Oracle's stock exploded 40% after revealing a $455B AI contract backlog and projections for $144B cloud revenue by 2030. The surge made Larry Ellison briefly the world's richest person—but can the company turn massive bookings into sustainable margins?
Publishers like Reddit and Yahoo launched a new licensing standard to charge AI companies for training data. The Really Simple Licensing protocol lets sites demand payment per crawl or per AI response. No major AI company has agreed to comply yet.
Runway just fired a shot across Hollywood's bow. Their new AI video generator, Gen-4, claims to do what others can't: create consistent characters and scenes that actually make sense.
The tool keeps characters looking like themselves across different shots - a neat trick that's harder than it sounds. Users just feed it a reference image and some instructions, and Gen-4 handles the rest. Want your protagonist in different lighting? Done. Need them walking through various locations? No problem.
But here's where things get sticky. Runway won't reveal where they got their training data, probably because they're already neck-deep in a lawsuit from artists who aren't thrilled about their work being used without permission. The company plays the "fair use" card, but the courts will have the final say.
Meanwhile, Runway's dancing all the way to the bank. They're reportedly seeking funding that would value them at $4 billion, with hopes of hitting $300 million in revenue this year. Impressive numbers for a company that might need to keep some lawyers on speed dial.
The real drama? Hollywood's watching this show with gritted teeth. A recent study suggests AI tools like Gen-4 could disrupt over 100,000 entertainment jobs by 2026. Those aren't exactly the kind of special effects the industry was hoping for.
Why this matters:
The AI video race just got serious - Runway's making AI that can finally keep track of who's who in a scene
Hollywood's about to learn if it's easier to fight AI or join it, as 75% of companies using AI have already cut jobs
Tech translator with German roots who fled to Silicon Valley chaos. Decodes startup noise from San Francisco. Launched implicator.ai to slice through AI's daily madness—crisp, clear, with Teutonic precision and deadly sarcasm.
AI startup Perplexity bids $34.5B for Google's Chrome—nearly double its own valuation—as federal judge prepares antitrust ruling. The timing isn't coincidental. Browser control becomes the new battleground in AI search competition.
While AI music rivals face billion-dollar lawsuits for copyright infringement, ElevenLabs took a different approach: they asked permission first. Their new music generator launched with licensing deals already signed.
Chinese startup Z.ai's new AI model costs 87% less than DeepSeek while running on half the chips. Built despite US trade restrictions, GLM-4.5 uses 'agentic' approach that breaks tasks into steps—potentially reshaping how AI works.
Chinese startup Moonshot AI released Kimi K2, an open-source model that matches GPT-4.1 performance while costing five times less. Silicon Valley's response? OpenAI delayed their planned open-source release hours after K2 launched.