Good morning, AI enthusiast.

Meta is teaming up with the popular AI lab Midjourney, a move that will integrate the latter's powerful image and video technology into Meta's own creative tools. The deal marks a major step in the company's effort to close the gap with competitors in the generative AI race.

While the partnership gives Meta an immediate boost against rivals like OpenAI and Google, it also raises questions about the future of AI development. Will we see more of these strategic collaborations, with even the largest tech giants opting to license top-tier technology instead of building it all from the ground up?

In today’s AI recap:

• Meta and Midjourney's new partnership

• Apple eyes Google Gemini for Siri 2.0

• Nvidia halts its China AI chip production

• 8 trending AI Tools

Meta and Midjourney Join Forces

The Recap: Meta announced a partnership with Midjourney, licensing the popular AI lab's image and video generation technology to accelerate the development of its own creative AI tools.

Unpacked:

• This collaboration helps Meta compete more directly with leaders in AI video generation like OpenAI's Sora and Google's Veo, as Meta's own tools have yet to match their capabilities.

• Midjourney's CEO confirmed the company remains independent and has not taken any outside investment, a rare position for a leading AI lab in today's market.

• The deal is the latest move in Meta's aggressive AI push, which includes multi-billion dollar investments, high-profile talent acquisitions, and a major internal team reorganization.

Bottom line: For Meta, licensing top-tier technology offers a direct path to enhance its creative AI features and close the gap with competitors. This partnership highlights a growing trend where even the largest tech companies collaborate with specialized labs to maintain a competitive edge.

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Apple Looks to Google for Siri 2.0

The Recap: Apple is reportedly in early discussions with Google to license its Gemini AI models to power a new version of Siri. The potential partnership could bring one of today's most capable AI engines to hundreds of millions of iPhone users next year.

Unpacked:

• This move signals a significant push by Apple to catch up in the generative AI space, where it has been seen as lagging while Google's Gemini has consistently topped performance benchmarks.

• Google isn't the only option on the table; Apple has also explored partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, indicating a flexible strategy to integrate the best technology available.

• A deal would be a major financial win for Google, creating a massive new licensing revenue stream on its main competitor's platform as its lucrative search deal with Apple faces regulatory risk.

Bottom line: For users, this could finally transform Siri into the powerful, conversational assistant they've always wanted. For the industry, it would represent a landmark collaboration between tech giants, reshaping the consumer AI landscape.

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Nvidia Halts China Chip Production

The Recap: Nvidia has reportedly ordered suppliers to halt production of its H20 AI chip for the Chinese market, a move that comes after Beijing raised security concerns and urged local tech companies to avoid the hardware.

Unpacked:

• The production freeze stems from Beijing's concerns that the H20 chips could have "backdoors" allowing for remote access or tracking, prompting China's Cyberspace Administration to launch a national security review.

• While H20 production is paused, Nvidia is already developing a new, more powerful Blackwell-based chip for China, tentatively named the B30A.

• The move puts a significant portion of Nvidia's business at risk, as its China sales are estimated to be over $20 billion annually, highlighting the immense challenge of navigating U.S.-China trade tensions.

Bottom line: This standoff highlights the escalating tech rivalry between the U.S. and China, forcing American companies to navigate an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape. Beijing's push for chip self-sufficiency could accelerate, creating more challenges for foreign tech firms in one of the world's largest markets.

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Coinbase's AI Mandate

The Recap: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took a hardline stance on AI adoption, firing engineers who refused to try AI coding assistants after he issued a company-wide mandate. He revealed the decision on a recent podcast, signaling a new era of expectations for developers.

Unpacked:

• Armstrong gave engineers a one-week deadline to onboard with tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor, scheduling a mandatory Saturday meeting for anyone who failed to comply.

• The mandate was less about immediate productivity and more about establishing a cultural imperative to adapt quickly to new technologies to stay competitive.

• To reinforce the shift, Coinbase now hosts monthly meetings for teams to share innovative ways they use AI, turning the mandate into a continuous learning initiative.

Bottom line: This move signals a major shift in the tech industry, where using AI tools is becoming a baseline expectation, not just a bonus skill. For developers, this serves as a clear notice that fluency with AI assistants is quickly becoming a non-negotiable part of the job.

The Shortlist

DeepSeek released V3.1, a 685-billion-parameter open-source model that merges chat, reasoning, and coding into a single architecture and features a specialized 'thinking' mode for complex agentic tasks.

Google published a new analysis claiming software optimizations and custom hardware have dropped the energy cost of a typical AI text query by a factor of 33 in just the last year.

Court filings revealed that Elon Musk and xAI approached Mark Zuckerberg to join a $97.4B takeover bid for OpenAI in early 2025, which was ultimately rejected by OpenAI.

A hobbyist created TimeCapsuleLLM, a small language model trained exclusively on texts from 1800-1875 London, which surprised its creator by independently reconstructing real historical events from 1834.

Signing off,

David, Lucas, Mitchell — The Recap editorial team