Hey, it’s Loryn here.

The past few months have been crazy with work. I definitely need a vacation soon. But, here’s what’s happening in today’s issue:

• How Meta is becoming a serious AI competitor

• WTF is going on at OpenAI

• Plus other top tech news you need to know

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Insight

Meta on the rise 🚀

Context

Over the past year, Meta has made a big push to integrate AI features into the platforms it owns, and it’s not slowing down. 

At its annual Connect conference this week, Meta announced a ton of new things like more image generator prompts in your feed, celebrity chatbot voices, and its new Llama 3.2 AI model. 

It also revealed ‘Orion’—its first consumer full holographic AR glasses, upgrades to its smart glasses with Ray-Ban—which can remember things for you, and a new Meta Quest 3S headset.

Meta’s AI edge

Meta clearly has an edge based on its ability to build and incorporate improved AI into all its platforms and services. 

A lot of its AI upgrades appear to offer more useful services for regular people than most AI tech does currently. For example, a Ray-Ban wearer can chat with someone speaking a foreign language and get a translation through the glasses’ speakers. As someone who travels internationally a lot, I find this pretty nice.

Neither Google nor OpenAI has a product that can compete with glasses… Actually, on the topic of OpenAI, WTF is happening at the company?

OpenAI leaders resign this week

This week, OpenAI’s CTO Mira Murati announced her departure from the company. Then, shortly after, OpenAI’s chief research officer, Bob McGew, and its research VP, Barret Zoph, also resigned. Though, apparently they each made these decisions independently of each other, according to Sam Altman’s post of X.

Publicly, OpenAI appears to be unaffected. It’s shipping new models at an incredibly fast pace and it’s in the middle of a giant fundraising round that could value it at $150B. Sam Altman is also everywhere, sharing his vision for AGI across multiple channels.

And yet, the internal workings at the company are still shrouded in mystery that seems to produce a lot of turnover. This will definitely be a big question for investors in its fundraising efforts.

Meta on the rise

While OpenAI deals with internal shakeups, Meta is making waves with all its new AI capabilities across its products and services. Its advantage lies in its massive user base and how it intentionally incorporates software and hardware together for its customers.

Can Meta handle the costs of scaling AI?

Meta is offering all these features as a free add-on. So, the big question is how much will it cost the company once hundreds of millions of people are using all these different AI features constantly? 

Its chief product officer Chris Cox claims its Llama 3 LLM is cheaper for developers to use than any other LLM, which implies the operating costs are also low for the company. But, at a mass scale, these costs could seriously add up.

News

Top hits

• 3 key OpenAI leaders resigned this week. Its chief research officer, Bob McGew, and a research VP, Barret Zoph, left the company on Wednesday, hours after its CTO Mira Murati announced her departure.

• At Meta Connect 2024, Zuck unveiled new hardware and software to support 2 of Meta’s big ambitions: AI and the metaverse. This included everything from new Quest headsets, updates to its Llama model, and even a new fully AR glasses prototype.

Other news

• OpenAI will restructure into a for-profit benefit corporation, no longer controlled by its nonprofit board, with Sam Altman receiving about 7% equity.

• Uber continues its autonomous vehicle partnership spree with a new deal that will bring WeRide’s robotaxis onto its platform starting in Abu Dhabi later this year.

• FTX fraudster Caroline Ellison is sentenced to 2 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11B.

• OpenAI rolls out Advanced Voice Mode for audio chats with more voices and a new look.

• Blue Origin gets its New Glenn rocket on track with a new test fire. It’s supposed to be the company’s first serious answer to competitor SpaceX.

• Mozilla, the internet browser company, rebrands itself—taking inspiration from early internet aesthetics to move its cause to ‘reclaim the web.’

• Sam Altman wrote on his blog titled “The Intelligence Age” that he believes superintelligent AI is just a 'few thousand days' away and will drastically change how we live.

• Amazon staff plead for reversal of 5-day RTO mandate by its CEO Andy Jassy in an anonymous survey.

• Amazon is working to catch Alexa back up in the AI race with one of its chief architects; Rohit Prasad leading the company’s efforts.

• Meta has acquired the Threads.com domain name.

Deal flow

• Raycast, the productivity software, raises $30M to bring its Mac app to Windows and iOS.

• Supabase, the open-source developer platform and Postgres database service, raised an $80M Series C round.

• Longshot Space, a startup rethinking how to send mass to orbit, raises over $5M to build a space gun in the desert.

• Harmonic, an AI platform developing mathematical superintelligence, raised a $75M Series A round at a $325M valuation led by Sequoia.

• Pyka, an startup that designs and manufactures electric autonomous planes, raised a $40M Series B round.

• HyperLight, a developer of thin film lithium niobate photonic integrated circuits , raised $37M in funding.

• Arqu, a San-Francisco, CA-based tech-enabled wholesale insurance brokerage, raised a $10M Series A round.

• Letta, one of UC Berkeley’s most anticipated AI startups, just emerged from stealth with tech that helps AI models remember users and conversations. It raised a $10M seed round.

• Cloud firm Snowflake announces proposed private placement of $2B of Convertible Bonds.

• Online furniture retailer Wayfair accounces proposed offering of $700M senior secured notes due 2029 in a private offering.

End

That’s a wrap

That’s it for this week. I hope you found this insightful. As always, let me know what you think and if you have any questions. Cheers!

🌜 Loryn + Nicole from Dark Mode Digest