WSJ made a 3-minute AI video

👋 Good morning/evening (wherever you are). It’s Wednesday.

The Wall Street Journal just dropped an AI video.

It’s a quick, solid breakdown of Google Veo 2 (and 3) and Runway Gen-4.

Apparently they generated 1000 video clips before selecting the final shots, and the estimated cost to produce the video was ~$1,000.

Watch the full 7-minute clip (3 min video + BTS). As usual, I posted it on my LinkedIn.

OK let’s keep going ↓

Here’s what you should know:

• Netflix’s Reed Hastings appointed to Anthropic's board of directors

  Hastings brings extensive experience from founding and scaling Netflix into a global entertainment powerhouse, along with his service on the boards of Facebook, Microsoft, and Bloomberg.

• Microsoft is testing Copilot for gaming

  In this early version, beta testers can ask Copilot about any games, including the game they’re currently playing, or ask for help if they get stuck. It can also answer questions about their Xbox activity, like play history and achievements, or even provide recommendations of what to play next.

• Odyssey’s new AI model lets you watch and interact (in real-time)

  On a long enough time horizon, this becomes the world simulator, where pixels and actions look and feel indistinguishable from reality.

• Google Photos just got an upgrade with new AI tools

  Today, more than 1.5 billion people use Google Photos each month, with over 9 trillion total photos and videos stored.

• AMD acquires Enosemi

  Enosemi will help AMD scale photonics and co-packaged optics development for next-gen AI systems.

• DeepSeek updates its R1 reasoning AI model

  It performs nearly on par with o3 (High) on the LiveCodeBench benchmark.

• Opera reveals a new browser, called Opera Neon

  An agentic browser designed to understand your intent, assist with tasks, and take actions.

The numbers:

• Saudi Arabia’s Humain plans to launch a $10B VC fund and build $77B in AI infrastructure, aiming to process 7% of global AI workloads by 2030.

• Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant company, raised $600M in a deal valuing the company at $9B.

• Hex raised $70M to scale its AI data platform, used by the NBA and others to turn billions of data points into smarter decisions.

• Chalk, an AI infrastructure startup, raised $50M in a Series A round that values the company at $500M.

• Rillet raised $25M to scale its AI-native ERP platform, which integrates with tools like Salesforce, Stripe, and Rippling.

• Infinity Constellation, an AI-native Holdco, raised $17M in new funding.

• Creatify raised $15.5M to scale its AI video ad platform, now used by 1M+ users and generating $9M ARR in just 18 months.

• Context raised $11M to build a secure AI-native office suite for working with documents, data, and presentations.

• Neuron Factory raised $6M to bring AI to the construction industry.

• Bito raised $5.7M to scale its AI code review platform.

• Frinks AI raised $5.4M to power AI in Indian manufacturing.

• Clear Current raised $4M+ for its virtual AI energy manager for enterprises.

Thought starters:

• Brian Grazer Says AI Won’t Replace Hollywood Writers, At Least For Now

• Jeffrey Katzenberg Says AI Is Not the End of Hollywood

A couple more updates for you 👇

Google announced SignGemma (model for translating sign language into spoken text):

No official deal has been signed (yet)…but Grok x Telegram may be coming soon.

Meme of the day:

Thanks for reading,

Eddie

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