OpenAI is pushing to get its AI into large companies faster through sales, partnerships, and capital. A 10-billion-dollar joint venture and a new deployment arm show where the real challenge lies: getting the technology integrated into actual company workflows.
Meta has signed a contract worth up to $27 billion with Dutch cloud provider Nebius for AI infrastructure. The deal runs for five years and includes $12 billion for dedicated capacity across multiple locations and up to $15 billion for additional available computing power, according to CNBC.
Nebius says it will operate one of the first major installations of Nvidia's latest AI chips, called Vera Rubin. Nebius founder and CEO Arkady Volozh described the deal as an expansion of the company's existing partnership with Meta, aimed at accelerating the growth of its AI cloud business. Nebius shares jumped 14 percent in pre-market trading after the announcement.
Last November, Meta announced plans to invest up to $600 billion in AI technology, infrastructure, and workforce expansion through 2028. But the high cost of AI infrastructure is reportedly pushing the company to cut back on personnel. So far, Meta hasn't seen concrete results from these investments; the AI market is currently split between Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, with Meta and xAI falling behind after early successes.
China's second-largest chip manufacturer, Hua Hong Group, has developed advanced manufacturing technologies for AI chips, according to Reuters. Subsidiary Huali Microelectronics is preparing 7nm chip production at its Shanghai factory, which would make Hua Hong the second Chinese manufacturer with this capability after SMIC. Three people familiar with the matter say Chinese tech giant Huawei is collaborating with Hua Hong on the 7nm technology.
Research began last year with support from domestic suppliers, including Huawei-affiliated SiCarrier. Huali plans an initial capacity of several thousand wafers per month by year's end. Chinese chip designer Biren, on a US restricted list since 2023 and cut off from TSMC, is already using Huali's 7nm line for initial prototypes.
Beijing is urging domestic companies to buy Chinese-made technology—particularly for AI—as it pushes for technological independence. The effort is driven by US restrictions on Nvidia chip purchases and China's reliance on a core AI technology controlled by a Western rival. But the gap remains significant: Bytedance reportedly just bought around 500 Nvidia Blackwell systems.
An Australian AI consultant used ChatGPT, AlphaFold, and Grok to find a possible treatment for his dog Rosie’s incurable cancer. The story went viral after high-profile AI executives like OpenAI’s Greg Brockman and Deepmind’s Demis Hassabis shared it as proof of what AI can already do.
Bytedance planned to launch its AI video model Seedance 2.0 globally in mid-March. That’s not happening, because Hollywood’s biggest studios have collectively put the brakes on the rollout. The backlash is also a sign of just how convincing AI-generated video has become.
The AI agent hype around OpenClaw has hit China hard. At least seven local governments rolled out funding programs within days, SCMP reports. The sheer pace suggests Beijing sees AI agents built on OpenClaw and similar frameworks as a potential driver for economic growth.
Hefei's tech district in Anhui province is offering up to 1.4 million dollars in subsidies for housing, offices, and computing power, partly to promote "one-person companies" where a single founder works with AI agents as employees. Shenzhen matched with up to 1.4 million dollars, Wuxi with around 700,000 dollars plus computing resources, Changshu with roughly 830,000 dollars, and Changzhou with about 700,000 dollars plus an extra 280,000 dollars for computing power. Nanjing is providing free office space and computing resources.
"Having AI work for [users], taking care of tasks on their behalf, offers an experience that goes beyond mere talk surrounding the technology," says Li Zhi, head of the Intelligent Institute at Analysys International. "It has tapped into a social sentiment and vision of productivity, ultimately fueling a nationwide craze that has swept up everyone, from tech geeks to ordinary users."
Hume AI has open-sourced TADA, an AI system for speech generation that processes text and audio in sync. Unlike previous systems that generate significantly more audio frames per text token, TADA maps exactly one audio signal to each text token. The result, according to Hume AI: TADA is over five times faster than comparable systems and produced zero transcription hallucinations—no made-up or skipped words compared to the source text—across tests with more than 1,000 samples. In human evaluations, the system scored 3.78 out of 5 for naturalness.
Hume AI says TADA is compact enough to run on smartphones, though longer texts can cause the voice to occasionally drift. The system comes in two sizes—1B and 3B parameters—both based on Llama. The smaller model supports English, while the 3B version covers seven additional languages. All code and models are available on GitHub and Hugging Face under the MIT license, and the full technical details can be found in the paper.
