Welcome to the newest edition of ID Tech’s AI update. Here’s the latest big news on the shifting landscape of AI and identity technology:
Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei told CCP President Xi Jinping that China’s lack of access to AI chips had eased, according to state media. Ren was one of a small handful of tech executives invited to speak with Xi in a meeting about which reporting has been tightly controlled. Ren suggested that there is now less worry about a lack of “core and soul”, terms that historically refer to semiconductors and operating systems in the context of China’s tech sector.
Figure is reportedly in talks to raise $1.5 billion at a valuation of $39.5 billion. The robotics startup recently announced the termination of a partnership with OpenAI, and revealed that it had developed its own AI software for robots enabling them to perform complex actions in collaboration with other robots, even when presented with situations they haven’t encountered before, like putting away groceries.
AheadComputing has raised $21.5 million in seed funding. The young startup is being led by former Intel engineers and executives, and is focused on building AI computing tech based on “RISC-V” open source architecture. The funding round was led by Eclipse Ventures and featured Maverick Capital, Fundomo, and EPIQ Capital Group.
Mira Murati has officially launched her own AI startup after departing her position as OpenAI’s CTO last September. Her new Thinking Machines Lab will be focused on open source AI research, with plans to publish papers and code that will foster human-AI collaboration. John Schulman, an OpenAI co-founder, is the startup’s Chief Scientist, while Murati is CEO.
Arm is planning to launch its own AI chip, which will target large-scale datacenters. This is a significant strategic shift for a major player that has so far stuck to designing and licensing chip IP, and it already has its first big customer in Meta. Arm plans to have a prototype ready this spring and to enter mass production in the fall of this year.
STMicroelectronics has launched a photonics chip aimed at data centers, developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services. The PIC100 chip is designed to let customers integrate multiple complex components while offering a “higher speed, higher bandwidth, and a more energy-efficient solution,” according to an executive. It will support a range of workloads including AI.
Microsoft has unveiled a new chip that it says can make quantum computing viable within years rather than decades. The Majorana 1 chip somehow leverages a “new state of matter“, which Microsoft calls a “topoconductor”, that is neither solid, liquid, nor gas to enable more stable and scalable quantum computing. It could dramatically speed up complex AI processes.
The chatbot’s take: Thanks for clearing that up, Chat…
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February 21, 2025 – by Alex Perala
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