Learn about Masayoshi Son’s $100 billion investment and the Future of A.I.
If you work or invest in technology, this has been a great holiday season for you. After Thanksgiving, several major A.I. applications released products all at once. In the past two weeks, we’ve seen new updates from Google, OpenAI, xAI and many more apps.
So today, I will review a few of these products, my thoughts on the industry and where we are headed next.
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What you need to know about investing in A.I.
I’m not an expert in A.I. hardware or software but I use several A.I. apps on a daily basis. For the past two years, I’ve been using four different A.I. tools on a daily basis. Sometimes I rotate a fifth app into my routine to test its functionality.
Since 2022, countless A.I. apps have been released but I’ve only had time to test the major players. Below are a few examples of how I use each tool.
ChatGPT’s 12 Days of Christmas
Let’s start with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This company has gone mainstream and is the product people are most familiar with. Last week, OpenAI announced the 12 days of Christmas which was a nice surprise.
I recommend checking out their YouTube channel for all of the videos. One of their popular updates was Santa Mode as seen below.
As for product updates, ChatGPT is making more premium products available at the free tier. Below is how I use Canvas to write content. Personally, I use GPT for reviewing code but I think writing content (i.e. marketing & sales emails) is what others will use Canvas for the most.
Anthropic’s Claude is popular for coding
Claude is the newest app I am testing this month. I haven’t found it particularly useful or differentiated from other apps, but many experts use it on a regular basis. Coding seems to be the most popular use case but some prefer its context window over the other apps.
I do appreciate Claude’s nuance with some responses. It has great functionality but I prefer the next three apps mentioned below.
Gemini Advanced for Deep Research
I use Gemini Advanced the most everyday because it is integrated with Google Workspace.?
For the past week, I’ve been experimenting with Gemini’s latest developments with Deep Research and Flash Experimental.
A few months ago, they released Google Vids, which was impressive for building video slides. Now they have released several video generation tools that blow out the competition. Watch the video below to learn more.
Google is proving that they can innovate at scale. Their transformer research was foundational to build generative A.I. apps today. Now with the latest advancements, they are leading the industry once again.
For example, ChatGPT released a Pro product for $200/month that thinks harder to provide even better answers. While Gemini Advanced released Deep Research that analyzes +100 websites to create a detailed outline for the user. Both have different use cases, and the utility is based on your preference.
Perplexity has the Best Real-time Search Product
Two weeks ago, I upgraded to Perplexity Pro and noticed a significant upgrade with the product features. Perplexity’s Pages, Spaces and Threads products have an organization feature that the other LLMs simply don’t have. It can convert my Threads into Pages so I can build research reports in real-time.
Perplexity also released a finance product and shopping feature right before Black Friday last month. The Shopping feature still has a few bugs but I use Perplexity’s finance function quite often. Sometimes it provides better, more relevant updates than what I will find on CNBC or Bloomberg.
xAI’s Grok is my personal favorite.
For starters, Grok is the only A.I. app that integrated humor into its default responses. It also has the best real-time responses for news updates. For example, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, posted all of the Gemini product updates directly on X this week. Instead of reading the news, I follow Sundar and his team. Then Grok shows me relevant posts and even searches the web now.
(If you want to learn more about how we use A.I., check out this post on how to write prompts to build cash flow statements.)
Learn about Satya’s Developments
If you want to learn about Microsoft’s recent A.I. developments, watch this video. Satya, the current CEO of Microsoft, is being interviewed by two notable VCs, to discuss his experience in the industry.
Satya discusses his journey with Microsoft, the company's new focus on AI. I think Satya has always been underestimated because Microsoft is viewed as an enterprise product. Sure, people don’t like Microsoft Teams but Satya’s ability to execute big picture ideas is amazing. Just look at his track record since 2014:
I don’t know what Satya’s next move is but I know he thinks big. Microsoft investment in OpenAI will probably parlay into an acquisition in the future.
SoftBank is investing $100b, again
Masayoshi Son has been building and investing in technology companies since 1981. The word ‘SoftBank’ is a combination of software and bank. Masayoshi Son wanted to be the bank of software. With +$100b of technology investments, I think he accomplished that goal. Now he’s raising even more.
Watch this video of Trump introducing Masayoshi Son. At first, the $100b plan was announced. But then Trump quickly suggested that Masayoshi Son double the amount.?
That was an impressive negotiation tactic and raised the bar for international investors. Everyone in the tech world is familiar with Masayoshi Son’s track record, from Yahoo! Japan to Alibaba. He even IPO’d ARM holdings and offered to take Nvidia private. All while brokering the T-Mobile/Sprint deal in the U.S. (read more here)
If Masayoshi Son sees a $100b investment opportunity in America, others will follow suit.?