48 AI Headlines Leading Up to Stargate

Q: What’s the upside of reading 400 AI headlines per week, an archive, and a decent memory?

A: I can throw together a timeline of what I recall over the past few months…

Short Version (links are below)

February:
- SoftBank declares they would go into the chip making business and compete with NVIDIA to reach AGI
July:
- SoftBank acquires British AI chipmaker Graphcore
September:
- Chinese model DeepSeek starts crushing Open AI
- Microsoft and BlackRock collaborate to pull together billions of dollars to develop data centers
- SoftBank to Invest $500 Million in OpenAI
October
- Former Palantir CISO Dane Stuckey joins OpenAI to lead security
November
- Chinese researchers develop AI model for military use on back of Meta’s Llama
- OpenAI presents plans for U.S. AI strategy and an alliance to compete with China
- DeepSeek further crushes OpenAI
- OpenAI gets $1.5 billion investment from SoftBank
December
- Sam Altman says AGI might be coming in 2025.
- OpenAI removes clause banning the use of its models for “military & warfare.” Announces a deal w/defense contractor Andruil.
- SoftBank CEO and Trump announce $100 billion U.S. investment
- DeepSeek beats even more records
- Alibaba’s Qwen sets records
- OpenAI o3 solves AIME, GPQA, Codeforces, makes 11 years of progress in ARC-AGI
- ByteDance skirts US restrictions and plans to spend $7 billion on Nvidia chips
January 2025
- OpenAI and Anthropic hint that AGI is coming sooner than anyone thinks
- OpenAI launches a robotics team
- OpenAI urges US to prioritize AI funding, regulation to stay ahead of China
- Senior Managing Director at BlackRock, Adebayo Ogunlesi joins OpenAI’s Board of Directors
- DeepSeek V3 sets new records (everyone but Open AI)
- DeepSeek R beats OpenAI on Inauguration Day
- Trump announces Stargate the day after Inauguration Day

Post Stargate additions:

January 2025
- Weapons start-up Anduril wants the Pentagon to go all-in on AI and drones
- ByteDance plans $20 billion capex in 2025, mostly on AI, sources say

Original Detailed Version w/ Links

February 2024

February 19, 2024
SoftBank founder and billionaire Masayoshi Son is reportedly looking to raise $100B to launch ‘Project Izanagi’. The AI chip venture aims to compete with NVIDIA and push towards AGI. $30B is potentially from SoftBank and $70B from Middle Eastern backers.
https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1759443216720445470
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/softbank-founder-reportedly-aims-to-raise-dollar100-billion-to-build-ai-chip-company-that-would-rival-nvidia
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/softbank-founder-masayoshi-son-aims-to-raise-100-billion-for-new-chip-venture-izanagi/ar-BB1iq42h?utm_source=tldrai

May 2024

May 12, 2024
SoftBank’s Arm plans to launch AI chips in 2025 – Nikkei Asia
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/SoftBank-s-Arm-plans-to-launch-AI-chips-in-2025

July 2024

July 11, 2024
Japan’s SoftBank acquires British AI chipmaker Graphcore | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/japans-softbank-acquires-british-ai-chipmaker-graphcore-2024-07-11

September 2024

September 10, 2024
“New DeepSeek-V2.5 model scores 89 on HumanEval, surpassing GPT-4-Turbo, Opus, Llama 3.1 in coding
https://twitter.com/rohanpaul_ai/status/1833638752842887533

September 17, 2024
Microsoft and BlackRock are part of a group of companies collaborating to pull together billions of dollars to develop data centers for artificial intelligence and the energy infrastructure to power them.
https://x.com/CNBC/status/1836170325274296443

September 18, 2024
Microsoft, BlackRock and the UAE have formed GAIIP – the Global Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Investment Partnership – to invest $100 billion in datacenters and power infrastructure, mainly inside the United States.
https://x.com/AndrewCurran_/status/1836408232543391994

September 30, 2024
SoftBank to Invest $500 Million in OpenAI — The Information
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/softbank-to-invest-500-million-in-openai

October 2024

October 1, 2024
SoftBank’s Masa Son Nears His Next Big A.I. Bet: OpenAI – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/01/business/dealbook/softbank-son-openai-altman.html

October 15, 2024
Former Palantir CISO Dane Stuckey joins OpenAI to lead security | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/15/former-palantir-ciso-dane-stuckey-joins-openai-to-lead-security/
https://x.com/cryps1s/status/1846325577906831728

October 19, 2024
“I am asking once again — why does China have the best AI video models on the market? Is it compute? Is it data? Is it algorithmic prowess? I can get firefly video being a laggard but aren’t most US based models training on “publicly available data”?
https://twitter.com/bilawalsidhu/status/1847651115958960349

November 2024

November 1, 2024
Exclusive: Chinese researchers develop AI model for military use on back of Meta’s Llama | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/chinese-researchers-develop-ai-model-military-use-back-metas-llama-2024-11-01

November 10, 2024
Exclusive: US ordered TSMC to halt shipments to China of chips used in AI applications | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-ordered-tsmc-halt-shipments-china-chips-used-ai-applications-source-says-2024-11-10

November 12, 2024
Kai-Fu Lee says GPU supply constraints are forcing Chinese AI companies to innovate, meaning they can train a frontier model for $3 million contrasted with GPT-5’s $1 billion, and deliver inference costs of 10c/million tokens, 1/30th of what an American company charges
https://twitter.com/tsarnick/status/1856446610974355632

November 13, 2024
OpenAI’s new policy blueprint for AI imagines a role for government | FedScoop
https://fedscoop.com/openai-policy-blueprint-ai-government/

November 13, 2024
OpenAI to present plans for U.S. AI strategy and an alliance to compete with China
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/13/openai-to-present-plans-for-us-ai-strategy-and-an-alliance-to-compete-with-china.html

November 20, 2024
“wow @deepseek_ai R1 cooks. people are sleeping on the competition for AI from China. clearly chip controls not working
https://twitter.com/saranormous/status/1859455354024927521

November 20, 2024
A Chinese lab has released a ‘reasoning’ AI model to rival OpenAI’s o1
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/20/a-chinese-lab-has-released-a-model-to-rival-openais-o1/

November 21, 2024
“Less than 48 hours ago, DeepSeek AI from China just dropped their AI reasoning model. And it’s on par with OpenAI o1-preview. Major shift. 10 examples (and how to try):
https://twitter.com/minchoi/status/1859622639133671576

November 26, 2024
OpenAI gets $1.5 billion investment from SoftBank in tender offer
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/26/openai-gets-1point5-billion-investment-from-softbank-in-tender-offer.html

November 24, 2024
Deepseek: The Quiet Giant Leading China’s AI Race
https://www.chinatalk.media/p/deepseek-ceo-interview-with-chinas

November 28, 2024
OpenAI faces critical test as Chinese models close the gap in AI leadership | VentureBeat
https://venturebeat.com/ai/openai-faces-critical-test-as-chinese-models-close-the-gap-in-ai-leadership/

November 29, 2024
Alibaba’s Qwen with Questions reasoning model beats o1-preview | VentureBeat
https://venturebeat.com/ai/alibaba-releases-qwen-with-questions-an-open-reasoning-model-that-beats-o1-preview/

December 2024

December 4, 2024
Sam Altman says AGI might be coming in 2025.
https://x.com/rowancheung/status/1864404295258615858

December 4, 2024
Earlier this year, OpenAI had this rule (pulled from WayBack machine) banning the use of its models for “military & warfare.” Today, it announced a deal w/defense contractor Andruil. OpenAI now says it won’t do: “offensive weapons.”
https://x.com/AASchapiro/status/1864470352081883174
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-enters-silicon-valleys-hot-new-business-war-7beccf6e
https://www.maginative.com/article/openai-and-anduril-partner-on-defense-ai-applications/
https://www.anduril.com/article/anduril-partners-with-openai-to-advance-u-s-artificial-intelligence-leadership-and-protect-u-s/

December 12, 2024
i keep hearing the same rhetoric that the US is ahead of China in AI. i don’t think that’s true, at all for several reasons. one thing i’d like to see from someone who is a native speaker in both languages is to compare SOTA chinese closed source models to SOTA english closed source models. i bet that they aren’t actually that far behind, and may actually be ahead in many ways. but we’re just not their target market
https://x.com/far__el/status/1867113586230751240

December 12, 2024
US Tightens Curbs on China’s Access to AI Memory, Chip Tools – Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-02/us-tightens-curbs-on-china-s-access-to-ai-memory-and-chips-tools

December 16, 2024
SoftBank CEO and Trump announce $100 billion U.S. investment
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/16/softbank-ceo-to-announce-100-billion-investment-in-us-during-visit-with-trump.html

December 20, 2024
[AINews] o3 solves AIME, GPQA, Codeforces, makes 11 years of progress in ARC-AGI and 25% in FrontierMath • Buttondown
https://buttondown.com/ainews/archive/ainews-o3-solves-aime-gpqa-codeforces-makes-11/

December 20, 2024
“NEW: OpenAI just announced ‘o3’, a breakthrough AI model that significantly surpasses all previous models in benchmarks. —On ARC-AGI: o3 more than triples o1’s score on low compute and surpasses a score of 87% —On EpochAI’s Frontier Math: o3 set a new record, solving 25.2% of
https://x.com/rowancheung/status/1870169402248945822

December 30, 2024
ByteDance appears to be skirting US restrictions to buy Nvidia chips: Report
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/30/bytedance-appears-to-be-skirting-u-s-restrictions-to-buy-nvidia-chips-report/

December 30, 2024
ByteDance Planned to Spend $7 Billion on Nvidia Chips Next Year — The Information
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bytedance-planned-to-spend-7-billion-on-nvidia-chips-next-year

January 2025

January 3, 2025
“One of the implications of China’s DeepSeek 3 being competitive with frontier models and open (and coming out so quickly after frontier US models) is that it seems that US (let alone EU) regulation is increasingly unlikely to stop continued AI model development.” / X
https://x.com/emollick/status/1875279332048039970

January 4, 2025
Sam Altman posts “i always wanted to write a six-word story. here it is: _ near the singularity; unclear which side.”
https://x.com/sama/status/1875603249472139576

January 5, 2025
This bit of Sam Altman’s newest post is similar in tone to a post by the CEO of Anthropic & what many (not all) researchers from every lab have been saying publicly and privately. You do not have to believe them, but I think they believe what they are saying, for what it worth.
https://x.com/emollick/status/1876119097660100636

January 5, 2025
“We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies.”
https://x.com/rohanpaul_ai/status/1876188657671106794

January 10, 2025
Really excited to be posting our FIRST Robotics hardware roles for @OpenAI, including two very senior tech lead engineering (IC) roles and a TPM Manager.
https://x.com/kalinowski007/status/1877809579154948223

January 10, 2024
“Or impact of the fact that closed-source players use open-source AI (currently dominated by Chinese players) like open-source datasets? The countries or companies that win open-source AI will have massive power and influence on the future of AI.”
https://x.com/ClementDelangue/status/1877767382120255792

January 13, 2025
OpenAI urges US to prioritize AI funding, regulation to stay ahead of China | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-urges-us-prioritize-ai-funding-regulation-stay-ahead-china-2025-01-13/

January 13, 2025
OpenAI blueprint urges new policies to edge out China in AI race
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/13/openai-blueprint-china-infrastructure

January 14, 2025 (a fun headline more than anything)
OpenAI’s AI reasoning model ‘thinks’ in Chinese sometimes and no one really knows why | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/14/openais-ai-reasoning-model-thinks-in-chinese-sometimes-and-no-one-really-knows-why/

January 14, 2025
Senior Managing Director at BlackRock, Adebayo Ogunlesi joins OpenAI’s Board of Directors
https://openai.com/index/adebayo-ogunlesi-joins-openais-board-of-directors/

January 16, 2025
“DeepSeek-V3, the company’s latest open LLM, surpasses Llama 3.1 405B and GPT-4o on key benchmarks, especially in coding and math tasks. Using a mixture-of-experts architecture with 671 billion parameters, only 37 billion are active at once, DeepSeek V3 was trained at a low cost” /
https://x.com/DeepLearningAI/status/1880087643964199260

January 21, 2025
Weapons start-up Anduril wants the Pentagon to go all-in on AI and drones – The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/01/21/anduril-startup-weapons-drones-ai/

January 23, 2025
Exclusive: ByteDance plans $20 billion capex in 2025, mostly on AI, sources say | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/bytedance-plans-20-billion-capex-2025-mostly-ai-sources-say-2025-01-23