Business
Up-and-Coming Startups: AI agents and infrastructure dominate CB Insights’ Top 100 AI Startups list
AI agents and infrastructure made a strong showing on CB Insights’s latest list of the top 100 AI startups.
Latest
Machine Learning Research
Music Generation for Pros: Google upgrades its AI music tools for professional use
Google refreshed its experimental tools for composers and producers.
Machine Learning Research
New Image Generator for OpenAI API: OpenAI launches API access to GPT Image 1, ChatGPT’s viral image generator
ChatGPT’s image generator is available via API.
Data Points
Zhipu AI builds smaller, open models to rival DeepSeek’s: Baidu accelerates China’s AI price war
Microsoft adds search and research tools and an Agent Store. Adobe updates its image model, opens door to competitors. Understanding why AI models react the way they do. Dia, an open speech-to-text model to rival ElevenLabs and NotebookLM.
Data Points
Building multi-agent systems in Rowboat’s IDE: Top computer use agent UI-TARS gets an update
GPT-4o’s image generator now available via API. Google updates its Lyria model and music editing tools. Grok 3 models now available for API developers. Executive order would overhaul K-12 AI education in U.S. schools.
Letters
How to Become a Multilingual Coder: AI makes it easy to code in any programming language — especially if you know just one.
Even though I’m a much better Python than JavaScript developer, with AI assistance, I’ve been writing a lot of JavaScript code recently.
The Batch Newsletter
OpenAI’s Five New Models, Hugging Face’s Open Robot, U.S. Tightens Grip on AI Chips, Text-Only LLMs Go Multimodal
The Batch AI News and Insights: Even though I’m a much better Python than JavaScript developer, with AI assistance, I’ve been writing a lot of JavaScript code recently.
Machine Learning Research
Text-Only LLM Goes Multimodal: LLMs learn to caption images, video, and audio without further training
Large language models excel at processing text but can’t interpret images, video, or audio directly without further training on those media types. Researchers devised a way to overcome this limitation.
Business
U.S. Tightens Grip on AI Chips: U.S. makes new rules for AI chip export rules to China, launches Nvidia investigation
The U.S. government escalated its long-running effort to block China’s access to cutting-edge AI hardware.
Hardware
Hugging Face Rolls Out Open Robot: Hugging Face acquires Pollen Robotics, launches Reachy 2 robot for open-source research
Hugging Face has made a name by providing open AI models. Now it’s providing an open robot.
Machine Learning Research
OpenAI Launches Cost-Effective Alternatives: OpenAI replaces GPT-4.5 with GPT-4.1 Family, plus o3 and o4-mini, new models focused on reasoning and coding
OpenAI refreshed its roster of models and scheduled the largest, most costly one for removal.
Data Points
Evaluating the best AI search engines: Claude can read your Gmail and the web
New BitNet model shows that 1,0,-1 might be enough. Kling gets a model update with image and video inputs. Google rolls out video generation and animation model to subscribers. Music streamer Deezer notes sharp uptick in AI-generated music.