AI Daily: Cerebras raises $1B, CoreWeave signs $14.2B deal with Meta

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:

FUNDING ROUND: Cerebras said Tuesday that it’s raised $1.1B in new funding at a valuation of $8.1B as it tries to take on Nvidia (NVDA), the world’s most valuable company, in the booming market of artificial intelligence chips, CNBC’s Jordan Novet reports. The AI chipmaker filed to go public exactly a year ago. The company has yet to take the plunge, but has now bought itself more time to stay private, the author notes.

NEW ORDER FROM META: In a regulatory filing, CoreWeave (CRWV) disclosed that on September 25, the company and Meta Platforms (META) entered into a new order form under the existing Master Services Agreement dated as of December 10, 2023, pursuant to which the company provides Meta access to cloud computing capacity through fulfillment of reserved capacity orders submitted to the company by Meta and as may be amended upon the company’s and Meta’s mutual agreement. Subject to any termination and satisfaction of delivery and availability of service requirements, Meta has initially committed to pay the company up to approximately $14.2B through December 14, 2031 under the order form, with the option to materially expand its commitment through 2032 for additional cloud computing capacity under the order form. “As a result, the company has determined that the MSA is a material agreement within the meaning of Item 1.01 of Form 8-K. The MSA will remain in place until either all outstanding orders under the MSA are expired or terminated, or the MSA is otherwise terminated in accordance with its terms. Either party may terminate the MSA (and any order thereunder) for cause. The MSA contains customary provisions regarding representations and warranties, indemnification, and limitations on liabilities,” the filing stated.

AI-POWERED ECHO DEVICES: Amazon (AMZN) announced four new Echo devices that it says were built from the ground up for Alexa+. “The all-new Echo Dot Max, Echo Studio, Echo Show 8, and Echo Show 11 are the most advanced Echo devices we’ve ever built. They deliver more processing power, memory, edge-based computing, and advanced sensing capabilities to enable Alexa+ to deliver ambient AI experiences that fade into the background of daily life. They have an all-new look and feel we think customers will love. And now, any customer who orders a new Echo device will get access to Alexa+ out of the box. At the core of our new Echo devices are two custom-designed silicon chips-AZ3 and AZ3 Pro-with an all-new AI Accelerator designed to run AI edge models of the future.”

AI ASSISTANT: Amazon stated, “Today, we’re excited to introduce Alexa+, our next-generation assistant powered by generative AI. Alexa+ is more conversational, smarter, personalized-and she helps you get things done. She keeps you entertained, helps you learn, keeps you organized, summarizes complex topics, and can converse about virtually anything. Alexa+ can manage and protect your home, make reservations, and help you track, discover, and enjoy new artists. She can also help you search, find or buy virtually any item online, and make useful suggestions based on your interests… Alexa+ costs $19.99 per month, but all Amazon Prime members will get it for free. Alexa+ is the newest Prime benefit, building on the tremendous value members were already enjoying.”

SORA 2, SOCIAL APP: OpenAI said that, “Today we’re releasing Sora 2, our flagship video and audio generation model… With Sora 2, we are jumping straight to what we think may be the GPT 3.5 moment for video… As a general purpose video-audio generation system, it is capable of creating sophisticated background soundscapes, speech, and sound effects with a high degree of realism… we’re launching a new social iOS app just called “Sora,” powered by Sora 2. Inside the app, you can create, remix each other’s generations, discover new videos in a customizable Sora feed, and bring yourself or your friends in via cameos. With cameos, you can drop yourself straight into any Sora scene with remarkable fidelity after a short one-time video-and-audio recording in the app to verify your identity and capture your likeness… This app is made to be used with your friends… Protecting the wellbeing of teens is important to us. We are putting in default limits on how many generations teens can see per day in the feed, and we’re also rolling out with stricter permissions on cameos for this group. In addition to our automated safety stacks, we are scaling up teams of human moderators to quickly review cases of bullying if they arise. We are launching with Sora parental controls via ChatGPT so parents can override infinite scroll limits, turn off algorithm personalization, as well as manage direct message settings… The Sora iOS app is available to download now. You can sign up in-app for a push notification when access opens for your account. We’re starting the initial rollout in the U.S. and Canada today with the intent to quickly expand to additional countries… Sora 2 will initially be available for free, with generous limits to start so people can freely explore its capabilities, though these are still subject to compute constraints.”

COPYRIGHT HOLDERS: OpenAI told studios that it plans to release a new version of Sora that creates videos featuring copyrighted material unless copyright holders opt out, The Wall Street Journal’s Keach Hagey, Berber Jin, and Ben Fritz report. The new product will require copyright holders to explicitly request that their material not be included in Sora-generated videos, according to people familiar with the matter, who add that while copyright characters will require an opt-out, the new product won’t generate images of recognizable public figures without their permission.

CHATGPT CONNECTOR: UiPath (PATH) announced a collaboration with Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI to build a ChatGPT connector integrating OpenAI frontier models with enterprise customer workflows, powered by UiPath enterprise orchestration, accelerating time to value and ROI from their agentic AI efforts. The company said, “UiPath’s best-in-class agentic automation capabilities, OpenAI models, and OpenAI APIs will simplify AI agent development and deployment, allowing users to focus on business goals rather than complexities of the underlying infrastructure and enable process owners to build trust in their AI agents.”

BUY COREWEAVE: Evercore ISI initiated coverage of CoreWeave (CRWV) with an Outperform rating and $175 price target. While the firm concedes that the stock will be volatile near-term, it sees higher probability CoreWeave is able to sustain and scale their differentiation from training to inferencing, the analyst tells investors. Evercore views CoreWeave as uniquely positioned to be the “Infrastructure-as-a-Service” provider for not just AI-centric customers, but also for enterprises looking to build, run and deploy AI applications, adding that accelerating revenue growth should drive sustained long-term margin and EPS inflection.