AI Daily: Nvidia CEO says new OpenAI investment will be ‘huge’

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly.

OPENAI INVESTMENT: Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang said the company will participate in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made,” Bloomberg’s Debby Wu reports. Huang told reporters in Taipei that Nvidia’s contribution to OpenAI’s latest funding round wouldn’t approach $100B, and described the investment as “huge” without saying exactly how much the company might contribute. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that a plan that Nvidia had announced in September to invest as much as $100B in OpenAI overall had stalled after some inside the chip giant expressed doubts about the deal.

LAWSUIT: U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco signaled she may dismiss a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s xAI accusing Sam Altman’s OpenAI of stealing trade secrets, Jonathan Stempel of Reuters reports. Lin said her “tentative view” is to grant OpenAI’s motion to dismiss xAI’s lawsuit.

PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT: Snowflake (SNOW) announced a collaboration with OpenAI that enables global enterprises to unlock greater value from their proprietary data with AI. This multi-year, $200M partnership agreement cements Snowflake and OpenAI’s commitment to co-innovation and joint go-to-market strategies aimed at deploying AI agents across global enterprises. The partnership agreement also makes OpenAI models natively available to Snowflake’s 12,600 global customers within Snowflake Cortex AI across all three major clouds.

AI RESEARCHERS DEPARTURE: At least four more AI researchers have left Apple (AAPL) in the last few weeks, as well as a top Siri executive, with the workers head to places such as Meta (META) and Google (GOOG), Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports. The latest departures include Yinfei Yang, Haoxuan You, Bailin Wang and Zirui Wang, with Yang starting a new company and You and Bailin Wang joining Meta, the author says, citing people familiar with the matter.

PATCHWORK APPROACH: Apple executives are questioning whether the company has the right ingredients to win in the AI-first era even as the company continues to thrive in the smartphone market, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports. There is no “miracle product” that will guarantee Apple’s success, and why Apple is betting on a patchwork approach that includes AI-enhanced services, a range of wearable and home devices, and a more personalized and conversational Siri assistant, Gurman says.