Aug 15, 2025 5 min read Daily Rundown

⛵ Robot Olympics

More Stories: Character.AI Kills AGI, Secure LLM Crown

Good Morning, Early Adopters!

This week, robots raced, stumbled, and played ping-pong for glory, the dream of all-knowing AI quietly shuffled offstage, and the battle for the safest, smartest mind left the arena with a single gleaming crown.

HUMANOID

Beijing Forges Ahead With Its Own Robot Olympics

👀 What’s the move: China just launched the World Humanoid Robot Games (Aug 15–17, 2025), blending sports, industrial trials, and public spectacle to collect data on robot coordination, handling, and autonomy. This contrasts with the U.S.’s more fragmented humanoid robotics ecosystem, largely anchored in conferences (like the Humanoids Summit) and DARPA’s episodic, mission-driven challenges.

💡 Why it’s not boring: China isn’t just hosting flashy contests—it’s weaponizing them. Its bot games serve dual purposes: refine real‑world coordination (football, sprints, sorting) and validate development under pressure. The spectacle fuels public embrace and institutional momentum. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley’s fragmented model—VC‑driven conferences and DARPA’s niche missions—lacks that scale and cross‑pollination. There’s energy in U.S. tech PR, but China’s turning robotics into sporting theater and data gold.

⛵ Key takeaway: China just turned robot failure into entertainment—and you can’t train robot humans under living room lights.

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STARTUP

Character.AI Kills AGI to Save Itself

👀 What’s the move: Once selling billion-dollar visions of “personalized superintelligence,” Character.AI is now ditching it, pivoting to an “AI entertainment vision” and swapping proprietary LLMs for cheaper open-source ones like DeepSeek and Llama. The pivot comes under new CEO Karandeep Anand as the company bleeds cash, loses its founders to a $2.7B Google acquihire, and fights a child-safety lawsuit.

💡 Why it’s not boring: This isn’t just a product pivot — it’s a full retreat from the investor-praised “closed loop” moat that made Character.AI worth funding. The shift to “AI entertainment” feels less like clarity and more like survival, with safety scandals forcing a rewrite of the company’s identity while cutting the very engine that once fueled its hype.

⛵ Key takeaway: In AI, the first thing to go isn’t always the money — sometimes it’s the mission.

STARTUP

Cohere’s $6.8B Raise Puts “Attention” on AI Safety

👀 What’s the move: Cohere just closed an oversubscribed $500M round at a $6.8B valuation, pulling in AMD, Nvidia, Salesforce, and Canada’s biggest pension funds. Founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez — co-author of “Attention Is All You Need” (the 2017 paper that redefined AI architecture) — the company has maintained a laser focus on secure, enterprise-grade LLMs, steering clear of consumer hype. Today, it is reaping the benefits as corporate demand for AI safety solidifies into dedicated budget lines.

💡 Why it’s not boring: This isn’t a hot-hand cash grab — it’s the payoff from a slow, strategic build that locked in heavyweight partners like Oracle, SAP, and RBC. With ex-Meta research head Joelle Pineau on board and heavyweight silicon behind it, Cohere is claiming the “secure LLM” crown at the very moment enterprises are realizing they can’t risk running ChatGPT-for-work on production data.

⛵ Key takeaway: Sometimes the quiet kid in the AI class ends up owning the only category that compliance will actually sign off on.

STARTUP SPOT

🧠 Cohere
“Secure LLMs for enterprise.”
Cloud-agnostic generative AI—search, summarization, agents—built for regulated sectors; privacy-centric, no data retention.
→ Founded 2019 by “Attention Is All You Need” co-author Aidan Gomez + ex-Google Brain team; Aug ’25 raised $500M at $6.8B; Joelle Pineau (ex-Meta AI) as CAIO; $100M+ ARR, Oracle/SAP/Dell clients.

🤖 Character.AI
“AI role-play as entertainment.”
Chat with AI-powered personas—fictional, historical, or original—built on open-source LLMs; now focused on social storytelling feed.
→ Founded 2021 by ex-Google Brain Noam Shazeer & Daniel de Freitas; Google $2.7B acquihire 2024, founders exited; June ’25 new CEO Karandeep Anand pivoted from AGI to entertainment; $30M+ ARR, aiming $50M.

🎨 Flowise
“Visual toolkit for AI agents.”
Open-source drag-and-drop builder for LLM workflows & multi-agent systems; supports RAG, tool use, HITL, API/SDK deploy.
→ YC Launch alum; 12K+ GitHub stars; v3.0 adds auto-sketch from idea; used by AWS, Deloitte, Priceline for production AI flows.

BAY AREA MEMOS

AI coding startup Cognition has reportedly raised nearly $500 million on a $9.8 billion valuation.
Fintech executives are urging Trump to ban bank fees on customer data, warning it could cripple U.S. innovation.
A new $150 million partnership between the NSF and NVIDIA will fund the creation of open-source multimodal AI models for the US scientific community.
Workday acquires open-source platform Flowise to accelerate the deployment of AI-powered agents and workflows for its customers.
HTC enters the AI glasses race with its new Vive Eagle smart glasses, featuring live translation and a built-in voice assistant.

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