Military gets a new chairman, Musk demands to know what fed employees are doing, and xAI ain't as good as they say
Advanced Computing, AI/ML, Chips, and Extended Reality
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Straight to the news today. We’ll be back next week with commentary.
News Headlines
Gen. C.Q. Brown is out at CJSC; Trump nominates LtGen Dan Caine for recall to active duty to serve as new chairman (CNN)
Musk directs all gov't workers to explain weekly contributions or face termination (POL)
Pentagon to cut up to 61,000 starting with 5,400 this week (DO)
Hegseth responds to criticism of Friday night Pentagon 'purge' (TH)
Bipartisan group of HASC members send note of concern to Hegseth over firings (MT)
Denmark plans to 'buy, buy, buy' military equipment (RT)
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) likens U.S.-Ukraine mineral deal to 'victim extortion' (TH)
U.S. believes Ukraine will agree to mineral deal this week (RT)
DARPA has tools to prevent cyber disasters, but no one is using them (DN)
Quantum Tech
Microsoft, DARPA collab yields possible quantum computing breakthrough (DO)
DARPA is planning to expand quantum benchmarking initiative (QI)
AI / ML
OpenAI weighs special voting rights to guard against hostile takeovers (FT)
India seeks AI breakthrough, but it is falling behind (BBC)
Thinking Machines Lab is ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's new startup (TC)
AI-designed chips are so weird that 'humans cannot really understand them' — but they perform better than anything we've created (LS)
xAI claims it has the smartest AI; it doesn't (TC)
NanoTech / Chips
Taiwan electronics firms plan more Texas investments, industry body says (RT)
Broadcom and TSMC are studying bids for Intel's chip-design and marketing business and chip plants, respectively (RT)
Deal Flow
Funds
Khosla Ventures aims to raise $3.5B for next fund (WSJ)
Meta launches $50M VR-focused Meta Horizon Creator Fund (VB)
VC
Safe Superintelligence, an AI startup co-founded by OpenAI's ex-chief scientist, is raising over $1B at a $30B valuation in a round led by Greenoaks Capital Partners (BBG)
Wooptix, a semiconductor metrology startup, raised a ~$11M Series C led by Samsung and Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (BW)
PE / M&A / Exits / Other
HP bought Humane AI for $116M after the startup's AI Pin failed to gain traction (TC)
Opportunities
DIU is seeking digital engineering platform to accelerate the design and validation of integrated circuits (DIU)
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