CuttingEdgeTech chronicles #10

Agentic AI Era Fueled by Large Investments and a Wave of New AI Models

?? Summary of this edition:

The AI boom continues, with DeepSeek, Perplexity, Google, xAI, and Anthropic launching next-gen models that push the boundaries of efficiency and reasoning.

Quantum computing also takes a leap forward with Microsoft’s Majorana 1 chip, Japan’s quantum-supercomputer hybrid, and a breakthrough in nuclear-spin dark states.

Meanwhile, Mira Murati’s new startup, Thinking Machine Labs, aims to build more flexible, personalized AI systems.

AI is also making huge strides in medicine—with models now diagnosing diseases from a single blood sample and accelerating breakthroughs in drug discovery and genetics. As AI investments surge, specialized and agentic AI models are shaping the future faster than ever.

????Explore below for top-tier tech and science insights...

?? Tech

1. Google launches Gemini Code Assist – Free automated code reviews now available across VSCode, JetBrains, and GitHub. ?? Google
2. Apple commits $500B to U.S. expansion – A massive investment over the next four years to strengthen operations and innovation. ?? Apple
3. Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s new startup emerges – Thinking Machine Labs aims to develop more flexible and personalized AI with $100M backing. ?? Thinking Machines
4. xAI unveils Grok-3, claims it surpasses GPT-4o & Claude 3.5 – Stronger performance in math, science, and coding benchmarks. ?? X
5. Perplexity open-sources an AI model rivaling DeepSeek R1 – Maintains high performance while removing built-in censorship. ?? Perplexity
6. Perplexity launches Deep Research AI – Generates in-depth reports on complex topics in under 4 minutes. ?? Perplexity
7. Gemini enables document uploads for all users – Users can now analyze PDFs, spreadsheets, and code files, a feature previously exclusive to paid subscribers. ?? X
8. GitHub integrates GPT-4o into Copilot for VS Code – Smarter code suggestions across 30+ languages. ?? GitHub
9. Sakana AI unveils AI CUDA Engineer – Automates CUDA kernel optimization with up to 100x speedup for GPUs. ?? Sakana AI
10. Adobe launches full-featured Photoshop mobile app – AI-powered editing now on iPhone, with Android version coming soon. ?? Adobe
11. OpenAI’s next move: GPT-5 to merge o-series models – Sam Altman hints at a unified, more dynamic AI system. ?? X

?? AI

1. Anthropic unveils Claude 3.7 Sonnet – Outperforms OpenAI and DeepSeek in coding and problem-solving, with new transparency in its thought process. ?? Anthropic
2. Alibaba’s Wan2.1 dominates video AI – Tops VBench rankings for motion smoothness, text rendering, and physics accuracy, surpassing OpenAI’s Sora and others. ?? WanX AI
3. Mistral releases regional AI model – A 24B parameter model tailored for Middle Eastern and South Asian languages and cultures. ?? Mistral AI
4. DeepSeek introduces NSA training method – Cuts training costs while improving long-context performance over full-attention models. ?? arXiv
5. DeepSeek rolls out FlashMLA – More efficient transformer decoding for NVIDIA Hopper GPUs. ?? GitHub
6. DeepSeek debuts DeepEP – First open-source communication library for MoE model training and inference. ?? GitHub
7. Alibaba’s Qwen2.5-VL launches – New quantized versions (3B, 7B, 72B) optimized for multimodal performance. ?? arXiv
8. Alibaba enhances Qwen Chat with QwQ – Upgrades math, coding, and deep reasoning capabilities. ?? Qwen Blog
9. LangGraph Studio enables deep research agents – Users can customize AI configurations, compare architectures, and analyze costs. ?? YouTube
10. Microsoft unveils OmniParser V2 – Turns any LLM into a computer-use agent with 60% faster inference. ?? Microsoft
11. Test-Time Scaling (TTS) breakthrough – Study shows a 1B LLM can outperform a 405B LLM in math tasks with optimized inference scaling. ?? arXiv
12. Perplexity introduces Sonar AI – Built on Meta’s Llama 3.3, this fastest web-searching AI surpasses GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet in user satisfaction. ?? Perplexity
13. Agentic Reasoning framework debuts – Enhances AI problem-solving via web search, code execution, and knowledge graph tracking. ?? arXiv
14. Anthropic launches Economic Index – Tracks AI’s impact on jobs and automation. ?? Anthropic
15. Google DeepMind’s Gemini 2.0 Flash leads LM Arena – Best cost-performance AI model in open LLM evaluation. ?? LM Arena
16. OpenAI expands ChatGPT capabilities – File & image uploads now available in o1 and o3-mini models.
17. OpenAI refines AI behavior with Model Spec update – Improves factual accuracy and consistency. ?? OpenAI
18. ByteDance & HKU introduce Goku AI – Unified model for top-tier image and video generation. ?? Goku AI
19. Codeium launches Windsurf Wave 3 – Enhances AI-assisted coding with new editing features. ?? Codeium
20. Zonos-v0.1 debuts – Multilingual voice cloning model generates natural speech from text using only seconds of audio. ?? Hugging Face
21. Nomic Embed Text V2 released – Multilingual MoE embedding model with state-of-the-art retrieval performance across 100+ languages. ?? Hugging Face
22. Luma AI upgrades Dream Machine with Ray2 – Generates hyper-realistic video from images. ?? YouTube

? Engineering

1. Microsoft unveils Majorana 1, a topoconductor-powered quantum chip – A major step toward scalable, practical quantum computing. ?? Microsoft
2. MIT study challenges traditional robot training methods – New research suggests starting AI in controlled settings before adding real-world distractions leads to better learning. ?? arXiv
3. Japan integrates quantum computing into Fugaku supercomputer – The world’s first quantum-supercomputer hybrid, featuring a 20-qubit processor with 800x more reliability due to built-in error correction. ?? Live Science
4. Tech giants back light-based chip connections – Amazon, Nvidia, and Alphabet support a new photonics-based data transfer system that could be 100x faster than traditional metal wires, eliminating a major computing bottleneck. ?? SciTechDaily

?? Space

1. ‘City Killer’ asteroid risk fluctuates – A newly tracked asteroid’s Earth impact risk reached the highest ever recorded before dropping again. ?? Scientific American
2. Scientists detect record-breaking cosmic neutrino – Found deep in the Mediterranean, this 20x more powerful neutrino could be linked to supermassive black holes or the Big Bang. ?? Science News
3. Astronomers discover ‘Quipu’—the largest known structure in the universe – This 1.3B light-year-wide cosmic colossus is 200 quadrillion times the mass of the Sun, reshaping our understanding of cosmic evolution. ?? Newsweek
4. Asteroid samples reveal life’s building blocks – Scientists confirm organic molecules on an asteroid, adding weight to the theory that life's ingredients came from space. ?? BBC

?? Science

1. Ex-DeepMind scientist launches Latent Labs – $50M startup aims to design novel proteins for disease-fighting antibodies and enzymes. ?? Latent Labs
2. Microsoft’s BioEmu-1 accelerates protein research – Open-source deep learning model generates thousands of protein structures per hour, rivaling supercomputer simulations. ?? Microsoft
3. Google unveils AI co-scientist – Helps researchers formulate hypotheses and map experiments, already making discoveries in leukemia, liver fibrosis, and antibiotic resistance. ?? Google Research
4. Nvidia’s Evo 2 masters genetics – New open-source AI model can analyze all domains of life, constructing synthetic genetic sequences for medicine and agriculture. ?? Nvidia
5. Coffee’s link to gut health – Researchers find coffee boosts beneficial gut bacteria, highlighting its potential health benefits. ?? Scientific American
6. Tumors hijack the nervous system to grow – Certain cancers form synapses with neurons, remodeling brain circuitry and fueling their own growth. ?? Scientific American
7. Scientists prove ‘nuclear-spin dark state’ exists – A breakthrough in quantum memory, potentially advancing scalable quantum computing. ?? Phys.org
8. Overlooked scientist behind Down Syndrome discovery – A researcher who identified the cause 50 years ago was never credited—until now. ?? Scientific American
9. AI tool diagnoses diseases from a single blood sample – Can detect diabetes, HIV, and COVID with high accuracy. ?? Nature

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?? Ending note

In the midst of the digital age, information is abundant, but quality can sometimes be scarce. The digital landscape, further amplified by the emergence of LLMs, has given everyone a voice. While this democratization of content creation is empowering, it has also made distinguishing between the signal and the noise quite challenging.

This is precisely why I embarked on this newsletter journey: to sift through the vastness of articles and curate quality insights.

Think of this as a distilled, recurrent tech digest that will, over time, also serve as a chronicle of the ever-evolving tech panorama.

I really value your input and would love your help in making this newsletter even better. If you find any cool articles, feel free to send them my way! I promise to give a shoutout to everyone who pitches in.

??Here's to navigating the tech realm together!