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Headliner: What’s the Real Cost of SoftBank’s $40B Bet on OpenAI’s Wild Ride? 🎲

Your AI Product - News Report - April 2nd

Author

Samuel Pierre-Gilles
April 02, 2025

For those that are new around here, this is an extension of my weekly newsletter where I highlight new and innovative AI products that are worth exploring.


Hey hey!

Happy Wednesday!

Here’s your news in newsletter!

Riding off the high of yesterday’s catchup recap, Today’s News issue covers the news from the past week, so it’ll be short and sweet.

In this Issue:

  • Your Weekly Industry News Recap

  • The Raise Recap

Headliner: What’s the Real Cost of SoftBank’s $40B Bet on OpenAI’s Wild Ride? 🎲

OpenAI must complete for-profit transition by year-end to raise full $40 billion

OpenAI must transition to a for-profit company by the end of the year to secure the full $40 billion funding led by SoftBank it is in the final stages of raising, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-must-complete-for-profit-transition-by-year-end-raise-full-40-billion-2025-03-28

OpenAI is reportedly raising a jaw-dropping $40B, with SoftBank leading the charge to fuel its next growth phase. 💸🤖 The deal would help scale ChatGPT and other tools, already reaching 500M weekly users. 🚀🧠 Plus, it backs the wild $500B “Stargate” plan to build next-gen AI supercomputers. 🛰️🖥️ But there’s a catch—they’ll need to complete their for-profit transition to cash it all in. ⏳💼 Read more: Link🧠💸

Your Weekly Industry News Recap

  • Elon Musk Merges xAI with X – Musk consolidates his ventures to build smarter AI into the X platform, blending social + agent tech. 🧪📲 Read More 🔗 

  • Semrush Touts AI-Driven Marketing SaaS Growth – The SEO giant is betting on AI to optimize marketing and drive long-term SaaS success. 📊🤖 Read More 🔗 

  • SaaS Consolidation is Coming, Says Khadim Batti – Co-founder of Whatfix sees fewer, stronger players surviving in the AI-SaaS space. 🔄🏢 Read More 🔗 

  • Haut.AI Previews AI Skin Analysis Tool – AI is coming to skincare: Haut.AI shows off a tool that analyzes your skin with crazy precision. 🧴🧠 Read More 🔗 

Crowning Q1👑 The Raise Recap Goes On A Tear📈💰 

  • 2am VC Fund Launches for AI, Fintech, SaaS – A new early-stage VC fund is backing the next wave of AI and SaaS disruptors. 💸🚀 Read more 🔗 

  • OpenAI Must Raise $40B to Complete For-Profit Shift – OpenAI’s big transition comes with a hefty bill: $40B in funding by year-end. 🧠💰Read more🔗 

  • Nexthop AI Launches with $110M in Funding – New startup Nexthop AI debuts with a major raise to build hyperscaler-ready AI infrastructure. 🏗️🤖Read More 🔗 

  • DeepIP Raises $15M Series A for IP Protection AI – DeepIP is developing AI tools for protecting intellectual property—now with $15M to back it. 🔐💼Read More 🔗 

  • Hakimo Secures $10.5M for AI Security Platform – Hakimo grabs fresh capital to expand its AI-powered physical security systems. 🛡️📹 Read More 🔗 

  • Bambu Raises $3M for AI WealthTech Platform – Singapore-based Bambu lands funding to grow its AI-driven financial planning tools. 📈🤖Read More 🔗 

  • Mendel Raises $35M Backed by PayPal – AI-powered spend and travel management platform Mendel secures a Series B led by big players. ✈️💳 Read More
    🔗 

  • GetReal Security Raises $17.5M to Fight Deepfakes – With AI threats on the rise, this startup is building tools to detect deepfakes and digital fakes. 🎭🧠 Read More 🔗 

  • CadDi Raises Funding for AI in Supply Chains – Japanese startup CadDi grabs backing from Atomico to bring AI to supply chain optimization. 📦 Read More 🔗 

  • Ethos Raises €3M to Revolutionize Headhunting with AI – This platform wants to match top talent using AI, now with fresh European VC support. 🧑‍💼🤖Read More 🔗 

  • GetReal Security Funding Also Featured on Fintech Global – The same raise highlighted again as part of the fintech-security trend. 🔐💼 Read More 🔗 

  • Amazon Alexa Fund Invests in 4 New AI Startups – Amazon is doubling down on AI innovation, spreading capital across early-stage bets. 💬📱 Read More 🔗

  • SplxAI Raises $7M to Protect AI from Threats – As AI risks grow, this startup wants to make LLMs safer—and now they’ve got fresh funding to do it. 🛡️🧠Read More 🔗

  • Navina Raises $55M to Expand AI in Healthcare – Navina uses AI to support value-based care, and this raise brings it to more providers. 🏥💊Read More 🔗 

  • Contoro Robotics Raises $12M for AI Unloading Bots – This startup wants to automate trailer unloading using robotics and AI. 🚛🤖 Read More 🔗

What I’m Reading 🧪👀

This one’s a deep dive into the science of the recent cohort of LLMs; This the link preview says it all - for those curious about more of the innerworkings, have a go at it!

Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks

Despite rapid progress on AI benchmarks, the real-world meaning of benchmark performance remains unclear. To quantify the capabilities of AI systems in terms of human capabilities, we propose a new metric: 50%-task-completion time horizon. This is the time humans typically take to complete tasks that AI models can complete with 50% success rate. We first timed humans with relevant domain expertise on a combination of RE-Bench, HCAST, and 66 novel shorter tasks. On these tasks, current frontier AI models such as Claude 3.7 Sonnet have a 50% time horizon of around 50 minutes. Furthermore, frontier AI time horizon has been doubling approximately every seven months since 2019, though the trend may have accelerated in 2024. The increase in AI models' time horizons seems to be primarily driven by greater reliability and ability to adapt to mistakes, combined with better logical reasoning and tool use capabilities. We discuss the limitations of our results -- including their degree of external validity -- and the implications of increased autonomy for dangerous capabilities. If these results generalize to real-world software tasks, extrapolation of this trend predicts that within 5 years, AI systems will be capable of automating many software tasks that currently take humans a month.

arxiv.org/abs/2503.14499

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Stay well, and see you next week!

-✌🏽 Sam

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