A recent Wall Street Journal report claims that the $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure project has yet to settle on even a single data center site six months after its January launch. The report claims that disagreements between Stargate's two joint leaders, OpenAI and SoftBank, over where to build data centers are behind the slow start, with the partners having allegedly scaled back initial plans from a $100 billion investment spree to delivering a single AI facility by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, OpenAI has privately secured two separate deals not involving SoftBank, one with CoreWeave and another with Oracle.
Google DeepMind's unreleased Gemini Deep Think and OpenAI's latest unnamed reasoning model each have achieved a gold medal on this year's International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) problems. Google entered the competition officially and had its 35‑point result certified without using tools or browser capabilities, while OpenAI evaluated its model independently - the latter caused some scrutiny online. With only about 10% of 630 human participants earning an IMO gold, the results underscore just how rapidly general-purpose AI for complex mathematics and reasoning has developed.
After a booming Q2 report earlier last week, Taiwan's TSMC closed at a valuation slightly over $1 trillion on the Taipei market, becoming the first Asian company after PetroChina's momentary peak to reach the milestone since 2007. As the leading chip provider for Apple and the ever-hungry Nvidia, which recently reached a valuation over $4 trillion itself, TSMC's earnings report and investor confidence confirm that demand for AI chips is not slowing down anytime soon.
The Browser Company's newly-launched AI browser, Dia, has recently debuted what it calls a "skill gallery" that allows users to save prompts and invoke them with a simple shortcut. The 0.1 version of the feature hosts numerous categories, where users can simply copy over prompts to their browser with a click. Meanwhile, Perplexity's Comet is set to launch something similar - last Sunday, company CEO Aravind Srinivas posted on X/Twitter saying that Comet would roll out "shortcuts for repetitive tasks" over the following week, calling the browser a "personal console for getting work done."
Meta has publicly declined to sign the EU's voluntary AI code of practice published on July 10th, calling it overly restrictive and a hindrance to innovation. The guidelines, which are meant to ease compliance with the upcoming AI Act, are backed by firms like OpenAI but were brushed off by Meta's global affairs chief Joel Kaplan in a recent LinkedIn post, stating that "Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI." Although the code of practice isn't enforced, the EU says that complying companies would benefit from "reduced administrative burden and increased legal certainty."
Perplexity AI has raised another $100 million in a recent fundraiser, restoring its valuation to $18 billion after it dipped to $14 billion in March, according to a Bloomberg report. Founded in 2022, the generative AI search startup has grown rapidly as investors pour capital into leading AI ventures, tripling its valuation multiple times over the year. With Perplexity's valuation rising so rapidly, Apple may have to pay a hefty price as reports allege that the giant has held internal talks about potentially acquiring Perplexity to power a future AI‑based search engine.