$20,000 per month for PhD level AI?

👋 Good morning/evening (wherever you are). It’s Wednesday. There’s a lot of activity from the last 24 hours — and even the last hour.

The headline is not clickbait. The Information reported that OpenAI may be planning to charge up to $20,000 per month for specialized AI “agents”. Apparently, there will be tiers:

• “high-income knowledge worker” agent = $2,000 a month

• software developer agent = $10,000 a month

• OpenAI’s most expensive rumored agent, priced at the aforementioned $20,000-per-month tier, will be aimed at supporting “PhD-level research”. Wait a second…how much do real PhDs make? Ohhh I see what’s happening here…an AI PhD is different becomes it won’t take any vacations and absolutely loves to work 24/7.

Other big news: Salesforce announced the newest version of Agentforce, its digital labor platform for bringing trusted, autonomous AI agents into the flow of work. Just a day earlier, they launched AgentExchange (marketplace for Agentforce).

Here’s the quick hits:

• Google Shopping’s new AI tools

  Google Search now lets US mobile users describe a fashion item they have in mind, generates AI images, and suggests similar products available for purchase. FYI, this is not “new”, and Google mentioned virtually trying on clothes with an AI shopping feature back in June 2023.

• OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 AI model comes to more ChatGPT users

  According to their X account, “the rollout will take 1-3 days”.

• How Crunchbase AI Is Forecasting Unicorns With 95% Accuracy 

  AI-driven investing is going to be big. Picture this: what if AI was trained on strategies from famous hedge funds like Renaissance Technologies — that uses mathematical and statistical models to invest in securities, futures, and derivatives. If you want to learn more, I recommend reading about Jim Simons and his Medallion Fund.

The numbers:

• Ahead of a possible $4 billion IPO, CoreWeave’s founders already pocketed $488 million.

• Assured, a startup focused on automating insurance claims using AI, raised equity funding in a round valuing the company at about $1 Billion.

• AI Massage Startup Raises $83 Million, Brings Robots to Equinox.

  Yes, that’s the actual headline. Massage startup Aescape is raising money from investors including Valor Equity Partners and basketball player Kevin Love.

• OpenAI commits $50M in funding and tools to leading institutions.

• Sony Music makes their first AI investment, leading Vermillio’s $16M Series A funding round.

  Vermillio’s goal is to create an AI platform that securely licenses intellectual property (IP). One of its core products is TraceID, which provides protection and third-party attribution for artists. Through it, the company claims artists and rights holders can control their data and AI rights.

Thought starters:

• Superintellligence Strategy: Expert Vision

  In a policy paper published Wednesday, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and Center for AI Safety Director Dan Hendrycks said that the U.S. should not pursue a Manhattan Project-style push to develop AI systems with “superhuman” intelligence, also known as AGI.

Thanks for reading,

Eddie

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