🚩 Should We Start With AI Again?

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Plus: OpenAI’s In-house AI Chip Is Coming?

Read time: 5 minutes

Big tech like Microsoft and Meta have struggled with AI chips for years. DeepSeek’s rise raises questions about future chip demand. Can OpenAI succeed where others have failed?

What are on FIRE 🔥

• 🤖 DeepSeek’s Valuation Drama: $1B or $150B?

• 🌟 AI Highlights

• 💸 Daily AI Fundraising

• 📚 AI Sources From AI Fire

• 🏅 AI Tools

• ⚡ 5 AI Quick Hits

• 📊 AI Chart

• 💼 4 AI Jobs

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AI INSIGHTS

🤖 DeepSeek’s Valuation Drama: $1B or $150B?

DeepSeek just went from side project to AI giant—but how much is it really worth? Depends on who you ask.

Here’s what’s going down:

• Some say it’s worth $1B, putting it in the same league as other Chinese AI startups.

• Others claim it’s closer to $150B, making founder Liang Wenfeng one of the richest tech tycoons in Asia.

• A more realistic estimate? Somewhere between $2B and $30B—still a massive number for a two-year-old company.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting…

📉 DeepSeek’s Impact on AI & Silicon Valley

DeepSeek disrupted the AI industry overnight, proving that cutting-edge AI doesn’t have to cost billions to train. This shook up Nvidia’s stock and challenged how AI companies are valued.

Governments from Australia to South Korea are restricting its use over security concerns, but Chinese tech giants might still pour billions into it—just like Microsoft did with OpenAI.

Why it matters: DeepSeek is reshaping AI economics, shaking up Silicon Valley, and fueling China’s AI rise. Whether it’s worth $1B or $150B, one thing is clear—this is just the beginning. 🚀

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TODAY IN AI

AI HIGHLIGHTS

📢 U.S. Vice President JD Vance Takes a Bold Stand on AI at Paris Summit

At the Paris AI Summit, Vice President JD Vance confidently laid out the Trump administration’s AI policy in front of European and Asian leaders. The message was clear:

1. AI = The New Nuclear Weapon – The U.S. sees AI as a strategic asset and is determined to stop China from dominating this game-changing technology.

2. China = The Threat – Vance accused China of weaponizing AI and warned that the U.S. will prevent it from gaining a technological edge.

3. Europe & Asia = Allies – The U.S. urged allies to ease AI regulations, arguing that overregulation weakens the free world while authoritarian regimes (China) take the lead.

This was one of the most assertive AI speeches from a U.S. leader on a global stage. The Cold War AI race is real, and Elon Musk’s influence on Trump’s AI strategy is impossible to ignore.

🍎 Apple is partnering with Alibaba to bring AI features to iPhones in China. It dropped Baidu due to slow progress. Approval is pending, but this could boost iPhone sales.

💡 How to Find AI Startup Ideas? Y Combinator shared a 45-minute video on finding AI startup ideas. No time? Greg Isenberg summed up the key points in a quick, helpful thread.

🎯 Paul Graham says software startups can survive AI by focusing on real user problems first. Solve those, and success will follow. AI is a tool, not the goal.

🫀 A new AI tool, DeepRhythmAI, reports ambulatory electrocardiography and detects heart problems better than human technicians. It catches 98.6% of critical cases, reducing missed diagnoses by 17x.

🔥 OpenAI is designing its first AI chip to cut reliance on Nvidia. TSMC will manufacture it using 3nm tech. If successful, mass production starts in 2026.

🧩 AI Agents & the Big Missing Piece

Geoffrey Hinton says AI will develop sub-goals and take more control—but does that really add up?

Here’s where the argument stumbles:

• Intelligence ≠ Autonomy – AI lacks a body, so it can’t interact with the world like humans do.

• No Intentionality – It optimizes goals, but that’s not the same as having purpose.

• Zero Creativity – AI follows patterns; it doesn’t reflect, rethink, or make truly new choices.

Hinton himself has admitted that current AI foundations, like back-propagation, are flawed—even saying we should “throw it all away and start again.” If the very architecture of AI is built on shaky ground, can we really assume it will evolve into an autonomous force?

AI isn’t a being—it’s a tool. It can’t just jump from intelligence to takeover without these missing pieces.

DAILY AI FUNDRAISING

Sardine raises $70M for AI fraud detection. Europe commits $320B+ to AI, pushing rapid growth. Macron urges investment, U.S. and U.K. reject AI regulations, fearing they’ll slow innovation.

AI SOURCES FROM AI FIRE

NEW EMPOWERED AI TOOLS

1. 💬 Talo is a real-time AI voice translator for video calls

2. 👀 DeepSeek-VL2 are open-source vision-language models with strong multimodal understanding

3. 🎨 Stunning is AI-powered web design that creates client websites fast

4. 🖌️ Krea Chat lets you edit and generate images using natural language

5. ⚡ Mistral Small 3 is an open-source 24B model with faster speed and better accuracy

AI QUICK HITS

1. 💡 Apple’s AI Lamp Moves Like Pixar’s Luxo Jr., Reads Gestures (Link)

2. 🤖 AI.com Keeps Trolling Big Tech—Mysterious Owner Still Unknown (Link)

3. 📰 AI Chatbots Still Struggle with News Summaries (Link)

4. 🔑 Chrome May Use AI to Auto-Replace Hacked Passwords for Security (Link)

5. 🏛️ AI Should Not Be Controlled by Authoritarian Governments (Link)

AI CHART

Gemini Thinks Faster?

Things at Google’s AI division just got real—Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking just dropped, and it’s closing in on OpenAI’s o1 while overtaking DeepSeek-R1 in key areas.

And get this… it’s free (for now).

Here’s the breakdown:

• 1 million token context window (vs. 32k before, 128k for o1).

• Beats DeepSeek-R1 in science tests (74.2% vs. 71.5%).

• Still behind in math (73.3% vs. DeepSeek’s 79.8%).

• Users love it—it just topped Chatbot Arena rankings.

• Python support for data analysis & code execution.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting…

📉 The AI Price War is Heating Up

We talked about this last week—AI models are getting way cheaper to run, and that’s a problem for big players like OpenAI, Google, and Meta, who are pouring billions into training their models.

If DeepSeek and others keep driving costs down, these giants may never recoup their insane hardware investments (NVIDIA must be sweating).

💡 Why This Matters

Google just sent a warning shot at OpenAI. If Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking keeps improving, ChatGPT may have real competition for everyday users.

Oh, and Google still has Gemini Ultra waiting in the wings.

AI JOBS

• Stelvio Group: AI Solutions Engineer (Link)

• Bloomberg: Technical Product Manager – AI Platforms – GenAI Developer Platform – CTO Office | New York, NY, USA (Link)

• AMD: AI Accelerator Power Engineer (Link)

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): Senior Generative AI Data Scientist, Amazon SageMaker (Link)

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The AI Fire Team