OpenAI’s benchmark for AI progress

Good morning,

Today, we’ll look at OpenAI’s new internal benchmark it shared at its company All-Hands meeting this week. Plus the top tech news you need to know from this week.

Let’s go 👇

This week’s insight

What happened

At its company All-Hands meeting on Tuesday, OpenAI shared a new benchmark to help track its progress towards developing artificial general intelligence, or software that can reason as humans do.

Benchmark levels

• Level one: Chatbots
  The company is currently at level one which encompasses AI software that’s able to converse with people. However, it’s close to reaching level two…

• Level two: Reasoners
  AI that can do human-level problem-solving.

• Level three: Agents
  Systems that can take actions.

• Level four: Innovators
  AI that can aid in coming up with new inventions.

• Level five (most advanced): Organizations
  AI that can do the work of an entire organization.

Bottomline

It’s crazy to see how much and how fast AI how progressed but also eye-opening to see that we’re only at level one. 

We have a long way to go to reach level five… but it might come sooner than we think.

This week’s videos

Top news

• Apple and Microsoft will no longer have representatives in non-voting observer roles on OpenAI’s board. These changes are likely a reaction to regulators in the EU and US increasing their scrutiny of Big Tech’s investments in AI startups.

• Google’s global search market share bumped up to 91.1% in June, while ChatGPT’s web visits fell 12%. Google’s ad revenue also increased which helped boost the company’s profits by nearly 60% in the first quarter.

• Alphabet halts its plans to acquire $25B-listed marketing software firm HubSpot.

Other news

• SpaceX employees are planning a Martian city housed by a giant dome. Most of Elon Musk’s companies will most likely contribute to the city, in some way.

• Apple’s Vision Pro is unlikely to hit 500,000 sales this year due to manufacturing complexities.

• Elon Musk says the next Neuralink brain implant is expected soon, despite issues with the first patient.

• Apple leads gains as the personal computer industry saw a 3% growth in Q2.

• Intuit lays of 1,800 employees or roughly 10% of its workforce as the TurboTax-maker prioritizes AI.

• OpenAI has blocked users in China from accessing its tools and services.

• Tesla’s US EV market share falls below 50% for Q2, while Ford, Kia, and BMW see growth.

• The FTC bans anonymous messaging app NGL from hosting users under 18 years of age on the platform.

• Etsy adds a new labeling system aimed at better describing the types of items sold on its site.

• xAI and Oracle end talks on a potential $10B server deal. Instead, xAI is buying chips to build its own data center.

• Qualcomm and Microsoft Harness AI Hype to Drive PC Market Revival.

• Tesla is expected to release a refreshed Model Y in early to mid-2025 dubbed ‘Juniper’.

Deal flow

• AMD will acquire Finnish AI startup Silo AI for $665M cash.

• Shien is launching a $215M VC fund aimed at tackling fashion waste.

• Fintech for alternative investors Canoe Intelligence raised a $36M Series C round.

• Scaler, an ML-based decarbonizing platform for real estate, raised a $10M Series A round.

• Accend, a startup helping fintechs and banks accelerate business clients’ onboarding, raised a $3.2M seed round.

• Autonomous and user-led cyber investigation platform Command Zero raised a $21M seed round led by a16z.

• AI robotics startup Skild AI raised a $300M Series A round at a $1.5B valuation led by Lightspeed, Coatue, SoftBank, and Bezo Expeditions.

• Volley raises $55M to build voice-enabled AI games.

• AI video startup Captions raises a $60M Series C round at a $500M valuation led by Index Ventures.

• AI-powered document search startup Hebbia, raises a $130M Series B round at a $700M valuation led by a16z. It’s currently generating $13M ARR.

• Fitness member management startup Gymdesk raised $32.5M led by Five Elms Capital.

• Database startup Tembo raised a $14M round led by GreatPoint Ventures.

• Global business identity platform Niva emerges from stealth with a $3.3M seed round.

• Broadcom sold $5B of bonds to fund its $69B acquisition of VMware.

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

🌜 Loryn from Dark Mode Digest