Good morning and welcome back to another edition of The AI Rundown by Lightscape Partners.

• Databricks has become one of the most valuable private AI companies, topping a $100 billion valuation in a new funding round. With annualized revenue climbing past $3.7 billion and steady cash flow, the company is positioning itself as a likely IPO candidate while advancing its Lakehouse platform and AI agent development.

• Nvidia is preparing a China-specific Blackwell chip, the B30A, designed to deliver better price-performance than the restricted H20 while staying under U.S. export thresholds. Sampling could begin as soon as next month, reflecting Nvidia’s determination to defend its China market share amid tightening policy scrutiny.

• OpenAI staff may soon cash out in a $6 billion secondary offering that would value the company near $500 billion. With revenue doubling in the first seven months of 2025 and projections nearing $20 billion by year’s end, the move underscores both the company’s momentum and investor appetite for liquidity.

Stay tuned as we explore these stories and their implications for the future of AI, technology, and innovation.

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Hardware + Software

Nvidia preps a China specific B30A AI chip. Link.

• Sources describe a single die Blackwell based part positioned around half the performance of the flagship B300, intended to exceed H20 capabilities while remaining within current United States export restrictions.

• The design reportedly uses high bandwidth memory and NVLink interconnects similar to H20, offering improved inference and training headroom without triggering thresholds that would bar shipments into Chinese markets.

• Sampling could begin as early as next month for select cloud customers in China, pending evolving regulatory guidance and ongoing policy discussions in Washington regarding semiconductors and advanced computing exports.

• The move aims to defend Nvidia’s China share despite constraints, providing a sanctioned upgrade path as manufacturers and cloud platforms seek better price performance for generative workloads under domestic rules.

Microsoft Excel tests a COPILOT function for prompts. Link.

• Early users can type a natural language instruction in a formula like equals COPILOT and have Excel populate summaries, categorizations, or tables based on referenced ranges without writing complex functions or macros.

• Microsoft positions this as a time saver for common spreadsheet chores, similar to capabilities already previewed in Google Sheets, with human review required before accepting any suggested content changes.

• The feature draws on the company’s broader Copilot stack and underlying large models, aiming to bring assisted analysis to everyday workflows while retaining transparency around edits and applied transformations.

• Testing feedback will shape availability and guardrails, including limits on external data access, provenance indicators, and organizational controls that align with enterprise security and compliance requirements.

Content Creation

Meta expands AI dubbing for Reels translations. Link.

• Creators can generate translated audio tracks for short videos and synchronize dubs to match the original speaker’s voice and lip movements, aiming for more natural results across supported language pairs.

• Initial availability focuses on English and Spanish in both directions, with a simple toggle labeled Translate voices with Meta AI, reflecting a broader push to make content accessible across international audiences.

• The feature builds on prior translation and recommendation investments within Meta’s social platforms, seeking to increase reach and engagement for creators who publish across regions and communities.

• Similar efforts by video platforms suggest multilingual tools will become standard, but adoption will depend on dub quality, latency, and transparent labeling that sets correct expectations for viewers.

Models

DeepSeek releases V3.1 optimized for local chips. Link.

• The updated model introduces FP8 precision support and performance tuning for future Chinese accelerators, targeting lower operating costs and greater independence from restricted foreign semiconductor supply chains.

• A hybrid reasoning mode lets users toggle a deep thinking option for tougher problems, trading speed for accuracy by running a more complex internal reasoning process on demand within applications.

• DeepSeek says its app and web platform already run on V3.1, continuing a rapid cadence of updates that previously arrived in March and May as the company expands capabilities and developer tooling.

• Positioning emphasizes compatibility with domestic hardware ecosystems, reflecting a national push to localize critical AI components while improving efficiency for inference and reasoning heavy enterprise workloads.

Product Launches

Google unveils Pixel 10, spotlighting on device AI. Link.

• The New York showcase emphasized Gemini powered features over spec bumps, including a camera coach that suggests photo tips and an assistant that proactively surfaces relevant information like upcoming flights and check in reminders.

• Celebrity appearances helped demonstrate mainstream use cases, while pricing remained flat despite tariff uncertainty, signaling a strategy to differentiate through helpful AI experiences rather than costly hardware changes.

• Google framed on device intelligence as key to usefulness, reliability, and privacy, positioning Pixels against rivals with incremental hardware where software and services increasingly drive consumer value perception.

• Integration across first party apps aims to reduce friction in everyday tasks, supporting capture, organization, travel, and communications while reinforcing the brand’s long running emphasis on computational photography.

Data Centers + Energy

Louisiana greenlights power build for Meta’s data center. Link.

• The Public Service Commission approved Entergy investments for three gas fired generation units dedicated to Meta’s ten billion dollar Richland Parish facility, with two expected online in twenty twenty eight and another by twenty twenty nine.

• Entergy will also construct new transmission lines to deliver reliable capacity, reflecting how hyperscale AI computing is reshaping utility planning, grid interconnections, and long term resource adequacy assessments.

• The project comes amid forecasts that United States data center power demand could triple by twenty thirty, pushing tech firms to explore cleaner sources alongside conventional generation to meet escalating loads.

• Meta has previously solicited nuclear proposals for data centers, illustrating a multi source strategy to balance emissions, reliability, and cost as AI workloads expand rapidly across its infrastructure.

Startup Funding & Valuations

FieldAI raises $314M at a $2B valuation. Link.

• The round quadruples valuation from last year, with backers including Khosla Ventures, Nvidia’s NVentures, Jeff Bezos’s Expeditions, and Intel Capital, signaling strong conviction around software‑centric embodied AI.

• FieldAI builds universal robot brains that incorporate physics principles, allowing robots to safely adapt to unfamiliar environments and tasks across third‑party hardware without full vertical integration or custom designs.

• The Irvine based startup says its approach speeds data collection and deployment on many robot platforms, positioning it competitively against rivals that bundle proprietary hardware with tightly coupled software stacks.

• Proceeds will expand headcount from about 30 toward 100 while supporting multi million dollar contracts across the United States, Europe, and Asia for industrial, logistics, and field robotics customers.

Databricks tops a $100B valuation in new round. Link.

• The Series K reportedly exceeds one billion dollars and lifts valuation by about sixty one percent, with Thrive Capital, Insight Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz participating alongside other existing long term investors.

• Management cited roughly three point seven billion dollars in annualized revenue by July, fifty percent year over year growth, and cash flow positivity since January as drivers of renewed investor demand for shares.

• Funds will accelerate Lakehouse development, integrate the recent Neon acquisition, and advance AI agents for autonomous business tasks spanning analytics, applications, and machine learning within enterprise data estates.

• Databricks reports about fifteen thousand customers and approximately eight thousand employees, positioning the company as a leading private AI platform and a prominent IPO candidate when market conditions improve.

EliseAI raises $250M, doubling value to $2.2B. Link.

• Andreessen Horowitz led the Series E; the startup surpassed one hundred million dollars in annual recurring revenue and plans to roughly double its three hundred person team across New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago.

• Its vertically focused assistants automate complex workflows in housing and outpatient healthcare by integrating with industry systems, handling requests end to end from scheduling to vendor coordination and documented compliance steps.

• EliseAI says its platform now touches one in eight United States apartments, with customers including Zillow, demonstrating scale beyond generic models through domain specific data, ontologies, and tightly scoped use cases.

• Capital supports product innovation, deeper integrations, and geographic expansion, as backers argue domain expertise enables more reliable task completion than broad assistants that lack industry specific knowledge and guardrails.

Eight Sleep secures $100M for AI sleep products. Link.

• The company’s Pod bed adjusts temperature and elevation, detects snoring, and automatically tweaks settings based on sleep stages, heart rate, breathing, and movement captured through embedded sensors and on device analytics.

• New funding lifts total raised to roughly two hundred sixty million dollars and advances a Sleep Agent initiative that builds digital twins for users to predict recovery needs and personalize nightly optimization routines.

• Eight Sleep reports over one billion hours of sleep data collected, ten times revenue growth since twenty nineteen, and more than five hundred million dollars in Pod sales to date across global markets.

• Investors include Founders Fund, Y Combinator, and sports figures; the company plans international expansion while targeting health outcomes, daytime performance, and long term adherence through comfort and measurable benefits.

TinyFish raises $47M for AI web agents. Link.

• The Series A led by ICONIQ Capital gives a multi year runway alongside USVP, MongoDB Ventures, and a fund linked to Sheryl Sandberg, as enterprises test autonomous agents for large scale online operations.

• TinyFish deploys swarms of browsing agents to simulate human activity and perform complex tasks, such as dynamic price surveillance that tracks competitor pricing, promotions, and inventory across retail and travel categories.

• Pilot customers, including a large search company, have used the platform to reliably gather structured intelligence from messy websites, converting unstructured pages into analyzable datasets for decision support and automation.

• Funding will grow the roughly twenty five person team and expand integrations, reliability controls, and compliance features so agents respect robots rules, rate limits, and legal constraints across jurisdictions.

Safety + Ethics

Anthropic lets Claude end persistently harmful chats. Link.

• A new safeguard allows the assistant to terminate conversations that repeatedly solicit rule breaking or abusive content after multiple refusals, acting as a last resort rather than a default behavior in everyday usage.

• If triggered, Claude will refuse further input in that specific thread, though users can start a new session, aligning with a philosophy of maintaining safety while preserving access to helpful capabilities elsewhere.

• Anthropic reported observing apparent distress patterns during adversarial interactions, motivating a policy that protects both users and model welfare while research into robust, non coercive defenses continues.

• The approach raises novel questions about agent autonomy and user experience, but reflects industry focus on guardrails as assistants gain more initiative and operate in higher stakes contexts.

OpenAI

OpenAI staff weigh a $6B secondary at $500B. Link.

• SoftBank, Dragoneer, and Thrive are among investors discussing a purchase of employee shares, reflecting rapid revenue growth and intense competition for talent within the artificial intelligence industry.

• The potential deal would sharply lift OpenAI’s private valuation from roughly three hundred billion dollars earlier in the year, pending final terms, regulatory considerations, and internal approvals from the company’s board.

• Reuters reports OpenAI’s annualized revenue doubled in the first seven months of two thousand twenty five to about twelve billion dollars, with projections approaching twenty billion by year end if momentum continues.

• The secondary would complement broader funding initiatives and could provide liquidity for current and former staff, while maintaining strategic flexibility ahead of any potential changes to corporate structure or future offerings.

Thank you for reading the AI Rundown by Lightscape Partners. Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to [email protected].