AI in practice Archive

Dec 31, 2025

OpenAI is handing out stock-based compensation averaging $1.5 million per employee, about 34 times what major tech companies typically paid before going public. According to financial data shown to investors and reported by the Wall Street Journal, the company's roughly 4,000 employees are getting more than any tech startup has ever offered. That's also more than seven times what Google paid back in 2003.

Share-based compensation as a percentage of annual revenue

Company	Share of turnover
OpenAI	46,2 %
Palantir	32,6 %
Alphabet (Google)	14,6 %
Meta (Facebook)	5,9 %
Average (18 tech companies)	~6 %

Sources: Wall Street Journal, Equilar analysis. All figures refer to the year before each company's IPO, except OpenAI, which uses 2025 projections.

The generous pay is meant to keep OpenAI ahead in the AI race, but it's also pushing up losses. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has turned up the pressure by offering top employees packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars and poaching more than 20 OpenAI staffers. OpenAI expects its compensation costs to climb by $3 billion annually through 2030.

Comment Source: Wall Street Journal

Matthias Bastian

Dec 31, 2025

AI in practice

Chinese AI startups beat Silicon Valley to the public markets in a massive IPO wave

Matthias Bastian

Dec 31, 2025

Short News

Nvidia is reportedly in advanced negotiations to acquire Israeli AI start-up AI21 Labs, according to a report by Calcalist. The deal could be worth between two and three billion dollars. AI21 was valued at $1.4 billion during its last funding round in 2023, with both Google and Nvidia among its investors.

Similar to its recent Groq deal, Nvidia appears primarily interested in AI21's workforce. The company employs around 200 people, most of whom hold advanced degrees and have rare expertise in AI development. At the reported deal value, Nvidia would be paying roughly $10 to $15 million per employee.

AI21, based in Tel Aviv, was founded in 2017 by Professor Amnon Shashua, Professor Yoav Shoham, and Ori Goshen. The company builds large language models and offers software tools, including an agent builder. Its products target enterprise customers, with estimated annual revenue of around $50 million.

Comment Source: Calcalist

Matthias Bastian

Dec 31, 2025

Short News

Nvidia's China business is ramping up again. According to Reuters, the chip company is in talks with contract manufacturer TSMC to expand production of its H200 AI chips to meet surging demand from China. Chinese tech companies have ordered more than two million H200 chips for 2026, but Nvidia currently only has 700,000 units available.

Production at TSMC is set to begin in the second quarter of 2026, with Nvidia planning to sell the chips for around $27,000 each. ByteDance alone, TikTok's parent company, plans to spend around 100 billion yuan (about $14 billion) on Nvidia chips in 2026, according to the South China Morning Post.

The Trump administration recently cleared H200 chip exports to China with a 25 percent fee attached. However, China hasn't approved the imports yet. Officials there are still debating whether access to advanced foreign chips might slow down the country's domestic chip industry. One proposal under consideration would require every H200 order to include a certain percentage of chips made in China.

China is also working on a rule that would require domestic chip manufacturers to use at least 50 percent locally made equipment.

Comment Source: Reuters | South China Morning Post

Matthias Bastian

Dec 31, 2025

Short News

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has reportedly entered "founder mode." According to the Financial Times, Nadella has shaken up Microsoft's management to keep pace with Amazon, Google, and startups like Anthropic. "Satya is trying to demonstrate a sense of urgency," one executive said. "The goal is to get out of some of the structures that exist and make the route to him easier."

Nadella has brought in several new executives, including former Meta technology chief Jay Parikh. Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google Deepmind, now leads Microsoft's in-house AI development with his own budget and salary structure. The move has created internal friction, but Microsoft is accepting that to stay competitive for AI talent.

Microsoft remains strong overall, especially thanks to its Azure cloud AI services, but faces tough challenges ahead. The company will lose exclusive rights to OpenAI's research and models in the early 2030s, and OpenAI is no longer required to use Microsoft's data centers. Meanwhile, Copilot's 150 million users trail Google's Gemini (650 million) and ChatGPT (800 million). Nadella has reportedly already stepped in to influence development directly.

Comment Source: Financial Times

Matthias Bastian

Dec 31, 2025

Short News

Elon Musk's xAI keeps growing its data center footprint. According to Musk and The Information, the AI company has snapped up a warehouse in Southaven, Mississippi, where it plans to build a third massive data center. Construction is set to begin in 2026. The new facility sits right next to xAI's existing Colossus 2 data center in Memphis. Musk says the expansion will push xAI's total computing power to nearly two gigawatts.

The new data center's name takes a jab at Microsoft. | Screenshot via X

The new data center goes by "Macrohardrr," a not-so-subtle dig at Microsoft. The name reflects Musk's ambition to build xAI into an AI software company that can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft. Back in early December, Musk teased the move on X, posting "MACROHARDER coming soon" in response to a satellite image showing the word "Macrohard" painted on the roof of Colossus 2.

Comment Source: The Information | Musk via xAI

Matthias Bastian

Dec 31, 2025

Update

AI in practice

Meta pays $3 billion for Manus AI after startup cut all Chinese ties to clear regulatory hurdles

Meta is buying AI agent startup Manus AI, a system built on competitor models. The deal shows how far the company has fallen behind on AI agents despite billions in spending. Still, the acquisition could be a smart shortcut.

Read full article

Comment

Matthias Bastian

Dec 31, 2025

AI in practice

China's semiconductor independence push is turning US export controls into a domestic boom

China is forcing chipmakers to use at least 50 percent domestic equipment in new factories. The undocumented rule is Beijing’s answer to US export restrictions; and a major step toward breaking the country’s dependence on Western technology.

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Comment

Matthias Bastian

Dec 29, 2025

Short News

If you use a chatbot and an Urban browser extension, you might want to rethink that combination. Security researchers at Koi have found that eight browser extensions with more than eight million users combined are secretly harvesting AI conversations and potentially selling them to third parties.

Extension	Chrome	Edge
Urban VPN Proxy	6,000,000	1,323,622
1ClickVPN Proxy	600,000	36,459
Urban Browser Guard	40,000	12,624
Urban Ad Blocker	10,000	6,476

The extensions intercept conversations with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok, and Meta AI. Even when the VPN is switched off, data collection continues in the background. Uninstalling the extension is the only way to stop it.

According to Koi, the data collection feature was quietly added in July 2025 through an automatic update. The data goes to Urban VPN's servers, and the privacy policy states that browsing data is shared with affiliate BiScience and that AI prompts are used for marketing analytics.

But the provider tells a different story in the Chrome Web Store, claiming data is not sold to third parties. Adding to the confusion, "Featured" badges from Google and Microsoft give users a false sense of security. Urban Ad Blocker for Edge is the only extension without a Featured badge.

Comment Source: Koi

Matthias Bastian

Dec 28, 2025

Short News

In case there was any doubt that Nvidia's Groq deal is anything but a takeover in disguise: according to Axios, roughly 90 percent of the workforce—including CEO Jonathan Ross and President Sunny Madra—is moving to Nvidia. Groq will continue as an independent company under new CEO Simon Edwards.

Though officially a non-exclusive license agreement worth around $20 billion, employees and shareholders are walking away with significant payouts. Staff moving to Nvidia get cash for vested shares and Nvidia stock for unvested ones; even those at Groq for less than a year will have their vesting cliff waived for immediate liquidity. Shareholders receive about 85 percent upfront, another 10 percent in mid-2026, and the rest by year's end.

Since 2016, Groq has raised around $3.3 billion from investors including Blackrock, Samsung, and Social Capital. They're now seeing substantial returns, as the deal pushed the startup's valuation from $7 billion to roughly $20 billion. For a more in-depth look at why Nvidia made this move, see my analysis.

Comment Source: Axios