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Daily Digest #452

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Hello folks, here’s what we have today;

PICKS

1. Anthropic is shipping 🔥 - bringing two much-needed updates. First, you can now publish and share Artifacts⁴⁸² in Claude. Other people can remix shared Artifacts to create their own versions. Second, Anthropic improved its developer console.²⁸¹ You can generate advanced prompts, create test suites and evaluate model responses. performance.

2. Microsoft bows out of OpenAI's boardroom.²⁸¹ Microsoft's ditching its non-voting observer role on OpenAI's board, effective immediately. OpenAI is getting rid of the entire concept, which means Apple is also not getting one.🍿Our Summary⁴ (also below)

3. Correction on yesterday’s Health Coach Story: It’s a partnership between OpenAI and Thrive Global. Thrive Capital is a separate organization.

4. AI leaders meet at HumanX 2025⁵⁷⁸ - the most consequential AI gathering you’ll ever attend.

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   Where the future of AI is defined. Not just discussed. Join AI visionaries from Snowflake, Applied Intuition, Google & more for actionable insights and unparalleled networking. 

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TOP TOOLS

• Writer⁵³⁶ - Next-level chat apps with explainable AI, built-in RAG, and more.

• Workflows in Julius³²⁴ - Run repeatable, multi-step analysis on your data.

• Threado²⁵⁵ - AI agents for customer-facing teams.

• Reworkd^430† - Effortlessly extract web data at scale.

• LlamaCloud by LlamaIndex¹⁷⁹ - The data processing layer for your LLM applications.

• Outfit.fm³¹⁷ - Make amazing photos for your clothing brand.

• SmartCrawl by Firecrawl⁴³⁰ - Turn any website into an API with AI.

• Fluidworks^202† - Live video AI agent for SaaS sales demos.

View more →¹²³

NEWS

• Chinese developers scramble as OpenAI blocks access in China.¹¹⁰ But Microsoft Azure is still open⁴⁵ to Chinese vendors.

• Bumble⁸⁹ users can now report profiles that use AI-generated photos.

• Gemma 2 9B and 27B⁸³ are available on Google AI Studio.

• The AI summer²⁹⁸ and boring hunt for product-market fit.

• How close is AI to replacing product managers?⁴⁰⁷

• xAI ends talks with Oracle⁶⁵ on a server deal. It is buying chips to build its own data centre.

• a16z is building a stash of more than 20,000 GPUs to win AI deals.¹³¹

• Index Ventures raises $2.3B¹⁰² to chase AI breakthroughs.

View more →⁷²

FUNDING ROUNDS

Too many companies announced funding rounds yesterday. Here’s a quick list:

• AI game maker Volley raises $55M¹²¹ in Series C co-led by Microsoft and Lightspeed.

• Skild AI is building a general-purpose brain for robots⁷⁷ with a $300M series A.

• Captions raises $60M⁸⁹ series C by Index Ventures.

• Enso raises $6M¹²¹ for its guided AI agents builder.

• Command Zero raises $21M⁸⁴ seed led by a16z for last-mile cybersecurity assistance.

• Also, two Humane execs left the company to found an AI fact-checking startup.¹³⁸

Unclassifieds - short, sponsored links

• Systematically Improving RAG Applications (Course): ¹¹⁶Successfully iterating on products depends on decision-making frameworks, not just technical skills.

QUICK BITES

Looks like Microsoft's taking a step back from OpenAI's inner circle.²⁸¹ They're giving up their observer seat on the board, saying they've seen enough progress to feel confident about OpenAI's direction.

What's going on here?

Microsoft's ditching its non-voting observer role on OpenAI's board, effective immediately.

What does this mean?

Microsoft says OpenAI's made "significant progress" in the last 8 months, so they don't need the insider view anymore. This move comes after Microsoft played a key role in bringing Sam Altman back as CEO in November 2023 and reshaping OpenAI's governance. At the time, Microsoft and Satya Nadella were focused on getting some say in how OpenAI operates.

They got some in the form of an observer seat. OpenAI's been busy rebuilding its board since then, adding heavy hitters like Larry Summers and ex-NSA official Paul Nakasone. There was chatter about Apple exec Phil Schiller getting an observer seat, but now OpenAI's scrapping the whole observer concept.

Instead, OpenAI is cooking up a "new approach" to keep strategic partners and investors in the loop, without giving them a seat at the table. These partners like Microsoft and Apple along with big-shot investors like Khosla Ventures and Thrive Capital will now get regular meetings with Sarah Friar, the former Nextdoor boss and now OpenAI’s CFO.

Why should I care?

The media is focused on the antitrust angle. They say this shake-up could mean smoother sailing for both companies. Microsoft dodges potential antitrust headaches, while OpenAI gets to run its ship without Big Tech looking over its shoulder.

But let’s brew some rumours here. OpenAI’s integration with Apple was less than stellar. OpenAI wasn’t getting paid for the integration either. Giving them a board seat would’ve been too much. What if Sam and Uncle Bret (Board chair) scrapped the observer seat system to get rid of this drama? I won’t be surprised.

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