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This Week in AI: OpenAI gains an invaluable infrastructure advantage | TechCrunch

Jan 22, 2025 - techcrunch.com
OpenAI has announced the Stargate Project, a joint venture with SoftBank, Oracle, and others to build AI infrastructure in the U.S., potentially attracting up to $500 billion in funding over four years. This initiative could solidify OpenAI's dominance in the AI sector, as it already boasts 300 million weekly active users and over 1 million paying business customers. While competitors like Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI are making strides with partnerships and expansions, Stargate's scale and backing may be difficult to match. The first data center has already begun construction in Abilene, Texas, with an initial investment of $100 billion.

In other AI news, Microsoft is no longer the exclusive provider of data center infrastructure for OpenAI, now holding only a "right of first refusal." Perplexity has launched an API service called Sonar, and the Pentagon is using AI to enhance threat assessment. Microsoft introduced AI tools MatterGen and MatterSim for material design, while Google released an improved version of its reasoning model, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental. Additionally, the GameFactory project demonstrates the potential to generate interactive simulations by training models on Minecraft videos.

Key takeaways:

  • OpenAI announced the Stargate Project, a joint venture with SoftBank, Oracle, and others, aiming to build AI infrastructure in the U.S. with potential funding of up to $500 billion.
  • Microsoft is no longer the exclusive provider of data center infrastructure for OpenAI, now holding only a "right of first refusal."
  • Google released a new version of its experimental reasoning model, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, which performs better on math, science, and multimodal reasoning benchmarks.
  • GameFactory, an AI project, demonstrates the potential to generate interactive simulations by training a model on Minecraft videos and extending it to different domains.
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