OpenAI is openai for business

OpenAI nears $100B round: The highest-profile TWiST 500 company of them all, in many respects, is reportedly nearly a new funding round that will bring in around $100 billion, the kind of record-smashing deal sure to make the #1 story spot in all of your favorite tech newsletters. (The expected total was closer to $830 billion, so they even smashed their own record.) Pre-money value will stay at around $730 billion, according to Bloomberg. Where will all this cash — from investors including Amazon, SoftBank, Nvidia, and Microsoft — go? Massive AI infrastructure build-out, including fresh data centers, more cloud and chip partnerships, R&D on the next generation of Codex, ChatGPT, and Sora. The usual stuff.

Ring founder takes apology tour: Ring’s memorable Super Bowl ad, promoting their ability to surveil your neighborhood (presumably for lost dogs), didn’t quite work out the way the company planned, and made a lot of doorbell camera owners suspicious of who was really watching their stoop footage. The backlash has been loud enough to motivate Ring founder and inventor Jamie Siminoff to respond with a number of media appearances. As expected, he clarified that the company’s primary interest remains helping homeowners monitor their own property, that they do not store footage from anyone who doesn’t have a Ring subscription, and that the “Search Party” feature — the one advertised during the Super Bowl — remains exclusively opt-in. Will it be enough to salvage the reputation of the iconic Amazon-owned brand?

Reddit tests AI shopping feature: The beloved community/aggregation site announced an experimental new AI search tool that will be exclusive to a small group of beta users. Their search results will include “interactive product carousels,” including images, pricing, and direct links, should they feel like making a purchase. The items will be selected by AI based on recommendations from the community (so long as they align with Reddit’s shopping and advertising partners, of course). Reddit launched custom ads based on a users’ search data and interests last year, and keeps looking for new and innovative ways to get you to stop reading comments and make some impulse buys.

Taalas: The Canadian startup produces custom chips designed to power specific AI models. The process involves printing portions of the models themselves on to silicon, which then gives the finished chip an additional speed advantage for those models. As with Groq’s, Taalas chips are best suited to AI inference, the portion of the process in which the AI model responds to user queries and produces outputs. Their new $169 million round brings the company to $219 million in total funding so far.

Ownwell: Based right here in beautiful Austin, Texas — where complaining about property taxes is a favorite local pastime — Ownwell uses AI to help homeowners navigate the complex property tax appeals process, analyzing “millions of local records” to help users make the strongest-possible case to the local municipal authorities. Co-founder and CEO Colton Pace tells Crunchbase the company’s goal is to give everyone access to the kinds of customized loopholes and money-saving Best Practices that were once only available to people with full time wealth or estate managers. Ownwell secured a new $50 million funding round, including $30 million in equity and $20 million in debt.

Freeform: The startup created GoldenEye, a unique system for 3D printing metal components by fusing them together from powders via a collective of 18 lasers. They’ve raised a $67 million Series B, which Freeform will put toward the next generation of GoldenEye, named Skyfall. (We appreciate a laser company making Bond references, that’s clever.) CEO and co-founder Erik Palitsch came up with the idea for GoldenEye while developing rocket engines for SpaceX, and if that sort of pedigree doesn’t give you some confidence in his know-how, you’re reading the wrong newsletter.

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