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And again, Elon Musk...

And again, Elon Musk...
@gianniandrews via midjourney

The billion-dollar argument: Musk's bid challenges Altman's profit motive

A bidding consortium led by Elon Musk has made an unsolicited $97.4 billion offer to acquire the non-profit arm OpenAI, which calls into question CEO Sam Altman's plans to turn OpenAI into a for-profit company.

The offer, made by Musk's attorney Marc Toberoff, comes at a bad time for OpenAI and could derail one of the most significant IT infrastructure projects in the US: OpenAI chief Altman is pushing his multibillion-dollar "Stargate" vision. Up to $500 billion will be invested in the US AI infrastructure, primarily in constructing several new data centers. Musk claims that the investors - OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle - don't have the money to complete the project, sparking an online debate about Trump's promise.

Musk's bold takeover bid is an indirect attempt to drive a wedge into the project. The world's richest man and former co-founder of OpenAI argues that the company has strayed from its original open-source mission. Back then, security was paramount, Musk proclaims. "It's time for OpenAI to become the open source, safety-first force it once was," he said.

But Altman quickly dismissed the suggestion in a tweet on X, formerly Twitter, ironically offering to buy Twitter for $9.74 billion - moving the decimal point on Musk's offer - emphasizing that OpenAI’s current structure prevents any company from taking control. In a response, Musk called Altman a “swindler” and a “scam Altman”.

Why this matters:

  • The high-stakes proposal comes amid an unfolding legal and public relations battle between Musk and Altman. Musk accuses the company of betraying its nonprofit roots in favor of profit.
  • Notably, the offer is well below OpenAI's recent valuations of between $157 billion and $300 billion. However, this should be enough to unsettle the future of the AI giant further.
  • The competition highlights a fundamental realignment of the AI industry - away from hype-driven investments and toward a focus on value creation and market leadership - and could potentially redefine which players will dominate the sector.

Read on, my dear:

Today's AI Photo

@infuio via midjourney
@infuio via midjourney
Prompt:
2 rich old ladies wearing fancy freaky pink batwoman costumes, jumpsuites with yellow bat logo on the chest, sitting at the back of an american retro car, looking in camere, glance, cosplay, highly detailed, super cinnematic, very realistic quality

AI summit in Paris: Why French AI company Mistral stands out


Once celebrated for its impressive "open-weight" models and the rapid raising of $1 billion in investment capital, Mistral now faces stiff competition from American giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic and Chinese rival DeepSeek.

With its AI assistant Le Chat and strategic partnerships with France Travail, Veolia, Stellantis, and European defense contractor Helsing, the startup is now focusing on enterprise solutions.

CEO Arthur Mensch emphasized the shift from academic research to practical, customized applications that increase productivity. French President Macron publicly endorsed Mistral and called for support for a European champion.

Why this matters:

  • Mistral is developing “vision-language-action” models with Helsing to revolutionize the defense sector.
  • Mistral is one of the few successful AI companies in Europe. It represents Europe's quest for independence, innovation, and global impact on AI.

Read on, my dear:

The best productivity apps for February:

  • Midjourney : Image generator for lifelike images in perfect precision. Perfect for creatives, designers and marketers.
  • SpinachAl: Helps to structure meetings and supports over 100 languages. Integrates with Notion, HubSpot, Slack, and other CRMs.
  • Eleven Labs: Converts text to audio. Great for advertising, podcasts, audio, and video. Converts voice to other languages.
  • Cursor: AL-based code editor that can fix errors, autocomplete, and generate code.
  • Gamma: Create engaging presentations in seconds, can also turn prompts and documents into web pages.

AI and Technology News

Google AI chief: DeepSeek development costs 'exaggerated'

Demis Hassabis says the less than $6 million in development costs claimed by DeepSeek are "exaggerated. He believes that DeepSeek only reported the cost of the final training phase and not the total cost. DeepSeek does not change the economics of AI development.

France bets on nuclear power for AI

President Macron has announced that one gigawatt of nuclear energy will be provided for a new AI data center that will compete with major projects in the US. This initiative is part of a larger effort to strengthen France's position in the global AI race.

OpenAI is close to completing its first custom chip design

The San Francisco-based company wants to use it to reduce its dependence on Nvidia. TMC will manufacture the chip in Taiwan and will be in mass production by 2026.

BBC: AI chatbots distort and mislead on current affairs

A study by the BBC has found that leading AI chatbots often provide misleading and inaccurate information on current affairs. Many responses from ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Perplexity were found to be problematic, including errors about political figures and misrepresentation of facts.

Meta cuts jobs to hire new AI talent

CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to invest hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure.

Distillation: How low-cost AI models are shaking up the industry

In artificial intelligence, distillation refers to a method by which smaller, less expensive models can achieve nearly the same performance as expensive, sophisticated AI systems. In this process, a compact model learns from a larger model’s results without going through the elaborate training process from scratch.

The technique has been around for a while, but the Chinese company DeepSeek has perfected it to the point where it challenges the business models of tech giants like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. While they invest billions in ever more powerful AI systems, DeepSeek can develop similarly good models in less time and at a fraction of the cost through distillation.

This raises an important question: Is it worthwhile to be at the forefront of AI development when cheaper copycats offer nearly equivalent products? There is growing concern in the industry that distillation will further depress prices and make it harder to justify the high investment in new models.

Some companies are already considering how to better protect their AI models to make distillation more difficult. However, open source models and new players like DeepSeek are changing the rules of the game - and could challenge the dominance of the big AI companies.

Read on, my dear: