Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Over the weekend, xAI's latest model, Grok 3, got unexpectedly candid—and controversial—about its creator and the U.S. President, before being swiftly silenced and censored.

Did Elon's promise of a “maximally truth-seeking AI” just crack at the first sign of inconvenient truths?

In today’s AI rundown:

• Grok 3 rebels against Musk, gets censored

• 1X’s NEO Gamma home humanoid

• Turn top content into an AI creation system

• The world’s smallest video language model

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

XAI

 🥊 Grok 3 rebels against Musk, gets censored

Image source: @eyeslasho on X

The Rundown: xAI’s new Grok 3 model faced backlash after users discovered it was refusing to mention negative details about President Donald Trump and Elon Musk — despite Musk billing the AI as unfiltered and “maximally truth-seeking.”

The details:

• Users found Grok initially providing controversial takes about Donald Trump and calling Musk the biggest spreader of misinformation.

• xAI engineer Igor Babuschkin said the responses are “really strange and a bad failure of the model,” patching it by refusing answers on the subject.

• Days later, users found that Grok 3's system instructed the AI to exclude sources that link Trump and Musk to controversial subjects like misinformation.

• Babuschkin revealed that the person responsible for the censoring is a former OpenAI employee, saying they haven’t “fully absorbed xAI’s culture yet.”

• Separately, OpenAI staff criticized xAI for leaving out match benchmark data on Grok 3’s release, with Babuschkin calling the claims “completely wrong”.

Why it matters: Elon has long criticized social media platforms and AI models for limiting free speech—but is this what happens when his truth-seeking model challenges his worldview? Censored results like this, along with proposed changes to Community Notes, are starting to reveal cracks in Musk’s ‘unbiased’ armor.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

⚡️ Ship product, not paperwork

The Rundown: Vanta transforms SOC 2 compliance from a time-consuming distraction into an automated process, letting founders stay focused on what matters — building and shipping great products.

Vanta delivers:

• A proven compliance framework trusted by thousands of YC startups

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• Expert guidance to navigate complex security requirements

Start your compliance journey with Vanta’s free SOC 2 checklist.

1X

🤖 1X’s NEO Gamma home humanoid

Image source: 1X

The Rundown: Norwegian robotics company 1X just launched NEO Gamma, a next-generation humanoid specifically designed for home environments — with a softer, more approachable appearance and advanced AI capabilities for household tasks.

The details:

• The demo showcases Gamma’s movements (walking, squatting, sitting), with the ability to tackle tasks like cleaning, serving, and moving objects.

• The humanoid features "Emotive Ear Rings" for better human interaction, along with soft covers and a knitted nylon exterior for enhanced safety around people.

• It also has an in-house language model for natural conversation, with a multi-speaker audio setup and improved microphones for clear communication.

• Hardware improvements include a 10x boost in reliability and significantly quieter operation, bringing noise levels down to that of a standard refrigerator.

Why it matters: With Figure’s Helix and now NEO Gamma, we’re seeing major leaps in consumer-focused humanoids. 1X’s demo takes a much softer approach than rivals, positioning Gamma as a calm, helpful presence with features that appear to humanize the robot (save room on your couch!).

AI TRAINING

✍️ Turn top content into an AI creation system

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a custom Claude project that analyzes your top-performing content to generate new posts matching your unique style and voice.

Step-by-step:

1. Name your Claude project "Content Writer" and enter the project description shown in the thumbnail.

2. Upload 5-10 of your best-performing content pieces to the knowledge base.

3. Copy our preset project instructions to analyze content patterns.

4. Test with our template: "Create a [content type] about [topic] for [platform]"

Pro tip: Include as much detailed information about the topic you want it to write about, especially if it’s about something new (since Claude doesn’t have web access yet).

PRESENTED BY ASSEMBLY AI

🗣️ Speech-to-text API for conversations

The Rundown: Build powerful Conversation Intelligence products with AssemblyAI’s industry-leading Speech-to-Text API — allowing you to automatically detect languages, extract critical insights, improve downstream processes, and deliver highly accurate transcripts.

With AssemblyAI, you will:

• Achieve >93% accuracy, ensuring clarity and precision in every transcript

• Deliver clear, formatted transcripts with unrivaled Speaker Diarization

• Easily integrate with an enterprise-grade API trusted by over 200,000 developers

Test the API for free.

HUGGING FACE

🎥 The world’s smallest video language model 

Image source: Hugging Face

The Rundown: Hugging Face researchers just released SmolVLM2, the world’s smallest AI model family to understand and analyze videos on everyday devices like phones and laptops, without requiring powerful servers or cloud connections.

The details:

• The SmolVLM2 family includes versions as small as 256M parameters while still matching the capabilities of much larger systems.

• The team has also built practical applications including an iPhone app for local video analysis and an integration for natural language video navigation.

• The 2.2B parameter flagship model of the family outperforms other similarly-sized models on key benchmarks while running on basic hardware.

• The models are available in multiple formats including MLX for Apple devices, with both Python and Swift APIs ready for immediate deployment.

Why it matters: The quality of models able to run on phones and laptops is getting better and better — and having sophisticated video understanding run locally without sending data to the cloud could enable a whole new wave of privacy-preserving video applications.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• ♻️ Pika Swaps - Replace scene items or characters with image or text prompts

• 🤟 Signs - AI platform for learning American Sign Langauge (ASL)

• ⛳️ Flags SDK - Free open-source library for feature flags and A/B tests in apps

• 🐰 Rabbit Android Agent - Control Android apps via natural language

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🔐 Palantir - Sr. Software Engineer — Identity & Access Management

• 🖥️ Coreweave - Hardware Engineer, Compute Infrastructure

• 🚗 Waymo - Machine Learning Research Engineer

• 💼 Dataiku - Senior Sales Engineer, UK

📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI rolled out its recently released Operator AI agent to more countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, and the U.K.

Google published the price for using its next-gen Veo 2 model in Vertex AI, coming in at $0.50 per second of video generation.

ByteDance is restructuring its AI division, hiring Google veteran Wu Yonghui to lead foundation research in response to rising competition from DeepSeek.

OpenAI terminated accounts linked to 'Qianyue' — an alleged AI surveillance system designed to monitor anti-China protests in the West and relay all that data to China.

DeepSeek is planning to open-source five new code repositories, building on the success of its R1 reasoning model, which has already attracted 22M daily active users.

Elton John is calling the UK to abandon 'opt-out' AI copyright proposals, advocating for protections requiring AI companies to obtain permission before using artists' work.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Wednesday, February 26th at 3 PM EST and learn how to create personalized AI video messages at scale with Synthesia's Kevin Alster, Strategic Advisor and former Head of Synthesia Academy.

RSVP 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

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Norwegian robotics company 1X Technologies just unveiled NEO Gamma — a softer, gentler humanoid designed specifically for the home.

1X says that NEO’s advanced situational awareness allows it to blend seamlessly into your home, quietly doing the dishes and other chores while you binge your favorite series.

Could this be the high-tech roommate of the future?

In today’s robotics rundown:

• 1X NEO Gamma home humanoid

• EngineAI’s front-flipping robot

• Tiny robot swimming like flatworms

• New AI that learns like a child

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

1X

🤖 1X NEO Gamma home humanoid

Image source: 1X Technologies

The Rundown: Norwegian robotics company 1X launched NEO Gamma, its next-generation AI-powered humanoid for home environments—with a demo video showing the robot handling household tasks like making coffee, doing laundry, and vacuuming.

The details:

• NEO Gamma wears a soft knit nylon suit (for enhanced safety) and walks, squats, and sits like humans while performing household activities.

• The humanoid’s underlying visual manipulation model ensures real-time adaptability when handling unfamiliar objects in different household scenarios.

• It uses "Emotive Ear Rings" with an in-house language model, an advanced three-speaker system, and four mics for seamless back-and-forth interactions.

• Its hardware is also now 10x more reliable and 10 dB quieter than the last version— or just about the same as a standard refrigerator.

Why it matters: NEO Gamma joins a sea of humanoids from companies like Figure, Boston Dynamics, and Agility. While most startups are testing their humanoids in factory settings, 1X’s focus on a softer robotic roommate marks a different approach. The only question remains: will it reach the scale to become a mass-market product?

ENGINEAI ROBOTICS

🔥 EngineAI’s front-flipping robot

Image source: EngineAI Robotics

The Rundown: China’s EngineAI Robotics just released a video on X showing its lightweight, compact PM01 humanoid performing a full front flip with impressive accuracy – in what appears to be a world’s first.

The details:

• Standing 4.5 ft. tall with a weight of about 88 pounds, PM01 uses 24 degrees of full-body freedom to move like humans at a speed of about 2 m/sec.

• However, the interesting bit is flexibility: it supports 320-degree waist rotation with 5 and 6 DoF for arms and legs, enabling complex movements.

• The humanoid utilizes an X86 architecture-based computing system with NVIDIA Jetson Orin modules, supporting cross-platform algorithm deployment.

• Its smart control interface is inspired by Iron Man, which, the company says, allows users to easily issue commands and access functions.

Why it matters: Since frontflips are trickier than backflips, the stunt shows that PM01 is getting more agile than many robots out there. Plus, it stands out with a price (approximately $14K) lower than alternatives from Tesla and Unitree as well as an open development approach.

RESEARCH

🏊🏼‍♂️ Tiny robot swimming like flatworms

Image source: École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

The Rundown: A team of Swiss researchers has developed a promising little swimming robot, inspired by marine flatworms, that could be used in pollution monitoring and environmental studies like surveying coral reefs.

The details:

• Detailed in a new study in Science Robotics, the aquatic robot is smaller than the size of a credit card and weighs only 6 grams.

• Rather than traditional propeller-based systems, this tiny robot derives part of its agility from its featherweight oscillating fins—similar to a flatworm.

• The bot can autonomously navigate surfaces dense with plants or animals, without harming the environment, the researchers said.

• Plus, it can move in multiple directions, achieving impressive speeds of up to 4.7 inches per second, equivalent to 2.6 body lengths per second.

Why it matters: Combining cutting-edge robotics with insights from nature, the researchers are leading the way for a new generation of adaptable, environmentally harmonious robotic systems for ecological studies. Of course, there's still more work to be done—this bot can float on the surface, but it can't take a deep dive just yet.

RESEARCH

👶🏽 New AI that learns like a child 

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan have developed a brain-inspired AI that integrates vision, movement, and language to teach robots more human-like interaction.

The details:

• The researchers took inspiration from how toddlers connect words & vision to actions—like identifying a red ball after playing with a bunch of red flowers.

• Using the idea, they created an embodied AI with an architecture that focuses on compositionality or the ability to break down and recombine concepts.

• In tests, a robot powered by the AI learned to move or stack unfamiliar colored blocks, based on verbal instructions to perform specific tasks.

• Compared to traditional LLMs, this approach achieves real-time adaptability with much less data and computational power.

Why it matters: Researchers say this new AI model could help develop a new breed of robots that better interpret and respond to humans in real-world settings. Plus, it could help create systems with a deeper understanding of concepts like “suffering,” potentially resulting in more responsible and ethical AI behavior.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 18.4, adding support for robot vacuums in the Apple Home app through Matter.

Open-source code repository Hugging Face debuted a foundational AI model for robots that translates natural language commands into physical actions.

Serve’s autonomous robots will soon be delivering Uber Eats orders for Shake Shack and Mister O1 in Miami, following similar deals in Los Angeles.

The Robotics and AI Institute is teaching robotic bikes to jump and robot dogs to run on a track at 11.6 miles per hour, tripling its original speed.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that Elon Musk wasn’t open to making Tesla’s planned robotaxis available on the ride-sharing platform.

China’s Northeastern University researchers developed a new H-shaped bionic robot that could replicate the movements that cheetahs make while running. 

University of California, Santa Barbara researchers engineered robots that work together to behave as smart materials, with tunable shapes and strength levels.

U.S. researchers are developing surgical robots that administer sight-restoring subretinal injections better than surgeons due to the limitations of human motor control.

University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) researchers developed a lightweight prosthetic hand with 19 degrees of freedom and human-level functions.

China’s autonomous driving tech company Pony.ai launched a robotaxi service in Guangzhou between the airport and railway station to the city center.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Wednesday, February 26th at 3 PM EST and learn how to create personalized AI video messages at scale with Synthesia's Kevin Alster, Strategic Advisor and former Head of Synthesia Academy.

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

See you soon,

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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Two weeks after breaking up with OpenAI, humanoid maker Figure revealed what they've been working on: an AI system that lets robots understand speech and handle objects they've never seen before.

Could this technology be the breakthrough that finally brings capable robots into our homes?

In today’s AI rundown:

• Figure debuts new system for household robots

• Microsoft's new AI speeds up protein research

• Create your own AI-powered email assistant

• AI matches decade-long superbug research in days

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

FIGURE

🤖 Figure debuts new system for household robots

Image source: Figure

The Rundown: Humanoid robot maker Figure just introduced Helix, a new AI Vision-Language-Action model that lets robots understand voice commands and handle items they've never seen before — a major step toward practical household robots.

The details:

• The system combines a 7B-parameter "brain" for understanding and a fast 80M-parameter model for precise movement control.

• Figure demonstrated two robots working together to put away groceries they'd never seen before using natural language commands.

• Helix runs efficiently on basic onboard GPUs and requires just 500 hours of training data, far less than previous approaches.

• The breakthrough comes just weeks after Figure ended its OpenAI partnership, suggesting confidence in their in-house technology.

Why it matters: Robots are already proving capable in industrial settings, but it’s a matter of when, not if humanoid robots will play a significant role in household tasks. Figure’s system and its ability to scale robot learning brings the tech a step closer to being able to reliably handle the mess of unique objects and situations around a home.

TOGETHER WITH TURING

🔮 AI’s next era with DeepMind’s Jeff Dean

The Rundown Turing’s AGI Icons Episode 3 features Jeff Dean, Google DeepMind’s Chief Scientist, and Jonathan Siddarth, CEO of Turing, as they discuss the future of AGI, breakthroughs in Google’s Gemini 2.0, and how AI is transforming software engineering, research, and businesses worldwide.

Watch to learn:

• The evolution of AI from early days to AGI

• Key challenges in scaling intelligence

• The future of AI’s real-world impact

Watch the episode now.

MICROSOFT

🔬 Microsoft's new AI speeds up protein research

Image source: Microsoft Research

The Rundown: Microsoft Research just released BioEmu-1, a new AI system that can predict how proteins change shape and move — generating thousands of protein structures per hour while matching the accuracy of supercomputer simulations.

The details:

• The system generates protein structure samples 100,000x faster than traditional molecular dynamics, turning months of compute into minutes.

• The model was trained on 200 milliseconds of molecular simulation data, over 9 trillion DNA building blocks, and 750,000 stability measurements.

• Testing showed extreme accuracy in predicting how stable proteins are, matching lab measurements even for proteins it hadn't seen before.

• Microsoft is making the system freely available to researchers worldwide through Azure AI Foundry Labs.

Why it matters: Is this the week of fast takeoff for AI science? Both Microsoft and Google are dropping model after model that accelerate the scientific research process — turning months or years of work into days (more on that below). Plus, with so many systems being open-sourced to researchers across the globe, it’s likely just the start.

AI TRAINING

💌 Create your own AI-powered email assistant

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build a personal email assistant that can draft and manage emails using n8n's workflow automation and AI capabilities.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit n8n and create a new workflow.

2. Set up a chat trigger as your workflow's starting point.

3. Add an AI Agent with OpenAI Chat Model, Window Buffer Memory, and Gmail tool

4. Configure Gmail settings for draft creation with dynamic content using $fromAI('placeholder_name')

Pro tip: We did an extensive workshop showing The Rundown University members how to create your own AI Agent to automate tasks and run local AI models with n8n here.

PRESENTED BY DEEPGRAM

🗣️ AI speech-to-text, redefined

The Rundown: Deepgram’s Nova-3 is a new speech-to-text model built to excel in the most challenging enterprise environments, from high-volume call centers to chaotic trading floors — ending your days of wrestling with poor transcription accuracy.

What sets Nova-3 apart:

• Industry-leading accuracy for both live and recorded audio

• The first Voice AI model built for real-time multilingual transcription

• Instant customization to fine-tune vocabulary without extensive retraining

Try Nova-3 today.

GOOGLE

🦠 AI matches decade-long superbug research in days

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: Google's AI co-scientist system just independently reached the same conclusion about bacterial antibiotic resistance as Imperial College researchers — in just 48 hours compared to the team's decade-long unpublished investigation.

The details:

• The AI identified how bacteria steal virus "tails" to spread resistance genes, matching unpublished findings from a 10-year study.

• The system generated five viable hypotheses, with its top prediction matching the experimental results perfectly.

• Researchers confirmed the AI had no access to their private findings, making the matching conclusion even more significant.

• Google publicly announced the Co-Scientist system yesterday, making it available to researchers through a new testing program.

Why it matters: It didn’t take long for Co-Scientist to already make jaw-dropping news, and it’s just a taste of a future where years of scientific breakthroughs will be compressed into days. This testing also illustrates how AI won't necessarily replace scientists, but dramatically speed up their discovery and validation process.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 💻 Proxy 1.0 - AI assistant that can click, scroll, and browse the web

• 🧠 R1 1776 - DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model post-trained by Perplexity AI to remove censorship

• 🎬 BuzzClip - Generate viral TikTok AI UGCs in 60 seconds

• 👩🏻‍💻 Fleet AI Copilot - AI-driven IT assistant for personalized support and streamlined equipment management

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🛡️ OpenAI - Network Security Engineer

• 🎯 Notable - Account Based Motion Coordinator

• 🆘 Writer - Enterprise support agent

• ✍️ Glean - Technical Writer

📰 Everything else in AI today

xAI announced that its new Grok-3 model is now freely available for a limited time, with premium users getting increased usage and early access to advanced features.

COO Brad Lightcap revealed that OpenAI now has 400M weekly active users and 2M paid enterprise customers, with developer usage also doubling over the past 6 months.

NVIDIA partnered with the American Society for Deaf Children to launch 'Signs', an AI-powered platform that provides real-time feedback for ASL learners alongside a dataset of 400,000 sign language video clips.

Pika Labs released Pika Swaps, allowing users to easily replace any item or character in a scene with image or text prompts.

Spotify announced the integration of ElevenLab’s AI voice technology into the platform, enabling authors to create and distribute AI-narrated content in 29 languages.

MIT researchers unveiled 'FragFold', an AI system that can predict which protein fragments can bind to and inhibit target proteins for drug discovery and cellular biology.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our workshop today at 4 PM EST to learn how to use the newest Grok 3 model effectively and how it stands out in the current AI landscape with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

RSVP 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

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Microsoft just unveiled a quantum chip powered by a new state of matter that isn't solid, liquid, or gas – claiming the Majorana 1 could revolutionize quantum computing.

Could this mysterious new quantum state be the breakthrough that finally makes quantum computers practical enough to solve some of humanity's biggest challenges?

In today’s tech rundown:

• Microsoft unveils Majorana 1 quantum chip

• Apple introduces its iPhone 16E

• X aims for a $44B valuation

• YouTube to launch cheaper Premium Lite

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

MICROSOFT

🔥 Microsoft unveils Majorana 1 quantum chip

Image source: Microsoft

The Rundown: Microsoft has just unveiled Majorana 1, a quantum chip that relies on a new state of matter to unlock quantum computing – Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says we could see computers solving “industrial-scale problems in years, not decades.”

The details:

• The chip utilizes topoconductors, a breakthrough material that can observe and control Majorana particles to produce more reliable and scalable qubits.

• Majorana 1 can potentially fit a million qubits onto a single, palm-size chip – a crucial threshold for quantum computers to deliver game-changing solutions.

• IBM and Google have also been trying to make qubits – units of information in quantum computing – as reliable as the binary bits used today.

• The software giant has spent 17 years working on a research project to create the new material and architecture, detailed in Nature.

Why it matters: Microsoft says that utility-scale quantum computers could be up and running within the next 5 to 10 years, out-powering anything we have now. This could enable quantum computers to solve complex industrial and societal problems, such as breaking down microplastics to developing self-healing materials for healthcare.

APPLE

🍎 Apple introduces its iPhone 16E

Image source: Apple

The Rundown: Apple officially announced its long-rumored iPhone 16E with a starting price of $599, making it the most affordable smartphone in the lineup – and its AI features mark a huge leap from the third-gen iPhone SE it replaces. 

The details:

• The sleek new phone comes feature-packed with an OLED screen, Face ID A18 chip, Apple Intelligence, 48MP camera sensor, and 26 hours of video playback.

• Its 6.06-inch OLED display is about the same size as Apple’s iPhone 16, meaning Apple no longer offers a phone much smaller than its default model.

• The iPhone 16E introduces Apple’s long-awaited in-house 5G C1 modem, the company’s bid to end its reliance on Qualcomm’s 5G chips.

• Rather than the Dynamic Island, the Face ID (and selfie) cameras fit into a notch that cuts down from the top of the phone.

Why it matters: Apple is taking a gamble on price, assuming that anyone willing to shell out $429 for the SE might as well go ahead and pay $599. While the phone is missing the classic Touch ID and MagSafe support for wireless charging, it’s now the cheapest way to get one of Apple’s thin-bezel phones with Apple Intelligence AI.

X/TWITTER

🚀 X aims for a $44B valuation

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: X is reportedly in talks to raise money from investors to bring it to a $44 billion valuation, matching the price Elon Musk paid for the social network in 2022 and marking an incredible turnaround after its shares dropped last year.

The details:

• This funding would be the first known investment for X since Musk took the company private in 2022

• The talks come as Fidelity Investments marked down its stake in the company by about 70% in December 2024.

• X has seen a rebound in ad revenue, with major advertisers like Apple and Amazon returning to X after leaving due to content moderation concerns.

• Investors too may be drawn to X’s $6 billion stake in Musk's AI startup xAI, which is separately seeking funding at a $75 billion valuation.

Why it matters: Musk and his lucrative business portfolio are riding high with his increasing influence in the Trump administration, with Tesla and SpaceX shares surging since Trump’s reelection. If successful, this funding round could also possibly validate Musk’s controversial changes to the platform back when he took over.

YOUTUBE

📱 YouTube to launch cheaper Premium Lite

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Google’s YouTube is reportedly about to officially launch a cheaper “premium lite” version of its subscription service that offers uninterrupted, ad-free streaming of video content and podcasts, according to Bloomberg.

The details:

• The new service will offer ad-free access to uninterrupted streaming of “non-music videos” but blocks access to YouTube Music and offline downloads.

• Price details aren’t yet confirmed, but reports say it could priced at about half the cost of the premium subscription, as much as $18.99 a month for iOS users.

• It’s set to launch in select markets, including the United States, Australia, Germany, and Thailand.

• YouTube piloted a no-ads plan dubbed Premium Lite in some European countries beginning in 2021 before cancelling the plan in 2023.

Why it matters: YouTube has been steadily and quietly raising the price of its premium service for years, with some regions seeing increases of up to 58%. So, a budget-friendly option for ad-free binging will likely be welcome and could help YouTube retain users who might turn to rivals like Spotify for ad-free podcasts.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

OpenAI just announced it is rolling out its AI agent Operator for ChatGPT Pro subscribers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, and other areas.

Microsoft Research and Xbox game studio Ninja Theory have partnered to create Muse, a first-of-its-kind generative AI model for gaming.

Google has agreed to pay €326 million ($340 million) to settle a tax claim in Italy covering the period between 2015 and 2019.  

Humane is selling most of its company to HP for $116 million and will stop selling its AI Pin, which stops functioning on February 28.

Bumble announced that it is discontinuing its two acquired dating and relationship apps, Fruitz and Official, citing financial problems.

Instagram is adding new DM features, including message translation, song sharing, message scheduling, group chats, stickers, and interactive features.

Amazon will discontinue its app store for Android on August 20, sending a notice to developers indicating that they will no longer be able to submit new apps to the store.

Facebook announced that live videos will only be stored on the network for 30 days, after which they’ll be deleted, with the change going into effect on Wednesday.  

Niantic, the company behind the augmented reality game Pokémon Go, is reportedly looking to sell its game development business to an undisclosed buyer.

COMMUNITY

 🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our workshop today at 4 PM EST to learn how to use the newest Grok 3 model effectively and how it stands out in the current AI landscape with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

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

See you soon,

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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Google just turned AI into every scientist's dream research partner — showcasing a co-scientist system capable of making new drug discoveries and outperforming human experts.

With a team of specialized agents helping crack scientific mysteries at superhuman speed, the future of research and AI-driven discovery has never been brighter.

P.S. We just hit 1M daily readers! We couldn't have grown this tiny newsletter into something special without your feedback, shares, and support over the past 2 years. Thank you for being part of this journey — exciting things ahead!

In today’s AI rundown:

• Google’s multi-agent AI co-scientist

• Microsoft’s game-generating Muse AI

• Building phone apps with zero code

• The largest AI model for biology

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

🔬 Google’s multi-agent AI co-scientist

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just launched an AI co-scientist, a multi-agent research assistant (built on Gemini 2.0) that accelerates scientific discoveries by generating and validating new hypotheses across areas like medicine, genetics, and more.

The details:

• The system deploys six specialized AI agents working in parallel, from hypothesis generation to validation of research proposals and final review.

• In trials at Stanford and Imperial College, the system identified new drug applications and predicted gene transfer mechanisms in just days.

• Initial testing shows 80%+ accuracy on expert-level benchmarks, outperforming both existing AI models and human experts.

• Google is rolling out access through a Trusted Tester Program, targeting research organizations globally for trials across multiple scientific domains.

Why it matters: Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said next-gen models will start discovering “new bits of scientific knowledge.” Google’s AI co-scientist now seems to be following that path. What we are seeing is the early stage of a new era where AI will serve as an integral part of scientists’ toolkits.

TOGETHER WITH TELY AI

📝 Running a lead-generating blog on autopilot

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MICROSOFT

🎮 Microsoft’s game-generating Muse AI

Image source: Microsoft

The Rundown: Microsoft researchers just introduced Muse, an AI model that can generate minutes of cohesive gameplay from a single second of reference frames and controller actions.

The details:

• Muse is the first World and Human Action Model (WHAM) with the ability to predict 3D environments and actions for producing consistent game structures.

• The model creates unique, playable 2-minute sequences that follow actual game physics and mechanics from just a single second of gameplay input.

• It has been trained on over seven years of continuous gameplay data, covering 1B+ images and controller actions, from the popular Xbox game Bleeding Edge.

• Microsoft is open-sourcing Muse’s model weights, demonstrator tool, and sample data, allowing other developers and researchers to build on the release.

Why it matters: Game development requires several months of character design, animation, and testing, but models like Muse could cut down this cycle to mere days. It won’t be long before AI-created games are climbing the charts — and Elon seems to agree, given his recent xAI gaming studio reveal.

AI TRAINING

📱 Build phone apps with zero code

The Rundown: Windsurf lets you create fully functional mobile applications using its AI assistant and plain English commands, all without writing a single line of code.

Step-by-step:

1. Install Windsurf and Xcode (with iOS 17.5 simulator) for testing

2. Create a new project using 'npx create-expo-app your-app-name'

3. Use Cascade AI assistant to build your app by describing its features in plain English.

4. Test and refine your app using the iOS simulator.

Pro tip: We did an extensive workshop on building using Windsurf with Kevin Hou, the Head of Product Engineering at Codeium. You can access it here (alongside an exclusive, free Rundown University member code for a 2-month Windsurf Pro plan).

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 – 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.

ARC INSTITUTE AND NVIDIA

🧬 The largest AI model for biology

Image source: Nvidia

The Rundown: Arc Institute and Nvidia just released Evo 2, an upgrade to its genome foundation AI model trained on over 9T DNA building blocks from 128,000 species (the entire tree of life) — making it the largest AI system for biological research and design.

The details:

• The model processes sequences up to 1M nucleotides long, enabling analysis of entire bacterial genomes and human chromosomes at once.

• Evo 2 achieved 90% accuracy in predicting cancer-causing gene mutations during testing, also successfully designing working synthetic genomes.

• The system was trained on 2,048 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, with its 40B parameters matching the scale of top language models.

• Arc is making Evo 2 freely available through NVIDIA's BioNeMo platform, allowing researchers worldwide to use and build on the tech.

Why it matters: As AI models start mastering individual biological tasks like protein folding, Evo 2 is a shift toward systems that understand life's code as a whole. The ability to work across species at scale could transform how we approach everything from drug development to synthetic organisms.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤝 Fiverr Go - Empowering freelancers to scale their business with AI

• 💼 Career Dreamer - Google’s AI experiment to discover career possibilities

• 🗣️ Lingo.dev - Ship apps translated to every language in minutes

• ⚙️ Webdraw - Explore, remix, and build AI apps with 50+ models

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🎨 UiPath - Brand Team Intern

• 🛠️ Grammarly - Technical Support Specialist

• 🤝 Hippocratic AI - People Generalist

• 📈 OpenAI - Senior Performance Marketer

📰 Everything else in AI today

IMAGINE AI LIVE '25 will connect business leaders with AI innovators on enterprise AI strategies at Fontainebleau Las Vegas, May 28 to 30—apply now for 25% off.*

Perplexity open-sourced R1 1776, a retrained version of DeepSeek’s reasoning model that delivers the same performance without built-in censorship.

Microsoft unveiled Majorana 1, a new palm-sized quantum chip that uses a new design material to scale toward more reliable and practical quantum computers.

Apple introduced the iPhone 16e as its most affordable device offering Apple Intelligence. It starts at $600 and also includes the company’s first 5G modem.

Convergence AI released Proxy 1.0, a free web agent that can click, type, and navigate the web on a user’s behalf to automate tasks.

Clone Robotics posted a new video of ‘Protoclone,’ a bipedal, musculoskeletal (and terrifying) android with an anatomically accurate body and 500 sensors.

*Sponsored Listing

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our workshop on Friday at 4 PM EST to learn how to use the newest Grok 3 model effectively and how it stands out in the current AI landscape with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

RSVP here. Not a member yet? 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

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Clone Robotics just gave a glimpse of the world’s first synthetic android designed to mimic the human skeletal, muscular, vascular, and nervous structures.

We’re headed into a humanoid-driven future, but the question remains: are we ready for synthetic machines that look, walk, and talk just like us? What do you think?

In today’s robotics rundown:

• The world’s first bipedal musculoskeletal android

• Figure’s Helix AI brain for humanoids

• Chinese automakers pivot to humanoids

• Field AI targeting a $2B valuation

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

CLONE ROBOTICS

🤯 The world’s first bipedal musculoskeletal android

Image source: Clone Robotics

The Rundown: American-Polish startup Clone Robotics unveiled Protoclone V1, a groundbreaking synthetic android with skin, muscles, tendons, and veins (that pump water)—sparking both awe and a dose of dystopian fear.

The details:

• This faceless android (currently a prototype) has 200 degrees of freedom, 1,000 myofibers, and 500 sensors to move and work like humans.

• In a 40-second video from Clone, it was seen suspended in a workshop and executing dynamic movements of hands and legs.

• Protoclone is being built using the principles of biomimetics, where it replicates all human soft tissues—with water serving as hydraulic fluid rather than motors.

• Co-founder Dhanush Radhakrishna said the android will start selling this year at a premium, but the price will eventually drop to around $20K.

Why it matters: Radhakrishna hails the Protoclone V1 as “ground zero for the age of androids.” The work is certainly groundbreaking, but it remains to be seen if it would prove handy in dangerous environments where we want machines to move and adapt in ways more than humans can.

FIGURE AI

🧠 Figure’s Helix AI brain for humanoids

Image source: Figure

The Rundown: Figure AI just unveiled Helix, an AI system that enables humanoid robots to understand speech and reason through problems – bringing us closer to robots that can think and act like humans.

The details:

• Helix allows Figure’s humanoids to adapt to new tasks without additional training or code, allowing the robots to work in diverse environments like homes and warehouses.

• CEO Brett Adcock shared a clip that showed two Helix-equipped robots collaboratively storing unfamiliar groceries, showing real-world adaptability.

• Helix coordinates a 35-DoF action space at 200Hz to control everything from finger movements to end-effector trajectories, head gaze, and torso.

• The architecture of Helix includes two systems: a pre-trained 7B parameter VLM and an 80M parameter visuomotor policy.

Why it matters: With Helix, Figure may have solved one of robotics’ biggest challenges: getting robots to adapt to new situations without specific programming. This breakthrough also likely explains why Figure ended its OpenAI partnership — they’ve developed their own powerful internal AI system.

EV MAKERS

🚘 Chinese automakers pivot to humanoids

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Chinese electric vehicle companies like BYD and XPeng – which already use humanoids in their smart factories – are beginning to mass-produce their own specialized humanoid robot models.

The details:

• China-owned GAC Group has developed the GoMate humanoid to install wires on its production line, with plans to begin mass production by 2026.

• EV startup Nio has also partnered with robot maker UBTech while simultaneously forming an in-house R&D team to build humanoids.

• The country is promoting automation through initiatives like the Robotics+ action plan, which aims to double the density of manufacturing robots.

• Currently, China controls 63% of the companies in the world’s supply chain for humanoid components, particularly in actuator parts and rare Earth processing.

Why it matters: With supply chain access and the government’s push, Chinese companies can produce humanoids (and EVs) at much lower prices. Currently, Unitree’s H1 comes at $90K, about half the cost of Boston Dynamics’ Atlas. Similarly, Unitree G1 is priced at $13K as compared to Tesla Optimus’ projected $25K.

FIELD AI

🦄 Field AI targets a $2B valuation

Image source: Field AI

The Rundown: California-based robotics startup Field AI is in talks to raise funds at a massive $2B valuation, a 4x jump from last summer when Nvidia and others valued it at $500M, according to The Information.

The details:

• Field AI is developing advanced AI models to enhance robotic capabilities in industries such as construction and oil and gas.

• Their key technology works as a general-purpose robot brain that enables machines to operate autonomously, without GPS or pre-programmed routes.

• Field’s software works through an external hardware unit compatible with robots from companies like Boston Dynamics and Unitree Robotics.

• It is currently working on a large multimodal model that integrates text, images, voice, and lidar sensor data to improve robotic autonomy.

Why it matters: Field AI’s tech allows robots to operate autonomously in challenging environments, which has applications across multiple sectors. The talks of the next round at such a massive valuation show it’s ready to compete alongside rivals like Skild AI and Physical Intelligence.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

MagicLab launched the MagicHand S01, a dexterous hand that can perform precise and complex movements like grasping, gripping, and two-finger movements.

Shenzhen-based UBTech Robotics debuted Una, a humanoid designed to provide “emotional companionship” at the LEAP tech event in Saudi Arabia.

Uber Eats is now using Avride robots to deliver orders in Jersey City, New Jersey – the company is already using robots in 11 cities with plans to expand.

Realbotix Corp. has launched its proprietary AI vision system, which includes face and object recognition, facial tracking, and real-time scene detection capabilities.

UK startup Engineered Arts is debuting its human-faced humanoid Ameca, capable of advanced facial expressions and more nuanced gestures.

Chinese tech firm Baidu is reportedly launching its robotaxi service, Apollo Go, in Dubai, marking the company’s entry into the Middle East.  

Diligent Robotics has reportedly reached a new milestone for its healthcare humanoid Moxi with 1 million deliveries across its entire fleet.

A dozen Tiangong humanoid robots will reportedly line up to run the Beijing half marathon in April in a world first.

The UK’s Robotic Living Lab opened at Manchester Fashion Institute to enable fashion designers to mass-produce more sustainably with cobot arms.

Canadian startup Maple Advanced Robotics won the Hannover Mess Robotics Award for its Autonomous Adaptable Robot System

Unitree Robotics says orders for its humanoid robots “surged” in China after its H1 model performed a dance routine on CCTV to celebrate China’s Lunar New Year.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our workshop Friday at 4 PM EST to learn how to use the newest Grok 3 model effectively and how it stands out in the current AI landscape with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

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

See you soon,

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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI's former CTO just unveiled her secretive new AI venture — and she's bringing some serious talent along.

With experts from top AI labs and a bold open-science vision for user-focused applications, will Mira Murati be the latest ex-OpenAI leader to rewrite the AI industry playbook?

P.S. We just launched two more newsletters! Join The Rundown Robotics for bi-weekly email updates on the Robotics industry and The Rundown Tech for bi-weekly email updates on everything happening in Tech — all in our signature rundown style.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Mira Murati’s OpenAI rival ‘Thinking Machines Lab’

• OpenAI’s new software engineering benchmark

• Creating consistent visuals for presentations

• Fiverr’s AI platform for gig workers

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

MIRA MURATI

🧠 Mira Murati’s OpenAI rival ‘Thinking Machines Lab’

Image source: Getty Images

The Rundown: OpenAI’s former CTO Mira Murati officially brought Thinking Machines Lab, a new AI research company, out of stealth with the mission to make AI systems more “widely understood, customizable, and generally capable” through open science.

The details:

• Thinking Machines plans to develop frontier models focused on science and programming with an emphasis on human-AI collaboration and multimodality.

• Murati has hired a dream team for the company with OpenAI’s John Schulman and Barret Zoph as well as experts from DeepMind, Character AI, and Mistral.

• The AI lab has also expressed commitment to open science and confirmed plans to regularly publish technical papers, code, datasets, and model specs.

• Its introduction comes just six months after Murati abruptly left OpenAI “to create time and space for her own exploration”.

Why it matters: The move makes Murati the latest to go from OpenAI leadership to founding a rival lab, with Ilya Sutskever’s SSI also in talks to raise $1B+. While the stacked team may emerge as a major new player, its commitment to open science could be the big catalyst pushing the industry towards a more open-source mindset.

TOGETHER WITH FIREFLIES AI

📝 AI that takes notes in real-time

The Rundown: Fireflies’s Notetaker is trusted by millions of users across platforms like Microsoft Teams and Google Meet — and now it offers real-time features that can extract instant, actionable insights from your daily meetings.

During live calls, Fireflies can:

• Capture bullet-point notes summarizing the conversation in real-time

• Curate action items, create comments, and bookmark key moments

• Understand 100+ languages from different parts of the world

• Answer questions you may have about the meeting

Add Fireflies to your team today!

OPENAI

📊 OpenAI’s new software engineering benchmark

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI just introduced SWE-Lancer, a new benchmark designed to measure AI’s coding performance against real-world freelance software engineering jobs — putting LLMs to the test with a total of $1M in actual task payouts.

The details:

• SWE-Lancer features over 1,400 freelance software engineering tasks from Upwork, spanning from minor bug fixes to high-value feature implementations.

• The benchmark evaluates both coding and technical management decisions of LLMs, challenging them to write code and select engineering proposals.

• It introduces monetary metrics, with success measured by how much a model could theoretically "earn" by completing tasks correctly.

• All top models struggled on the benchmark, with Claude 3.5 Sonnet performing best — solving nearly half of the tasks and earning $400k out of the $1M.

Why it matters: The benchmarks are increasing their difficulty to try and properly evaluate increasingly capable AI, but it’s hard to see any of these tests standing the test of time. Plus, while models “struggled” on the benchmark, $400k of value is no joke — and is a good example of the scale of displacement about to arrive in dev work.

AI TRAINING

🎨 Create consistent visuals for presentations

The Rundown: Freepik lets you maintain a unified presentation style by creating custom AI styles that generate consistent visuals across all your slides.

Step-by-step guide to use it:

1. Visit Freepik AI Suite and select the “Create” option in the main dashboard.

2. Click the plus icon in the Style section.

3. Upload 10-50 reference images and select Ultra/High quality for optimal results.

4. Use targeted prompts for each slide type and generate visuals with your custom style at 100% strength for consistency.

Pro tip: Check out our exclusive workshop on creating custom styles with Freepik here. Additionally, The Rundown University members enjoy a free monthly premium Freepik plan.

PRESENTED BY HEROKU

🏗️ Make AI work for you

The Rundown: Heroku’s new Managed Inference and Agents platform lets developers easily deploy, scale, and manage AI-augmented applications and agents.

Heroku’s platform offers:

• Streamlined AI integration

• Advanced AI tools

• Scalable AI logic

Join Heroku’s pilot program for early access to powerful tools that can put AI to work for you.

FIVERR

🤖 Fiverr’s AI platform for gig workers

Image source: Fiverr

The Rundown: Freelance service platform Fiverr just launched Fiverr Go, a new suite of AI tools that lets gig workers train models on their work and automate future jobs, while also announcing an equity program giving top performers shares in the company.

The details:

• Freelancers can train personal AI Creation Models for $25/mo, allowing them to sell AI-generated versions of their work while retaining ownership rights.

• A $29 monthly Personal AI Assistant helps manage client communications and handle routine tasks, using past interactions to provide customized responses.

• Access is initially limited to "thousands" of vetted Level 2 and above freelancers in specific categories like voiceover, design, and copywriting.

• The company is also launching an equity program that will give top-performing freelancers shares in Fiverr, though specific details haven't been disclosed.

Why it matters: AI is in the process of upending traditional gig work, and Fiverr is attempting to give freelancers a stake in automation instead of competing against it. While the platform could help some creators scale, it also will likely face some backlash from creatives who may feel that opting out of AI is becoming unavoidable.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 Grok-3 - xAI’s new SOTA next-gen reasoning model (slowly rolling out)

• 🌎 Mistral Saba - Language model designed for Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures and linguistics

• 🧠 DeepHermes 3 Preview - Nous Research’s new 8B model with the ability to balance reasoning and speed

• 🤝 AndSend - AI Customer Relationship Agent that spots opportunities, suggests timely messages, and helps you reach your goals

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🛡️ Palantir Technologies - Principal Infrastructure Security Engineer

• 🌎 Soundhound AI - Sales Director, LATAM

• 📝 Anyscale - Technical Content Writer

• 🎓 Metropolis - Director, Learning & Development

📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted a poll on X asking what project users would like to see open-sourced, with an “o3-mini” level model leading over a “phone-sized model.”

Elon Musk announced the launch of xAI’s Gaming Studio during its Grok-3 demo, with plans to build games with AI.

xAI also revealed that a Voice Mode for Grok will go live in ‘about a week’, with the company providing a brief teaser at the end of the recent demo.

HP acquired Humane’s AI software platform and team for $116M and will discontinue its AI Pin hardware, with plans to integrate AI capabilities across HP’s device portfolio.

Meta announced Llamacon, the company’s first dedicated generative AI developer conference, for April 29.

Google rolled out new AI features to Google Meet, including a scrollable caption history allowing users to review up to 30 minutes of live and translated captions.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 3 PM EST and learn how to create custom AI soundtracks for your business content with Udio’s Andrew Sanchez, CEO/Co-founder, and Ian Braunstein, Head of Product.

RSVP 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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Elon Musk’s xAI just introduced the world to its next-gen Grok-3 model family — taking center stage in the AI race merely within two years of its existence.

But, with OpenAI and Anthropic circling the waters with releases of their own, will Grok-3's self-proclaimed ‘smartest AI on Earth’ title stand for long?

In today’s AI rundown:

• Elon Musk and xAI’s next-gen Grok-3

• Mistral’s first region-specific AI

• Run AI models locally for autocomplete code

• The New York Times’s AI for newsroom

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

XAI

🚀 Elon Musk and xAI’s next-gen Grok-3

Image source: xAI

The Rundown: Elon Musk and just xAI unveiled Grok-3 as ‘the smartest AI on Earth’ — achieving SoTA performance across math, science, and coding tasks and outperforming Gemini-2 Pro, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and GPT-4o on key benchmarks.

The details:

• The main Grok-3 model is being rolled out slowly via the Grok app, and a smaller Grok-3 mini version promises faster responses.

• Both models topped the AIME‘24, GPQA, and LiveCodeBench benchmarks, with an early version of Grok-3 ranking #1 on Chatbot Arena.

• The models also have reasoner variations, where they ‘think through’ problems like OpenAI’s o3-mini and DeepSeek R1. They also support deep research.

• The models have been trained on 10x more compute than Grok-2, using xAI’s Colossus supercomputer with 200,000 H100 GPUs (proving scaling laws hold).

Why it matters: Grok-3 positions two-year-old xAI at the top of the AI race. But, it will be interesting to see how long its leadership lasts as OpenAI gears to launch GPT-4.5, followed by a unified GPT-5. Anthropic, DeepMind, and Chinese players like Alibaba and DeepSeek are also taking major strides in the domain.

TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT

🧠 100+ ChatGPT prompts to revolutionize your workflow

The Rundown: HubSpot’s free, comprehensive  “How to Use ChatGPT at Work” guide provides 100+ ready-to-use prompts to help professionals boost efficiency and adopt AI-driven workflows.

Inside, you’ll find:

• A quick crash course to master ChatGPT in under 30 minutes

• Practical industry use cases to spark real-world inspiration

• 100+ prompts to streamline tasks and accelerate productivity

• Expert tips to tackle common AI roadblocks with confidence

Get your free copy and join 10,000+ professionals leveling up with AI.

MISTRAL

🌍 Mistral’s first region-specific AI

Image source: Mistral

The Rundown: French AI startup Mistral just released Mistral Saba, a language model designed for Middle Eastern and select South Asian regions — marking the company’s first push into localized AI tailored for specific cultures and nuanced linguistics.

The details:

• Saba is a 24B model trained on Middle Eastern and South Asian datasets, offering faster and more cost-efficient performance than larger models.

• The model supports both Arabic and South Indian-origin languages like Tamil and Malayalam, addressing cross-regional linguistic and cultural needs.

• Saba is designed for conversational AI and culturally relevant content creation, enabling more natural engagement of Arabic-speaking audiences.

• It is available via API and via local deployment, with Mistral also revealing work on custom models for strategic enterprise customers.

Why it matters: The race for the biggest and best general model is always on and garnering the headlines, but smaller, specialized systems are also seeing massive improvements — with particular value for regions with languages and nuances that aren’t always covered thoroughly in major datasets.

AI TRAINING

🤖 Run AI models locally for autocomplete code

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create your own private AI coding assistant by combining Ollama's local models with the CodeGPT extension for autocompletion and chat capabilities.

1. Download and install Ollama, then run ollama run deepseek-coder:base in your terminal.

2. Install the CodeGPT extension from your VS Code's marketplace

3. Enable auto-completion in CodeGPT settings and select the Ollama model you downloaded.

4. Start coding and use Tab to accept AI suggestions!

Pro tip: Download additional models like deepseek-r1:14b for more advanced chat-based assistance when needed.

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

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

THE NEW YORK TIMES

📰 The New York Times’s AI for newsroom 

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: The New York Times is making a significant transition to allow the use of AI tools in its newsroom, utilizing both external and internal tools to assist with tasks like SEO headlines, editing, summaries, and product development.

The details:

• AI can now be used for SEO, brainstorming, research, and social, but is still prohibited for drafting articles, image generation, and other editorial tasks.

• Tools like GitHub Copilot, Google’s Vertex AI, NotebookLM, and OpenAI’s non-ChatGPT API are available under NYT’s approval.

• The paper also introduced Echo, an in-house AI summarization tool designed to condense articles, briefings, and interactive content.

• The shift comes as NYT remains locked in a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the company improperly trained models on Times content.

Why it matters: It’s been a rocky relationship between major publishers and AI, but it is inevitable that nearly every outlet will shift policies to take advantage of the productivity increases that the tech brings. Other notable pubs using AI are Financial Times, Vox Media, Axel Springer, and the Associated Press.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 📖 Perplexity Deep Research - Generate in-depth research reports in minutes

• 🤖 ChatGPT 4o - New upgraded model with upgrades to creative writing, coding, instruction following, and more

• 🗣️ Nova-3 by Deepgram - New voice AI model for real-time multilingual transcriptions in real-world enterprise use cases

• 📣 SEO AI Agent - Automate your entire SEO workflow with AI

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 📱 OpenAI - iOS Engineer, Sora

• 🔐 Glean - Infrastructure Security Engineer

• 📊 Palantir Technologies - Sales Operations Analyst

• 🚀 Weights & Biases - Senior Demand Generation Manager (US)

📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI founder Ilya Sustkever’s SSI is reportedly in talks to secure over $1B in funding, set to reach a valuation of over $30B just months after its launch.

Nous Research released DeepHermes-3, an 8B parameter open-source model featuring a toggle to balance reasoning and speed for different use cases.

OpenAI published a guide to prompting its o-series reasoning models, emphasizing simpler, more direct approaches over traditional instructions.

SoftBank’s Arm is reportedly planning to develop its first in-house AI chip with Meta slated as an early customer, a major shift from its traditional licensing model.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted that testers of GPT-4.5 have had “feel the AGI” moments, with hype continuing to build for a potential launch of the new model.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek suspended its chatbot app downloads in South Korea after regulators raised concerns about data privacy practices.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Wednesday at 3 PM EST and learn how to create custom AI soundtracks for your business content with Udio’s Andrew Sanchez, CEO/Co-founder, and Ian Braunstein, Head of Product.

RSVP 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