During an earnings call with investors following Q4 earnings, Amazon announced it plans to boost its capital expenditures to $100 billion in 2025, surpassing last year's roughly $83 billion total. The increased amount is mainly driven by investments in generative AI and AI for AWS, such as supporting data centers, Nova models, Trainium chips, and more. CEO Andy Jassy described the move as a "once-in-a-lifetime type of business opportunity," assuring long-term benefits for the business, customers, and shareholders despite mixed Q4 results.
Google has recently seemed to have a change of heart regarding its AI ethical guidelines, as the company updated them to remove mentions of previous 2018 commitments to avoid use cases in weapons and surveillance. In a Tuesday blog post, Demis Hassabis and James Manyika explained that as AI becomes ubiquitous, democratic nations must lead its development while supporting government and national security clients. The revised text reads that human oversight will be strict in order to align with "widely accepted principles of international law and human rights."
India's finance ministry has recently issued an internal advisory to ask its employees to avoid using AI tools such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek for official purposes, claiming the tools pose too much risk to the confidentiality of government documents and data. The advisory, dated January 29, mirrors ever-growing concerns over data security and follows similar measures taken by other countries, like Australia and Italy. This internal directive emerged ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's scheduled visit to India, where he is set to meet the IT minister.
Figure AI, a frontier robotics startup working on general-purpose humanoid robots, recently announced it is exiting its deal with OpenAI in favor of developing in-house AI. The company cites a "major breakthrough" as the primary reason, with CEO Brett Adcock promising to deliver “something no one has ever seen on a humanoid” in the next 30 days. The decision comes after integration challenges between Figure 02 and OpenAI's models became apparent due to the tech company's massive breadth. Meanwhile, Figure AI says it needs embodied AI, a more specialized approach that isn't OpenAI's focus.
Microsoft-owned GitHub announced several major updates to Copilot, its AI-powered pair programmer, along with a glimpse into Copilot's more agentic future. Previously also a browser extension, Vision for Copilot lets users upload images - like screenshots, diagrams, or mockups - to automatically generate code, interfaces, and alt text. In addition, the "next edit suggestions" feature uses recent edits to predict subsequent changes, while Copilot Edits now includes an agent mode for multi-file natural language changes.
Canadian programmatic advertising platform StackAdapt recently announced that it secured $235 million in a recent fundraiser led by Teachers' Venture Growth. The investment, joined by Intrepid Growth Partners and four additional investors, brings the company's total funding to over $500 million following a previous $300 million round from Summit Partners in 2022. The pooled cash will go towards driving growth in the programmatic advertising sector, expanding into marketing technology, and bettering its platform AI.
