Good morning, AI enthusiast.

OpenAI's viral video tool, Sora, has been a massive success with users, but its free access comes at an enormous price. New analysis suggests the tool is costing the company an estimated $15 million per day to operate.

The staggering figure pulls back the curtain on the challenging economics of cutting-edge generative AI. With such a massive burn rate, the race is on to drastically reduce inference costs and find a viable monetization model at scale.

In today’s AI recap:

• Our Blog to YouTube Video n8n automation that get’s us 140k Visitors/Month

• OpenAI's $15M daily burn for Sora

• China's new humanoid challenges Tesla

• The AI boom's massive power problem

• 8 trending AI Tools

The $15M Daily Bill for AI Memes

The Recap: OpenAI's viral video tool, Sora, is a massive hit, but new analysis suggests its free access is costing the company an estimated $15 million per day, a figure OpenAI's own head of Sora called completely unsustainable.

Unpacked:

• The staggering daily bill comes from an estimated 11.3 million daily video generations, with each 10-second clip costing OpenAI approximately $1.30 in compute power.

• This spending spree adds to an already massive burn rate, with the company recently losing over $12 billion in a single quarter despite projecting a $20 billion revenue run rate.

• OpenAI is following the classic internet playbook of prioritizing market share and user engagement over initial profitability, gathering valuable training data while planning for future monetization.

Bottom line: Sora’s enormous operational cost pulls back the curtain on the challenging economics of cutting-edge generative AI. The race is now on to drastically reduce inference costs and find a monetization model that can support AI at a global scale.

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China's New Humanoid Robot

The Recap: Chinese EV maker XPENG has unveiled IRON, a highly advanced humanoid robot that signals a serious challenge to Tesla's Optimus. The reveal dramatically reshapes the global robotics landscape into a high-stakes industrial race between U.S. and Chinese tech giants.

Unpacked:

• IRON’s design pursues “extreme anthropomorphism” with a flexible humanoid spine that allows it to bend and balance dynamically, while its hands feature 22 degrees of freedom for delicate manipulation.

• The robot is the world's first humanoid to run on an all-solid-state battery, a direct advantage from XPENG's EV supply chain, and it packs 3,000 TOPS of processing power from three in-house AI chips.

• XPENG is targeting mass production by the end of 2026, with a phased rollout starting in its retail showrooms before expanding to industrial partners like steel giant Baosteel.

Bottom line: This launch proves the humanoid robot field is moving beyond research projects and into an industrial-scale competition. The race is no longer about who can build a demo, but who can leverage automotive-scale manufacturing to mass-produce and deploy robots in the real world.

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AI's Power Problem

The Recap: The AI boom is creating an unprecedented demand for electricity, putting a major strain on existing power grids. Analysts from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan project a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure buildout is needed to support the power-hungry data centers fueling this growth.

Unpacked:

• Data centers could consume up to 9% of total U.S. electricity generation by 2030, a significant jump from the roughly 1.5% they use today, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.

• America's reliance on natural gas, which generates about 40% of the nation's electricity, means the AI boom is directly tied to rising fuel costs and increased export demand.

• This massive power requirement is driving a surge in investments for related industries, from companies making gas turbines and cooling solutions to those upgrading the nation's grid infrastructure.

Bottom line: This isn't just a challenge for utility companies; it's becoming a core strategic consideration for any tech company scaling its AI operations. The race to build AI is now inseparable from the race to secure and generate massive amounts of power, reshaping both the tech and energy sectors for years to come.

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The Shortlist

Gamma announced a $68M Series B at a $2.1B valuation, revealing the AI presentation-maker has profitably surpassed $100M in annual recurring revenue with a lean team of about 50 employees.

OpenAI faces seven new lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT encouraged suicides and fueled delusions, intensifying the scrutiny on the safety and psychological impact of its AI models.

CoreWeave reported its third-quarter revenue more than doubled to $1.36B, while its revenue backlog swelled to over $55B, signaling massive, sustained demand for its specialized AI cloud infrastructure.

OpenAI weighs a significant move into consumer healthcare, with sources saying the company is exploring building tools like a personal health assistant or a data aggregator, marking a major push beyond its core offerings.

Signing off,

David, Lucas, Mitchell — The Recap editorial team