The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending March 7, 2025, closed at 4,106.42 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index dipped –1.37% (or -56.96 basis points). Seventeen RDWI members gained value last week from 0.08% (Stellantis NV) to 12.51% (Volkswagen AG). Eight RDWI members lost value the previous week from -0.25%…
SoftBank reportedly wrapping up $40B investment in OpenAI
Japanese conglomerate SoftBank is reportedly nearing a deal to invest $40 billion in OpenAI. This investment, coupled with a separate $500 billion joint venture called “Stargate” to build advanced AI infrastructure in the U.S., provides fresh evidence that the AI arms race is showing no signs of slowing down, even as DeepSeek spooked investors in…
25 landmark R&D-heavy tech funding rounds of 2024
[Updated December 18, 2024 with new details on Databricks] In 2024, AI-focused startups continued to dominate the funding landscape with industry leaders like OpenAI ($6.6B), xAI ($6B), and Anthropic ($4B) leading the pack. Adding to this trend, MLflow and data lakehouse pioneer Databricks recently secured a $10 billion funding round that was primarily equity-based, at…
This week in AI research: Amazon doubles Anthropic stake to $8B as industry debates scaling limits
Amazon recently doubled down on its Anthropic investment with an additional $4 billion, while NVIDIA reported another quarter of remarkable growth with sales hitting $35.1 billion. Meanwhile, a debate emerged at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit about whether AI development is hitting a scaling wall, with industry leaders like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Scale AI’s Alexandr…
This week in AI research: OpenAI’s valuation hits $150B as it unveils o1 model family
After nearly a year of rumors surrounding OpenAI’s “Q*” (later “Strawberry“) project and its potential for advanced reasoning, the company has finally unveiled its new “o1” AI models that mirror humans’ ability to think before speaking. These models allocate more processing power to reasoning before generating output, significantly improving accuracy on complex tasks across science,…
OpenAI unveils ‘o1,’ a new AI model family that ‘thinks’ before responding
After a wave of media attention about rumored OpenAI models codenamed Strawberry and Orion, OpenAI has announced the launch of OpenAI o1, a new series of AI models designed to handle complex problems requiring advanced reasoning. According to an announcement from the company, the model family represents a significant leap forward from previous models in…
This week in AI: Musk unveils world’s largest AI cluster, OpenAI eyes premium subscriptions
From accelerating drug discovery to automating patent searches, AI is popping up in a growing number of R&D contexts. Two of the top stories this week had a direct NVIDIA connection — first, Elon Musk’s announced what he terms the world’s largest GPU cluster, featuring 100,000 of its H100 GPUs, designed to power his new…
Los Alamos National Laboratory and OpenAI to test genAI-based biological threats
Los Alamos National Laboratory and OpenAI are joining forces to conduct the world’s first real-world evaluation of AI’s potential role in biological threats. The partnership between OpenAI and Los Alamos goes beyond previous text-based assessments of AI in biological contexts. OpenAI highlighted two aspects that set this research apart, noting the “research will involve real…
Nvidia surges to $3 trillion; Apple’s AI Rollout Hits EU snag in this week’s R&D Power Index
The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending June 21, 2024, closed at 3,785.63 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was up 0.38% (or 14.33 basis points). Eighteen RDWI members gained value last week from 0.44% (Alibaba) to 3.52% (Cisco). Seven RDWI members lost value the previous week from -0.02% (Volkswagen…