In other tech news, Apple has released new developer betas for iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS 15.1 Sequoia, introducing new Apple Intelligence features. Reddit experienced a significant outage, with over 150,000 users reporting issues. New Enterprise Associates (NEA) has raised more than $468 million for its Secondary Opportunity Fund. Meanwhile, OpenAI is reportedly in talks to close a new funding round at a valuation of over $100 billion.
Key takeaways:
- AI image-generating platform Midjourney is entering the hardware sector, with a new team based in San Francisco.
- Midjourney has hired Ahmad Abbas, an ex-Neuralink staffer and engineer of the Apple Vision Pro, hinting at the possible direction of their hardware pursuits.
- Despite ongoing lawsuits over its AI training approach, Midjourney continues to develop AI models for video and 3D generation, which may be related to their new hardware efforts.
- Midjourney's CEO, David Holz, has previous experience in hardware, having co-founded Leap Motion, a company that built motion-tracking peripherals.