OpenAI's $50M fund | Perplexity partners with Bharti Airtel | AI’s natural limit is electricity

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A $50 million fund to build with communities

• OpenAI has announced a $50 million fund to support nonprofit and community organizations working in education, healthcare, economic opportunity, and AI research.

• The initiative stems from feedback collected via its Nonprofit Commission, which involved over 500 community groups.

• The goal is to ensure AI development benefits all of humanity by investing in grassroots, community-led innovation and impact.

Perplexity sees India as a shortcut in its race against OpenAI

• Perplexity has partnered with Bharti Airtel to offer a free one-year subscription of Perplexity Pro (worth $200) to all 360 million Airtel users.

• The company has seen massive growth in India, with a 600% year-over-year increase in downloads and over 640% growth in monthly active users—outpacing even ChatGPT.

• By tapping into India’s telecom and fintech ecosystem, Perplexity aims to quickly scale its user base and compete directly with OpenAI on the global stage.

Cursor snaps up enterprise startup Koala in challenge to GitHub Copilot

• Cursor has acquired top engineering talent from Koala, an AI-powered CRM startup, as part of a push to build out its enterprise offering; Koala will shut down by September.

• The acquisition is part of Cursor’s strategy to compete with GitHub Copilot by strengthening its enterprise capabilities in security, sales, and infrastructure.

• Cursor claims strong traction with over half of the Fortune 500 using its product and aims to position itself as a full-fledged AI coding platform for businesses.

Ex-Google CEO: AI’s natural limit is electricity, not chips

• Eric Schmidt stated that the true bottleneck for scaling AI isn’t chips, but electricity—highlighting that the U.S. may need as much new power as 92 nuclear plants to meet AI demand.

• AI infrastructure, especially data centers, is significantly increasing water usage, with companies like Microsoft consuming billions of gallons annually for cooling.

• Without major advancements in energy sources like nuclear and renewables, AI development could hit natural limits, making energy policy and infrastructure critical to AI's long-term future.

Till next time.