AI Daily: OpenAI hits $500B valuation, Apple shelves Vision headset revamp

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:

$500B VALUATION: Microsoft (MSFT)-backed OpenAI has reached a valuation of $500B following a deal where current and former employees sold $6.6B worth of shares, Krystal Hu of Reuters reports, a source familiar with the matter said. As part of the deal, OpenAI employees sold their shares to a consortium of investors, the source added.

OVERHAUL HALTED: Apple (AAPL) is halting a planned overhaul to its Vision Pro headset to redirect resources towards developing smart glasses that can compete with products from Meta (META), Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports. The iPhone maker, which had been preparing a cheaper variant of Vision Pro, announced internally last week that it’s shifting workers from that project to accelerate work on glasses, the author says, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

FREE COMET: As human and AI-generated “slop” floods the internet, Perplexity says it’s fighting back by making Comet – its AI-native browser that normally costs $200 a month – free for anyone in the world, forever, Business Insider’s Charles Rollet reports. “We want to build a better internet, and that needs to be accessible to everybody,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told Business Insider at a launch event in San Francisco on Wednesday. The free version of Comet, which launches today, will come with rate limits, Srinivas made clear.

SEMICONDUCTORS: Samsung (SSNLF) and SK Hynix (HXSCL) have signed a letter of intent with Microsoft-backed OpenAI to supply semiconductors for the AI company’s $500M Stargate data center project, The Financial Times’ Christian Davies reports. The LOI was signed on Wednesday during a visit to Seoul by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who met the chairs of SK Group and Samsung as well as South Korea’s president Lee Jae Myung. The Fly notes that Nvidia (NVDA) last month announced plans to invest up to $100B in OpenAI in return for a significant stake in the ChatGPT maker, as part of a deal to build up to 10 gigawatts of processing capacity.

AI SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE: Microsoft is folding its AI subscription service for consumers into Office in an effort to help the company better compete against OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bloomberg’s Matt Day reports. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a higher-priced tier of Microsoft 365, which will include an integrated chatbot and AI features such as image generation, alongside the current package of Word, Excel, Outlook and other Office apps. Customers currently paying for the phone- and web-based Copilot Pro chatbot will eventually be moved over, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s consumer chief marketing officer, said in an interview.

AI-POWERED GEMINI FOR HOME: Google (GOOGL) announced Gemini for Home, a new, foundational intelligence that transforms a user’s relationship with their home. Gemini not only replaces the Google Assistant on smart displays and speakers but upgrades the smarts of devices in your home like your cameras and doorbells as well as in the Google Home app. It’s built to be more conversational, to better understand what’s happening and to make it easier than ever to get things done at home.

XAI LAWSUIT: Apple has filed a motion to dismiss xAI’s lawsuit, which alleges that Apple’s ChatGPT integration stifles competition, saying it plans to integrate other chatbots, Bloomberg’s Robert Burnson reports. Elon Musk’s AI startup and his social media platform X sued Apple and OpenAI in August, seeking billions of dollars in damages over their claim that the iPhone maker’s favoritism toward OpenAI, inhibited innovation in the AI industry and deprived consumers of choices.