Jun 17, 2025 5 min read Daily Rundown

The Price of Progress

OpenAI Wins Big Deal, The New AI Ally, AI Meets Fashion

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AI may optimize workflows, but who’s optimizing the human cost—besides the CFO?

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OpenAI Awarded $200 Million U.S. Defense Department Contract.
General Dynamics Wins $580M Security System Contract.
Pano AI Raises $44 Million Series B Funding to Scale Wildfire Detection Technology
Alibaba Launches Qwen3 for Apple Devices.
Trump Organization Launches Trump Mobile Wireless Service and Smartphone.

Groq Challenges Cloud Giants with Hugging Face Partnership

Groq, the AI inference startup, is making aggressive moves to compete with AWS and Google through two major announcements: supporting Alibaba's Qwen3 32B model with full 131,000-token context and becoming an official inference provider on Hugging Face's platform. This strategic push positions Groq to capture market share in the rapidly expanding AI inference market currently dominated by cloud giants.

Technical Breakthrough: Groq claims to be the only fast inference provider supporting the full 131K context window for Qwen3 32B, running at approximately 535 tokens per second with competitive pricing at $0.29 per million input tokens.
Massive Developer Access: The Hugging Face integration exposes Groq's technology to millions of developers worldwide, allowing them to select Groq directly within the Hugging Face Playground or API with streamlined billing.
Infrastructure Scaling Challenge: Groq currently serves over 20 million tokens per second across data centers in the US, Canada, and Middle East, but faces the challenge of scaling against well-funded competitors with deeper infrastructure resources.

This bold strategy represents Groq's bet that specialized LPU architecture and aggressive pricing can overcome the infrastructure advantages of tech giants in the $154.9 billion AI inference market projected by 2030.

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TOGETHER WITH MACROCOSMOS

Pretraining is the hardest part of AI to decentralize - until now

Vast data centres, enormous compute, and insatiable energy demands: only big tech can train LLMs. Even open-source models like Llama or Qwen are centrally trained, leaving DeAI dependent on centralized competitors.

Macrocosmos, an open-source AI lab on Bittensor, just launched IOTA - Incentivized Orchestrated Training Architecture. It allows anyone, anywhere to participate in LLM training-at-home:

✅ No memory constraints = wider accessibility.

✅ Fair, real-time rewards = co-ownership with proportionate attribution.

✅ 128× compression + trustless weight merging = global scale, fast.

Check out our interactive 3D dashboard. Join now to contribute compute, get rewarded, and train LLMs - and help make data centres a thing of the past.

STARTUP

Alta Raises $11 Million to Develop AI-Powered Personal Styling Platform

Fashion-tech startup Alta has successfully raised $11 million in seed funding led by Menlo Ventures to develop an AI-powered personal styling agent that helps users decide what to wear based on their budget, lifestyle, weather, and calendar. Founded by 28-year-old Jenny Wang, the platform aims to bring the iconic digital closet concept from the movie "Clueless" to life using advanced AI technology.

Product Features and Functionality: Alta serves as both an AI stylist and personal shopper, allowing users to upload their closet through photos or purchase receipts, create personalized virtual avatars to try on outfits, and receive tailored recommendations for specific events or occasions while mixing existing wardrobe items with potential new purchases
High-Profile Investor Backing: The funding round attracted notable investors including Michelle Obama's stylist Meredith Koop (who helped train Alta's AI), the Arnault family's Algaé Ventures (LVMH), DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, supermodels Jasmine Tookes and Karlie Kloss, and various other fashion and tech industry leaders
Strategic Partnerships and Expansion Plans: Alta has already partnered with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and is working with Marie Kondo for expansion into Oceania and the Pacific region, while also planning to establish retail partnerships worldwide and expand throughout Europe with support from LVMH

The company represents Wang's long-held vision that she previously attempted to build multiple times but was constrained by immature AI technology. With founder Wang relocating from San Francisco to New York to be closer to the fashion industry, Alta positions itself as part of the new wave of consumer AI technology aimed at making styling and shopping more effective and personalized for users.

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CHIPS

Intel Announces Major Layoffs: 15-20% Reduction in Factory Workforce

Intel plans to lay off 15-20% of its factory workers starting in July, a decision that represents a significant operational streamlining effort as the company faces declining sales and mounting competitive pressure. Manufacturing Vice President Naga Chandrasekaran stated in a memo to employees that these difficult but necessary measures are designed to address the company's current affordability challenges and financial position.

Massive Scale of Layoffs: The cuts are expected to affect thousands of jobs, quite possibly more than 10,000 positions, impacting a broad range of roles within the Intel Foundry division, from factory floor technicians to specialized researchers
Company-wide Restructuring: Beyond factory workers, Intel is also planning major cuts in other business units, though the company has not yet specified the exact number of job eliminations in each business unit
Market Pressure-Driven Decision: The layoffs reflect Intel's financial pressures in an intensely competitive environment, with the company attempting to reduce organizational complexity to better serve customers and strengthen execution

This large-scale workforce reduction marks a significant strategic adjustment for Intel as it confronts industry challenges. While the company has promised to treat employees with care and respect during this important transition, the decision will undoubtedly have profound impacts on tens of thousands of workers and their families, while also reflecting the severe competitive environment currently facing the semiconductor industry.

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