Google has continued to step up the pace in the AI game, now announcing the release of Gemini 2.5, an updated generation of its reasoning AI models to tackle more complex queries. Gemini 2.5 readily outperforms or equals competitors on common benchmarks for understanding, mathematics, and, most importantly, coding, where it has dethroned Anthropic's previously incredibly dominant Claude 3.7 Sonnet. It comes with native multimodality and an enormous 2 million token context window, which many believe the company has its investments in TPU technology to thank for helping it make possible at such a low price.
Earlier this week, DeepSeek unveiled an upgraded version of its DeepSeek V3 LLM via Hugging Face, though the upgrade ended up being more impactful than many may have expected. The new model shows marked improvements in reasoning and coding, bolstering DeepSeek's competitive edge against Western rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. Most importantly, however, DeepSeek V3 now claims the spot as the "best" non-reasoning model on top of being open-source and significantly cheaper than OpenAI's GPT-4.5.
Following the likes of Perplexity, OpenAI, and Google, Microsoft is next in line to add "deep research"-like tools to its Copilot AI chatbot. In Microsoft's case, the company is giving Copilot two separate modes, Researcher and Analyst. Researcher integrates OpenAI's deep research model with "advanced orchestration" and "deep search capabilities," while Analyst, built on OpenAI's o3-mini model, is optimized for advanced data analysis and can also run Python code for more difficult queries. The features will be available starting in April for participants of its new Frontier program.
Popular AI startup Anthropic has secured itself an early victory as it convinced a California federal judge to reject a broad preliminary bid by music publishers. The bid, presented by publishers such as Universal Music Group, was presented to block the company from using copyrighted lyrics to train its Claude AI chatbot. However, US District Judge Eumi Lee found that the music publishers failed to demonstrate "irreparable harm" from Anthropic's conduct, though they remain confident in their broader case.
New Jersey-based cloud computing provider CoreWeave has significantly slashed its expectations after reducing the size and value of its planned IPO as investor demand for AI infrastructure wanes on Wall Street. The company is saying it now only expects to raise about $1.5 billion by selling around 37.5 million shares at $40 each, a stark contrast to its original $4 billion goal. Nvidia, an already major stakeholder, is said to be at the crux of the IPO by anchoring it at that $40 price point and is set to invest an additional $250 million in the company.
Two former Meta AI executives have reportedly raised $15 million for Yutori, a San Francisco-based startup developing autonomous AI personal assistants. Led by Rob Toews at Radical Ventures with participation from investors including Felicis, "AI godmother" Fei-Fei Li, and Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, Yutori says it wants to redefine how users interact with AI agents. Right now, the company is focusing on post-training models to improve web navigation and performance, taking aim at tasks ranging from food orders to complex travel logistics.