🤖 OpenAI: Sharks Circling
OpenAI is still enormous, hovering around a $300 billion valuation with nearly 500 million weekly users. But the competitive heat is intensifying. Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft’s xAI are aggressively pulling talent, with Meta offering sky-high signing bonuses. A $3 billion acquisition attempt of coding startup Windsurf just fell apart under pressure from Microsoft; many Windsurf engineers pivoted to DeepMind instead.
Internally, OpenAI has hit turbulence. It delayed the release of a new open-weight model, citing safety concerns. Employee burnout is reportedly widespread. Microsoft is growing wary of profit-sharing terms and AGI strategy divergence. Even its planned $6.5 billion AI partnership with Jony Ive might be in jeopardy over branding disputes.
Still, OpenAI isn’t standing still, it's cooking up an AI browser, finalizing a $200 million Pentagon deal, and even teaming up with Mattel on a Barbie AI project.
🇨🇳 NVIDIA Heads Back to China
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is heading to Beijing again, with a press briefing scheduled for July 16. This will be his second China visit in 2025. China still accounts for a significant slice of Nvidia’s business, about $17 billion or 13% of annual revenue.
Geopolitical tensions continue to weigh heavily on Nvidia’s operations. U.S. export controls have limited access to its most advanced chips, including the H20 series. Lawmakers have urged the company to avoid transactions with Chinese firms linked to the military or subject to trade restrictions. Nevertheless, demand from China’s AI sector remains robust, even as domestic competitors like Huawei begin to gain momentum.
🎨 AI & The Warped Face of Beauty
London’s Somerset House just opened “Virtual Beauty,” an exhibition that confronts the eerie collision between AI and human aesthetics. From AI-powered beauty apps to “Snapchat dysmorphia,” the show unpacks how digital ideals are warping real-life self-image and even inspiring cosmetic surgery trends.
The exhibit features works by Qualeasha Wood, Sin Wai Kin, and Mat Collishaw, each of whom navigates the blurred boundaries between AI-generated identity and traditional artistic voice. Some of the art even probes the philosophical weirdness of creativity by machine, are these outputs aesthetic, sentient, or something else entirely?