In today’s AI rundown:
Amazon’s hybrid reasoning AI model
Cohere’s SOTA multilingual vision model
Finding perfect prospects with AI
OpenAI’s $50M NextGenAI consortium
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
AMAZON
🧠 Amazon’s hybrid reasoning AI model
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: Amazon is reportedly developing an advanced reasoning AI model under its Nova brand—set for a June release—in what would be its most ambitious push yet to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
The details:
The company aims to create a "hybrid reasoning" system that delivers quick responses and methodical, multi-step problem-solving through a unified model.
Cost-effectiveness is a central focus, with Amazon looking to undercut competitor pricing while still delivering top-tier performance.
Amazon has reportedly set ambitious goals to rank among the top five models, especially on benchmarks for software development and math skills.
The project falls under Amazon's AGI division led by Rohit Prasad—signaling a strategic shift despite the company's massive $8B investment in Anthropic.
Why it matters: Amazon’s stake in Anthropic isn’t holding it back from developing its own rival models—aiming to compete in reasoning while undercutting both rivals and partners on price. With an AI-enhanced Alexa+ also in the pipeline, the retail giant is quickly positioning itself as a serious contender across multiple fronts in the AI race.
TOGETHER WITH UNSTRUCTURED
🎯 Improve RAG accuracy by 84%
The Rundown: Contextual chunking is the next level in document retrieval accuracy, and Unstructured is going to show you how it beats Gemini 2.0’s long context windows every time—helping you say goodbye to high error rates and hello to precise RAG apps.
Join Unstructured’s live session to learn:
How contextual chunking amplifies retrieval precision
Comparisons with Gemini 2.0’s long context window approach
Real-world strategies to reduce error rates and build stronger RAG pipelines
COHERE FOR AI
🌐 Cohere’s SOTA multilingual vision model
Image source: Cohere
The Rundown: Cohere's non-profit research arm, Cohere For AI, unveiled Aya Vision, an open multimodal AI that brings vision-language capabilities to 23 languages representing over half the world's population—setting new performance benchmarks.
The details:
Aya Vision comes in two sizes, with the 8B version outperforming rivals 10x its size and 32B beating those more than 2x its size, like Llama-3.2 90B Vision.
The model can interpret and describe images, answer visual questions, and translate visual content across diverse languages—from Vietnamese to Arabic.
It has been released under a CC non-commercial license and can be accessed on Kaggle, Hugging Face, or via WhatsApp.
Cohere has also open-sourced the Aya Vision Benchmark, which evaluates VLMs on open-ended questions around real-world, multilingual scenarios.
Why it matters: We’ve previously written about AI models breaking down language barriers, and now, breakthroughs like Aya Vision are achieving the same for visual content. Leveraging advanced AI won’t be limited to English-speaking audiences only, with users across the globe soon having access to a powerful universal visual translator.
AI TRAINING
🔍 Finding perfect prospects with AI
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Perplexity’s Deep Research feature to quickly generate focused B2B prospect lists and craft personalized outreach messages that convert better.
Step-by-step:
Define your targeting criteria clearly (such as industry, company size, location, and pain points).
Head over to Perplexity to generate prospects by entering a specific prompt requesting companies that match your criteria.
Ask it to prioritize and analyze your prospects by identifying the most promising fits and explaining why they'd benefit from your solution.
Generate personalized outreach messages for each priority prospect that reference their specific situation and funding.
Pro tip: You can use separate AI tools for research and content writing, e.g., take your prospect insights from step 3 and feed them into your favorite writing assistant for drafting polished outreach messages.
PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI
💼 Start your career as an AI Consultant
The Rundown: Innovating with AI’s new program, AI Consultancy Project, equips AI enthusiasts with all the resources they need to capitalize on the booming AI consulting market — which is set to grow 8x to $54.7B by 2032.
The program offers:
Tools and framework to find clients and deliver top-notch services
A 6-month roadmap to build a 6-figure AI consulting business
Student landing their first AI client in as little as 3 days
Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.
OPENAI
🎓 OpenAI’s $50M NextGenAI consortium
Image source: OpenAI
The Rundown: OpenAI announced NextGenAI, a new academic consortium backed by $50M in funding to support AI research and education across 15 leading institutions, including Harvard, MIT, and Oxford University.
The details:
The initiative provides research grants, compute resources, and API access to help students, educators, and researchers advance high-impact AI applications.
The partner institutions will tackle challenges from reducing rare disease diagnosis time to digitalizing historical texts and public domain materials.
The consortium comes after OpenAI's ChatGPT Edu launch last May, an affordable version of GPT-4o created specifically for educational institutions.
Notably, Perplexity is also moving in a similar direction, with eventual plans to make its Pro subscription free for students.
Why it matters: AI is on track to completely augment the traditional scientific research and educational structures — and providing top institutions with both the resources and means to integrate the tech more widely into their workflows will help lead to even more rapid advancements across the board.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
🧮 Data Science Agent - Google’s new tool for automating data analysis
🗣️ Asyncflow v1.0 - Text-to-speech AI with over 450 voice options
🖥️ Browser Operator - Opera’s in-browser AI agent for completing tasks
🧠 Pieces Long-term Memory - AI agent to capture, resurface past workflows
💼 AI Job Opportunities
🛡️ Abridge - Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Analyst
⚖️ OpenAI - Employment Counsel
🏗️ Scale AI - Enterprise Product Manager
📢 Metropolis - Marketing Coordinator
📰 Everything else in AI today
Google’s Pixel 10 will reportedly introduce “Pixel Sense”, an on-device assistant capable of processing data from over 15 Google apps to complete different tasks.
Tencent’s Yuanbao AI app surpassed DeepSeek as the top iPhone app downloaded in China this week, coming on the heels of its “fast-reasoning” Hunyuan Turbo release.
ASLP Labs introduced DiffRhythm, an open-weights model capable of generating complete 4-min songs with vocals in just 10 seconds, using lyrics and style prompts.
Amazon created a new dedicated agentic AI group within AWS, with CEO Matt Garman calling it a “potential multi-billion business” that will help users automate tasks.
Cortical Labs launched CL1, the world's first commercial “Synthetic Biological Intelligence” system that combines living human brain cells with silicon hardware.
Cornell and Tel Aviv researchers created ProtoSnap, an AI that matches template characters to ancient cuneiform tablets, unlocking untranslated 3,000-year-old texts.
IPO-bound Coreweave announced the acquisition of AI developer platform Weights and Biases to integrate its capabilities into its cloud infra platform.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said GPT-4.5 will roll out to Plus users in phases “over a few days” and suggested a credit-based system for accessing advanced features like Sora.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop this Friday at 3:30 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. You'll learn how to use the latest AI tools to take your coding to the next level, and how we're leveraging AI-powered coding at The Rundown.
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
Telekom, Perplexity debut 'AI Phone'
Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The smartphone revolution is entering its next phase — and T-Mobile's parent company is leading the charge.
With a new (Perplexity-powered!) phone that puts AI front and center, is this the mainstream device that could finally challenge the mobile status quo?
In today’s AI rundown:
Telekom’s Perplexity-powered 'AI Phone'
Anthropic’s $3.5B raise at $61.5B valuation
Speeding up research processes with AI
Microsoft’s new healthcare AI assistant
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
DEUTSCHE TELEKOM & PERPLEXITY
📱 Telekom’s Perplexity-powered 'AI Phone'
Image source: Deutsche Telekom
The Rundown: T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, just announced the development of an "AI Phone" in partnership with Perplexity, marking one of the first major carrier-led initiatives to build a smartphone optimized for AI experiences.
The details:
The device will feature Perplexity Assistant as its centerpiece, accessible directly from the lock screen — eliminating the need to navigate between apps.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas described the partnership as taking their tech from an “answer machine to an action machine" that can handle daily tasks.
The phone will also integrate AI partners like Google Cloud AI for real-time translation, ElevenLabs for podcast creation, and Picsart for avatar generation.
The device is slated for release later this year with an expected price under $1k, with DT also offering an app version of its Magenta AI starting this summer.
Why it matters: While tech giants have just begun to infuse AI into current phones (with mixed results), this feels like the first step toward shifting mobile experiences from app-centric interfaces to more proactive AI-powered assistants. It’s also a big win for Perplexity, which continues to establish a foothold in every area of the AI boom.
TOGETHER WITH RECALL
🧠 Bring order to content chaos with Recall
The Rundown: Recall is your own personal AI encyclopedia — helping you transform scattered content into an interconnected knowledge base that grows smarter the more you use it.
Features include:
High-quality content summaries
Automatic categorization and smart linking
Personalized review schedules
Also launching this month: Augmented Browsing, which surfaces related content from your knowledge base as you browse — turning stored knowledge into active intelligence.
Try Recall now and get 20% off with code Rundown.
ANTHROPIC
💰 Anthropic’s $3.5B raise at $61.5B valuation
Image source: Anthropic
The Rundown: Mere days after releasing Claude 3.7 Sonnet with hybrid reasoning, Anthropic closed a massive $3.5B Series E funding round—tripling its valuation to $61.5B and solidifying its position as a leading competitor to OpenAI.
The details:
The investment has been led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Salesorce Ventures, Cisco, Fidelity, Jane Street, and others.
Anthropic said the funds will help expand computing resources for developing models, strengthen AI safety research, and accelerate international expansion.
The company recently debuted Claude 3.7 Sonnet as its ‘most intelligent model to date,’ alongside a Claude Code agentic coding tool.
The model will also help power Alexa+, Amazon’s upgraded voice assistant unveiled last week. Amazon previously invested $8B in Anthropic.
Why it matters: Anthropic was quiet for a stretch, but the floodgates are now open for both new models and dollars. This massive valuation shows that despite the panic that set over DeepSeek, money is still flowing heavily into top AI startups, with the big four — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI — still going unwavered.
AI TRAINING
🔬 Speeding up research processes with AI
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Grok's DeepSearch feature to scan hundreds of websites and uncover the latest scientific breakthroughs or research frontiers in minutes.
Step-by-step:
Access DeepSearch on Grok's platform (currently free).
Craft a query using a structured format covering key aspects of emerging research in your industry (like breakthroughs or experimental technologies).
Review the report and refine your exploration by requesting technical details about specific innovations or comparing different research approaches.
Pro tip: You can also ask DeepSearch to identify under-explored research areas within your field. The Rundown University members can access the top prompts here.
PRESENTED BY CONVEYOR
✍️ Let Phil write winning RFPs
The Rundown: Meet Phil — Conveyor’s AI agent that automates your proposal process. From generating near-flawless responses to coordinating multiple teams, Phil helps you secure more wins with less hassle.
Phil, the AI agent for RFPs, can do all of this autonomously:
Generate 95% accurate AI answers to proposals
Maintain your source material and conduct RFP research
Organize your project, collaborate with other teams, and update systems
Sign up for early access and upgrade your proposal process with Phil.
MICROSOFT
🏥 Microsoft’s new healthcare AI assistant
Image source: Microsoft
The Rundown: Microsoft just introduced Dragon Copilot, a new voice-activated AI assistant that combines dictation capabilities with ambient listening to streamline clinical documentation and automate tasks for healthcare professionals.
The details:
The system merges Microsoft’s Dragon Medical One voice dictation with DAX Copilot's listening features into a single assistant for clinical workflows.
The assistant automatically generates documentation like clinical notes and referral letters while providing access to trusted medical information.
Early testing shows clinicians save approximately five minutes per patient encounter and report reduced feelings of burnout and fatigue.
The assistant will launch in the U.S. and Canada in May 2025, with availability via desktop, browser, or mobile app. More regions to follow soon.
Why it matters: Administrative burden is a massive challenge in healthcare and one that is ripe for AI to handle. Microsoft, Google, and other competitors are churning out AI tools that are quickly reshaping all aspects of medicine — from the treatments themselves to overall patient care and administration.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
🔎 ARI - A deep research agent for generating professional reports in minutes
🤖 Copilot - Microsoft’s AI assistant, now available via MacOS
👁️ SmolVLM2 - HuggingFace’s tiny multimodal models for video understanding
🎧 Findaway Voices by Spotify - Create AI audiobooks and publish to Spotify
📰 Everything else in AI today
Chipmaking giant TSMC announced an additional $100B investment in the U.S., bringing its total commitment to $165B for five new plants in Arizona.
The latest version of Grok-3 moved to the top of the LM Arena leaderboard, dethroning GPT 4.5-Preview just hours after the OpenAI model took the No. 1 spot.
Stability AI partnered with Arm to deliver its Stable Audio Open on smartphones, achieving 30x faster on-device audio generation—without using the internet.
Google introduced Data Science Agent in its Colab coding environment, a tool that creates complete, working notebooks to automate data analysis tasks.
Podcastle unveiled Asyncflow v1.0, a text-to-speech AI model with over 450 voices and developer API access — with voice cloning requiring just seconds of audio input.
Google announced that its Project Astra live video and screen-sharing capabilities will be rolling out to Gemini Advanced subscribers on Android this month.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop this Friday at 3:30 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. You'll learn how to use the latest AI tools to take your coding to the next level, and how we're leveraging AI-powered coding at The Rundown.
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
TSMC's $100B fuels U.S. chip boom
Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise
Good morning, tech enthusiasts. TSMC is investing $100B to expand its U.S. operations—one of the largest foreign bets on America.
Following Apple’s $500B pledge, the chipmaking giant is all in on “Made in USA” and creating thousands of jobs. Of course, new U.S. tariffs on foreign goods kicking off today make the timing no accident.
In today’s tech rundown:
TSMC’s $100B bet on the U.S.
Apple teases new MacBook Air
Microsoft shutting down Skype
SPHEREx mapping the universe
Quick hits on other major news
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
TSMC
💰 TSMC’s $100B bet on the U.S.
Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown
The Rundown: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest chipmaker, announced at a press conference alongside President Trump that it will invest $100B over four years to expand its U.S. operations.
The details:
The planned expansion will see the development of three semiconductor fabrication plants, two packaging facilities, and a major R&D center in Arizona.
It is expected to create 40,000 construction jobs over the next four years and tens of thousands of high-paying, high-tech jobs.
TSMC began producing 4nm chips in Arizona in January, but the future plants are expected to make chips using 2nm or other advanced technologies.
The $100B follows TSMC’s $65B pledged last year—taking its total U.S. investment to $165B. It also secured $6.6B in federal funding in 2024.
Why it matters: The move by TSMC, a key supplier to Nvidia, Intel, and Apple, is set to boost U.S. economic output by over $200 billion in the next decade. President Trump, who plans new tariffs on semiconductors as soon as April, described the massive investment as “a matter of economic security.”
APPLE
🍎 Apple teases new MacBook Air
Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown
The Rundown: Apple CEO Tim Cook teased the launch of a device this week with a short teaser on X that read, “There’s something in the Air” — the not-so-subtle clue that a new MacBook Air is on its way.
The details:
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that the new MacBook Air will come with an upgraded M4 chip and in two sizes: 13-inch and 15-inch.
Other expected upgrades are RAM configurations up to 32GB, faster memory bandwidth, two additional CPU cores, and a 12 MP center stage camera.
The MacBook Air refresh could also offer support for running two external displays with the lid open, much like the M4 MacBook Pro.
Finally, it may also use an enhanced Neural Engine, paving the way for Apple Intelligence features like notification summaries and more.
Why it matters: While it remains to be seen what exactly Apple has up its sleeve, the M4-powered MacBook Air is the most expected candidate. With this chip, Apple could future-proof MacBook Air for Apple Intelligence. The company is also rumored to be working on other Air devices, including iPads, keyboards, and maybe even an iPhone.
MICROSOFT
🧑🏻💻 Microsoft shutting down Skype
Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown
The Rundown: Microsoft announced that it is shutting down its once-popular video calling service, Skype, on May 5—replacing it with a free-to-use version of Microsoft Teams for consumers.
The details:
Skype users can now log in to the Teams app to access their message history and contacts or opt to export their data before Skype goes away.
One major change here is that Microsoft is sunsetting the paid telephony parts of Skype that allowed you to call domestic or international numbers.
Microsoft bought Skype from eBay for $8.5B in 2011, marking its largest acquisition at the time.
However, despite its initial dominance, Skype struggled to compete with new-age offerings in the market, including Zoom, WhatsApp, and Google Meet.
Why it matters: Since Microsoft shut down Skype for Business in 2021, it’s safe to say that the move to wind down the consumer version has also been in the works for a while. The platform leaves a lasting legacy—being one of the first to pioneer end-to-end encryption, which is now a standard in most messaging services.
NASA
🪐 SPHEREx mapping the universe
Image source: NASA
The Rundown: This week, NASA is launching its latest space telescope, SPHEREx, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to capture the world’s most complete sky survey and better understand how the universe evolved over several billion years.
The details:
The $488M SPHEREx mission will observe over 450 million galaxies and 100 million stars to gather data on cosmic inflation and the origins of the universe.
It will sit in low Earth orbit and produce a map of the entire sky in 102 different color bands, far exceeding the color resolution of previous all-sky maps.
The mission will measure the light from galaxies—including those billions of light years away—to understand how they took shape in the early universe.
Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SPHEREx will also search for water and organic molecules in deep space to complement future missions.
Why it matters: SPHEREx will map the entire sky, giving unprecedented insights into the evolution of the universe and our Milky Way. This could ultimately help scientists figure out what conditions led to the birth of our planet and search for those signs in the darkness of the universe—to find potentially habitable planets, maybe even life.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in tech today
AI startup Anthropic closed a massive $3.5B Series E funding round and tripled its valuation to $61.5B.
AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave, providing cloud-based GPUs to companies like Meta and Microsoft, filed for an IPO, aiming to raise $4B at a $35B+ valuation.
Fintech startup Ramp announced that it has nearly doubled its valuation to $13B after a $150M secondary share sale.
Adobe released a powerful Photoshop app for iPhone for free, with an Android version expected to arrive later this year.
Mozilla revised the Terms of Use for its Firefox browser after users raised alarms over an update indicating the company sought rights to all data entered or uploaded.
Lenovo unveiled a new concept laptop, the Yoga Solar PC, featuring a solar panel with an impressive 24% conversion rate.
Uber is piloting a teen-focused service in India that lets parents set up accounts for their kids with additional live safety features.
Smartphone maker Xiaomi secured 10,000 orders in just 3 days for its first premium EV—the SU7 Ultra.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next special workshop this Friday at 3.30 PM EST to learn about how AI can take your coding from 0 to 100—whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up your skills, 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
Apple's AI emergency
Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. If you were hoping that your iPhone’s Siri would finally live up to the AI hype with the launch of Apple Intelligence, you might be waiting a few more YEARS.
A fully revamped Siri may now be reportedly delayed as far as 2027 — and with voice assistant rivals like Amazon pushing ahead, Apple’s AI rollout is quickly turning into a full-blown internal emergency.
In today’s AI rundown:
Apple's Siri overhaul facing major delays
New AI voice to cross ‘uncanny valley’
Auto-screen resumes with AI
Sora video AI coming to ChatGPT
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
APPLE
🍎 Apple's Siri overhaul facing major delays
Image source: Apple
The Rundown: Apple's plans for a completely revamped AI-powered Siri have been pushed back, according to a new report from Bloomberg insider Mark Gurman — with employees now believing the assistant won't be fully modernized until 2027.
The details:
The smart assistant currently operates with a fragmented architecture, where traditional functions and newer AI features work as separate systems.
Apple had planned to merge the two into a single architecture, but the integration has reportedly fallen behind schedule.
Adoption metrics show that users aren't embracing current Apple Intelligence features, with many finding them limited compared to rival offerings.
The AI division is also reportedly struggling with talent poaching, leadership changes, and challenges in securing necessary AI chips.
Why it matters: Apple is known for perfecting existing tech rather than being first to market, but the rapid evolution of voice AI is exposing a massive gap in its capabilities. The year 2027 is a century away in AI progress—and with Alexa upgrades and other rivals levelling up, it’s starting to feel like a full-blown AI emergency for Apple.
TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT
💰 Turn AI into your income engine
The Rundown: HubSpot’s new “200+ AI-Powered Income Ideas” free guide offers actionable strategies to turn artificial intelligence into your own personal revenue generator — unlocking a gateway to financial innovation in the digital age.
With this guide, you can:
Explore hundreds of revenue-generating ideas across industries with real-world applications
Follow simple, step-by-step instructions that make AI accessible to everyone
Adopt cutting-edge strategies to keep you ahead in today's fast-paced market
SESAME
🗣️ New AI voice to cross ‘uncanny valley’
Image source: Sesame
The Rundown: Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe’s new startup Sesame just launched a demo of its voice tech aiming to cross the "uncanny valley" of AI speech — showcasing a model that responds with genuine emotions and natural speech patterns.
The details:
Sesame’s Conversational Speech Model gives natural voice responses by considering a conversation's context in real-time, not just individual sentences.
The system also incorporates emotional awareness, allowing the AI to adjust its tone and rhythm based on the conversation's mood and content.
Early demos showcase abilities like adjusting speaking pace, incorporating natural pauses, and maintaining conversational threads when interrupted.
Sesame is also developing AI glasses that integrate its voice tech, offering an always-available AI companion to observe the world and assist in real-time.
Why it matters: After spending years with subpar voice assistants, consumers are in for an eye-opening shift as voice technology gets a massive upgrade in 2025. With Hume, Alexa+, and now Sesame making moves, this past week has given a glimpse of the more human, context-aware systems to come.
AI TRAINING
📝 Auto-screen resumes with AI
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use AI tools to evaluate job applications by extracting key qualifications, identifying missing skills, and getting objective feedback.
Step-by-step:
Head over to your favorite AI assistant, e.g, ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
Create a template prompt defining your job requirements and asking for a summary, match score, matched skills, and red flags.
Process each resume by adding its text below the template prompt and submitting it to the AI assistant.
Track results in a spreadsheet and use your AI to draft personalized follow-up emails for each candidate tier.
Pro tip: You can also add your own resume to the template to improve it based on the AI feedback. The Rundown University members can access the top prompts here.
PRESENTED BY HUME
🗣️ Give your AI a real voice
The Rundown: While other text-to-speech systems just “read” words aloud, Octave is the first TTS that grasps their meaning. Built on a speech-language model, it brings natural expression to AI voice generation.
With Octave, you’ll experience:
The ability to describe emotive voices for any character or persona
Context-aware expression that matches emotional intent
Acting instructions like “whisper with intrigue” or “speak angrily”
Consistent across long-form content (audiobooks, podcasts)
OPENAI
🎬 Sora video AI coming to ChatGPT
Image source: OpenAI
The Rundown: OpenAI confirmed plans to integrate its Sora video-generation tool directly into the ChatGPT interface during the company’s first “Sora Global Office Hours” chat on Discord, alongside a new model and image generation capabilities.
The details:
Sora product lead Rohan Sahai revealed during a Discord office hours session that the integration is actively being developed, though no timeline was shared.
The ChatGPT version will likely have limited functionality compared to Sora’s web app, which offers advanced features like video editing and splicing.
Beyond ChatGPT integration, the company is exploring a dedicated mobile app for Sora and is actively recruiting engineers for the project.
Also in the works is a Sora-powered image generator that could surpass the current DALL-E 3 model in photorealism and a faster Sora Turbo model.
Why it matters: While Sora was once the tool everyone was holding their breath for, advances from competitors and a disappointing rollout have dampened its impact. Adding Sora into ChatGPT will put it front and center for better workflow integrations, but big quality upgrades are still needed to match rivals like Google’s Veo 2 and Kling.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
🤖 GPT 4.5 - OpenAI’s latest model with advanced emotional intelligence
💨 Hunyuan Turbo S - Tencent’s new ‘fast-thinking’ AI model
🖼️ Ideogram 2a - Fast image generation AI, optimized for graphics and text
🎬 Pika 2.2 - Upgraded video AI with transition and transformation capabilities
💼 AI Job Opportunities
🔍 Deepmind - Research Engineer, Gemini Embedding
🕶️ Palantir Technologies - Forward Deployed Engineer (Mixed Reality)
📑 Shield AI - Proposal Manager, Hivemind Solutions
📊 Mistral AI - FP&A Manager (Paris)
📰 Everything else in AI today
DeepSeek revealed that its AI models theoretically generate 545% profit margins on inference costs, a stark contrast to U.S. rivals currently operating at a loss.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that the company is “reserving” Claude 4 models for “substantial leaps” and that AI will surpass the best human coders in 2026.
SoftBank is reportedly seeking $16B in loans to fuel its AI investment strategy — with Elon Musk posting that CEO Masayoshi Son is “already over-leveraged.”
Anthropic will join the Department of Energy’s “1,000 Scientist AI Jam,” where its Claude model will be evaluated on scientific research and national security use cases.
Samsung launched new $300 Galaxy A series phones, bringing AI features like Circle to Search and AI photo editing to compete with Apple's new $599 iPhone 16e.
Chinese smartphone giant Honor announced a $10B AI investment plan to transform into a global AI device ecosystem company.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
We just did a full workshop on how to take full advantage of Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s frontier reasoning capabilities, along with advanced prompting strategies, with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.
Watch it here. Not a member yet? 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
No matching search results
Try using different keywords, double-check your spelling, or explore related categories.
Stay Ahead on AI.
Join 2,000,000+ readers getting bite-size AI news updates straight to their inbox every morning with The Rundown AI newsletter. It's 100% free.