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0. Data and calendar
All values as of 6 AM ET / 3 AM PT, other than S&P500 close (4 PM ET / 1 PM PT).
All times are ET.
1. IBM, Meta launch pro-open source AI Alliance, in partnership with 50 others
Goals include: to āresponsibly advance the ecosystem of open foundation models,ā ādevelop and deploy benchmarks and evaluation standards,ā and āfoster a vibrant AI hardware accelerator ecosystem.
Group includes AMD, Cerebras, Dell, Hugging Face, Intel, Oracle, and Stability AI.
Our view: NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Anthropic not being included in this is very telling
Leaders love closed-source, number 2's love open-source. If you are the dominant leader in a category, being closed-source helps you maximize your profits.
If you are not the leader, and especially if the software in question is not your business model (i.e. Meta's case), open source is a way to gather developer and user support around your platform, and hopefully take away market share from the leader.
You see this very clearly with iOS vs. Android.
2. Mistral AI in final stages of raising $482M at ~$2B valuation from a16z
ā¬325M in equity, with ā¬200M from a16z.
ā¬120M in convertible debt from NVIDIA and Salesforce.
Each of the 3 co-founders is selling ā¬1M+ in secondary.
Company founded in 2023.
Mistral's open-source 7B LLM, and its derivative Zephyr 7B, are the best 7B foundational models today
LEV Foundation was co-founded by Dr. Aubrey de Grey, one of the early pioneers in the longevity field.
Their 2 main projects are Robust Mouse Rejuvenation and Transplants on Demand.
Your donation can literally save your life, or the life of your closed ones. - Donate to the LEV Foundation.
*Sponsored.
