Top stories today:

1. Grok 1.5 Vision (in preview) performs comparably to GPT-4V: xAI
2. GPT-4 Turbo's April update available on ChatGPT Plus
3. Global smartphone shipments +8% YoY to 289M in Q1
4. Samsung to get $6.4B in grants, but no loans, from Chips Act
5. 29% of economists expect recession in next 12 months: survey

0. Data and calendar

1. Grok 1.5 Vision (in preview) performs comparably to GPT-4V, says xAI

• “Available soon to our early testers and existing Grok users.”

• “In the coming months, we anticipate [making] significant improvements” in multimodal understanding and generation capabilities.

• Our view: xAI is 6-12 months behind OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

  • But never bet against Elon.

2. GPT-4 Turbo's April update available on ChatGPT Plus, taking back #1 position on from Claude 3 Opus

• API had been updated on Tue.

  • Statistically insignificant difference between them.

  • Could be a sign that LLM quality is plateauing with current technology.

• 100s of Fortune 500 company execs have been pitched on ChatGPT Enterprise by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, relatedly.

4. Global smartphone shipments +8% YoY to 289M in Q1, as Samsung takes back #1 position from Apple

• Apple still leads in profitability, taking in ~80% of the industry’s profits, thanks to its high prices and pricing power.

Apple’s decline is led by falling sales in China

5. Samsung to get $6.4B in grants, but no loans, from Chips Act

Bloomberg brings more details on the news revealed last week:

• $40B+ in investments.

• 2 plants: one to start production in 2016, the other in 2017.

• Goal to mass produce 2nm and 4nm logic chips.

6. 29% of economists expect recession in next 12 months: survey

Down from a local peak of 63% in Oct. 2022, and the lowest level since Apr. 2022’s 28%:

7. Equity grant refresh issued to 47% of U.S. startup employees by Year 2, 70% by Year 4: Carta

8. Interesting videos, posts, and memes

9. Other headlines

AI

• OpenAI announces Japan office, along with GPT-4 tailored for Japanese.

• iOS 18 AI features to work entirely on device: Mark Gurman.

• South Korea to host 2nd AI Safety Summit on May 21-22, after UK’s.

• Adobe’s Firefly accused of being trained on Midjourney’s images.

• Google publishes infinite context window paper.

• Meta testing AI-powered search bar in Instagram.

Tech

• Tesla lays off 10%+ of global workforce, eliminating 14K+ people.

• Rubrik to raise as much as $713M in IPO.

• Airchat, Naval’s social app built around talk, launches to public.

• M4 Macs estimated launch dates revealed.

• Stubhub prepping summer IPO, previous valuation $16.5B.

• Google Pixel 9 series to get emergency sat connectivity, new modem.

• Windows 11 testing ads on Start menu.

Tech & law

• WhatsApp lowers minimum age in Europe from 16 to 13.

• Google testing not linking to CA news websites after proposed bill.

• Fortnite maker Epic urges judge to force Google Play Store to open up.

Biotech

• NeuroSense raising $4.5M to tackle ALS.

Crypto

• Hong Kong gives initial approvals for BTC, ETH ETFs.

• Solana releases update to ease congestion caused by memecoin frenzy.

• Uniswap hikes swap fee from 0.15% to 0.25% on trades through interface.

• Bitcoin halvening (from 6.5 to 3.25 BTC/10 min.) expected on ~Sat.

• Berachain increases funding round to $100M, at $1B+ valuation.

U.S. politics

• Trump’s NY criminal trial kicks off today at 9:30 AM ET with jury selection.

• Homicides -20% YTD in 133 U.S. cities.

World

• Israeli war cabinet wants to hit back on Iran, but how/when unclear.

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