Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
In today's Techpresso:
👀 Jeff Bezos is the co-CEO of a new AI startup
💸 Peter Thiel sells entire Nvidia stake amid AI bubble fears
👎 Perplexity voted most likely to flop at conference
🌦️ Google unveils its most accurate AI weather model
🤔 "We have work to do", admits Windows boss after agentic fury
🔎 Reporters expose crypto's criminal financial system
🎁 + 7 other news you might like
🔮 + 6 handpicked research papers and tools
👀 Jeff Bezos is the co-CEO of a new AI startup LINK
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is returning to an operational role as co-chief executive of a new AI startup named Project Prometheus, which has already secured $6.2 billion in funding.
His partner in the chief executive role is Vik Bajaj, who co-founded Google’s life sciences division and the Alphabet-owned biotech startup Verily before starting this new venture with Bezos.
The startup will build AI products for engineering and manufacturing in fields like aerospace and automobiles, describing its specific focus as creating "AI for the physical economy."
💸 Peter Thiel sells entire Nvidia stake amid AI bubble fears LINK
Peter Thiel's hedge fund, Thiel Macro LLC, sold its entire holding of 537,000 Nvidia shares during Q3, a move which represented almost 40 percent of the fund's equity portfolio.
The firm also wiped out its Vistra Energy position and slashed its Tesla holdings, cutting total long equity exposure by nearly 65% from $212 million down to just $74.4 million.
This sale aligns with Thiel's public warnings about an AI "hype loop," suggesting he is now acting on his belief that the market is speeding ahead of underlying economics.
👎 Perplexity voted most likely to flop at conference LINK
In an informal survey at a San Francisco conference, over 300 attendees voted Perplexity as the billion dollar AI startup that is most likely to fall, according to a report.
OpenAI was ranked second in the same poll of startups that could flop, even while its ChatGPT chatbot continues to be the leader in the AI market in terms of share.
The vote comes as Perplexity's valuation has soared from $14 billion to $50 billion in just a few months, amid wider industry fears about a potential AI bubble.
🌦️ Google unveils its most accurate AI weather model LINK
Google's WeatherNext 2 model can generate hundreds of possible outcomes from a single starting point, including low-probability catastrophic events, in under a minute using just one TPU.
The AI is trained only on individual weather elements called “marginals,” yet from this it learns to skillfully forecast large, interconnected systems known as “joints” for regional predictions.
This new technology is now integrated into the core forecasting system that powers Google's consumer apps, bringing more accurate weather results to Search, Gemini, and Pixel Weather.
🤔 "We have work to do", admits Windows boss after agentic fury LINK
Windows president Pavan Davuluri admitted the company has "work to do" after facing backlash from developers who criticized Microsoft's new vision for an "agentic OS" and flawed Copilot promotions.
The social media fury was fueled by a marketing video where Windows Copilot failed an accessibility request, instead misleading the user to scale their entire display rather than increase text size.
Responding to hundreds of uncomplimentary replies, Davuluri acknowledged "paint [sic] points" like inconsistent dialogs, reliability, and performance, stating the team discusses these issues to keep developers on Windows.
🔎 Reporters expose crypto's criminal financial system LINK
The ICIJ's "Coin Laundry" investigation found that criminals use a shadow financial system built on blockchain technology to move illicit funds through major exchanges with speed and anonymity.
Reports link North Korean hackers and the Sinaloa drug cartel to illegal transactions on major platforms like Binance, OKX, and Coinbase for crimes including people trafficking and dealing fentanyl.
Criminal organizations now send money easily using dollar-pegged stablecoins, a method replacing older techniques like hiding cash in cars and creating a system beyond law enforcement's reach.
Other news you might like
- Tim Cook retirement ‘leak’ is clearly a deliberate test of market reactionLINK
- Mac Pro Reportedly No Longer a Priority For Apple, Focus Switched to Mac StudioLINK
- BNPL is expanding fast, and that should worry everyoneLINK
- PowerLattice attracts investment from ex-Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger for its power saving chipletLINK
- Google is collecting troves of data from downgraded Nest thermostatsLINK
- Anthropic's CEO is 'deeply uncomfortable' being one of the only people deciding AI's futureLINK
- Jaguar Land Rover hack cost India's Tata Motors around $2.4 billion and countingLINK
Latest research and tools
Heretic: a tool that automatically removes censorship from language models while aiming to preserve their original capabilities.LINK
supercookie: uses favicons to assign a persistent tracking identifier to users that is not easily cleared or blocked.LINK
FreeMDU: an open-source project that provides tools for anyone to diagnose their Miele appliances, replacing the expensive software used by technicians.LINK
pgFirstAid: a PostgreSQL function that provides a prioritized list of actions to improve database stability and performance.LINK
fastmcpp: a high-performance C++ implementation of the Model Context Protocol, used to build fast servers and clients that can manage tools, resources, and prompts.LINK
New AI model analyzes spreadsheet-style data almost instantly: the team developed a system that makes highly accurate predictions on new data tables in less than one second.LINK
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