The Daily AI Briefing - 10/03/2025

Welcome to The Daily AI Briefing, here are today's headlines! The AI landscape continues to evolve rapidly with major developments in research, business, and technology. Today, we're exploring Ilya Sutskever's ambitious new startup, Microsoft's potential shift away from OpenAI, a promising AI-discovered weight loss breakthrough, and several innovative new AI tools making waves in the industry. First up, former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is reportedly raising an astonishing $2 billion for his startup Safe Superintelligence Inc. at a $30 billion valuation. What makes this remarkable is Sutskever's claim of pursuing "a different mountain to climb" in AI development. According to the Wall Street Journal, SSI has no revenue or public products yet operates with just 20 employees. The company has no plans to release commercial products before achieving superintelligence - a bold strategy from the researcher who departed OpenAI following Sam Altman's controversial ouster last November. Sutskever later expressed regret for his role in that board action, and now appears focused on charting an entirely new path toward advanced artificial intelligence that differs fundamentally from current approaches. In related news, Microsoft seems to be hedging its bets beyond its OpenAI partnership. The tech giant is reportedly developing "MAI," a new family of AI models designed to rival current industry leaders, alongside in-house reasoning models. These new MAI models reportedly match offerings from both OpenAI and Anthropic and will be available through Azure. Microsoft is actively testing them as potential replacements for OpenAI technology in its Copilot suite while also exploring alternatives from competitors like xAI, Meta, and DeepSeek. Tensions reportedly emerged when Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman grew frustrated with OpenAI's reluctance to share details about its o1 reasoning model. Adding fuel to this situation, OpenAI renegotiated its Microsoft deal in January, gaining freedom to use other server providers - suggesting the once-exclusive partnership may be evolving into something more complex. In the world of medical AI, Stanford researchers have made a potential breakthrough in obesity treatment using artificial intelligence. Their "Peptide Predictor" AI system analyzed 20,000 human genes to discover BRP, a natural molecule with weight loss capabilities comparable to Ozempic but potentially fewer side effects. What makes BRP promising is its targeted approach - affecting specific brain regions rather than multiple organs, which might avoid common side effects like nausea and muscle loss. Testing showed impressive results, with a single dose cutting food intake by half in both mice and minipigs, while obese mice lost significant fat during two weeks of treatment. A company has already formed to begin human trials, with researcher Katrin Svensson suggesting this AI-discovered molecule could revolutionize weight management treatments. Several noteworthy AI tools are also gaining attention. Mistral OCR offers state-of-the-art text extraction from images and documents, while Manus AI presents itself as a fully autonomous agent capable of handling real-world tasks. Tavus is introducing conversational video interfaces to bring AI agents to life visually, and Template Hub has launched as a marketplace for creating, sharing, and deploying specialized AI agents. In additional developments, former DeepMind researchers have secured $130 million to launch Reflection AI, focusing on autonomous coding systems as a path toward superintelligent AI. On social platforms, X now allows users to question Grok directly by tagging an automated account. Meanwhile, Alibaba researchers have published START, enhancing LLM capabilities through code execution and self-checking, and Sam Altman's World Network has released World Chat for encrypted communication between verified humans. As we wrap up today's briefing, it's clear the AI sector cont