Trump signs sweeping “AI Action Plan” and “anti‑woke” order. The plan emphasises “beating China” and loosening regulations so data centers and chip factories can be built more quickly. Trump also signed an “anti‑woke” executive order that bars AI vendors from receiving federal contracts if their models include diversity or equity‑related content. Yikes. AI is the new history book, the new Wikipedia. Imagine if all our content came from the same oracle. To paraphrase George Orwell: he who controls AI, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.
OpenAI and Oracle scale back the $500 billion Stargate project from 30 GW to 4.5 GW. Because Softbank bailed, they’re now only going to generate 4.5 gigawatts of. power from the new plants. There’s not going to be a big press conference with the president and cover stories about this. Even so, the new facilities will use more than two million chips (wire that money directly to Nvidia). There was a lot of speculation in the ancient days of January, 2025, that this OpenAI-Softbank-Oracle deal was a publicity stunt. Six months later, critics were wrong. It i 15% true.
xAI seeks up to $12 billion in debt to buy Nvidia chips Elon Musk’s AI company xAI is working with Valor Equity Partners to raise as much as $12 billion in debt to acquire Nvidia GB200 and GB300 chips for training Grok. According to the Wall Street Journal, lenders want repayment within three years and may cap borrowing to limit risk. Musk said xAI is building multiple superclusters using more than 230,000 GPUs and will soon launch another with 550,000 chips. Nvidia is going to get a significant chunk of that ten billion.
Gixel Emerges from stealth with €5 million seed round. Their design for AR glasses uses curved lenses, enabling a slim, lightweight form factor suitable for everyday wear. The optics engine delivers variable focal planes, allowing virtual objects to appear at correct depths and fostering natural eye focus dynamics. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, Gixel closed an oversubscribed €5 million seed round, led by Oculus VR co‑founder Brendan Iribe and backed by former 20th Century Fox/RED futurist Ted Schilowitz, the FlixBus founders (Jochen Engert, Daniel Kraus, André Schwämmlein), Germany’s federal innovation agency SPRIND, and early‑stage VC firm LEA Partners. The funds will support the industrialization of Gixel’s curved‑lens optical engine, development of developer kits, and groundwork for a Series A round in the coming year.
UC Riverside researchers, in collaboration with Google scientists, have developed an AI model capable of detecting deepfakes. Unlike earlier detectors, their new UNITE software identifies inconsistencies in backgrounds, motion patterns, and subtle visual artifacts. Built on a transformer architecture and leveraging a novel “attention-diversity loss,” it avoids focusing solely on faces by spreading attention across multiple regions. While still in development, it holds promise for integration into social media, fact-checking, and newsroom workflows, helping curb the spread of sophisticated video misinformation and AI slop in general.
Adobe Firefly is about to make its biggest leap in AI video yet with a new model and Veo 3 integration Adobe has just released Firefly Video Model 1.9, a major upgrade that significantly boosts realism and storytelling in AI-generated videos, available now via its Web App. This update enables creators to produce more dynamic natural and urban environments, including detailed animal motion, weather effects, and 2D/3D animation. Firefly also now supports Veo 3, Luma, Runway, and Topaz integrations. Notably, the beta “Generate Sound Effects” feature lets users craft custom audio via text prompts or voice input. The model also introduces new controls: reference-video input for composition transfer, style presets (like claymation and anime), and keyframe cropping tools.
Disney and Netflix are Quietly Using Runway’s AI Video Generators. If you recall, Runway is the AI start up that’s raised $450 Million and was valued at $3B. They already have a deal with Lionsgate. Netflix has already used Runway’s tools to produce a VFX scene in its sci‑fi series The Eternaut, highlighting savings in both time and cost. While Disney is reportedly testing the same technology, neither company has issued formal announcements.
Animal Company becomes one of the highest‑grossing Meta Quest games. The social VR game where players use Gorilla Tag‑like locomotion with their arms in a horror‑mystery setting, is a bona-fide bestseller with more than 500,000 daily active users and about one billion views on TikTok. Its average daily playtime is 100 minutes and 45 percent of users return after 28 days. Since monetization began in April, paying users have increased ninefold.
This column is also a podcast hosted by its author, Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive, and founding Red Camera executive, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Bilawal Sidhu, Ex-Google PM (XR, maps) and now leading creative voice at the intersection of Generative of AI and media. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.
What We’re Reading
RP1 says that metaverse needs its own browser (Dean Takahashi/GamesBeat)
