Hey Reader,

Hope you had a wonderful holiday season – happy 2025! We have a lot to come in January, including opening enrollment in our flagship program, The AI Consultancy Project.

You're already on the list to get all the details, but if you also want to get super-early access, sign up for text or WhatsApp alerts here.

In the meantime, here are 3 Big Things in AI for this week...

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#1 – Chip Wars: Nvidia sends less powerful AI chips to China

One of the most fascinating sub-plots of the AI revolution is the tug of war between the United States and China on the creation and export of high-end AI chips. Ultimately, the goal of U.S. policy is to keep China's military behind the curve on AI. To satisfy American rules, Nvidia has cut the capacity of its new China-specific chips by about 23%, which means American consumers will have access to much faster GPUs than Chinese consumers will.

This won't mean much in practice for those of us using the cloud-based AI tools that dominate the market today. But as more AI elements get integrated into local computer processors, the question of who gets access to the best and fastest chips will become more and more important for daily life.

#2 – Anthropic (the creator of the Claude AI model) takes venture capital at a $60 billion valuation

Despite tons of investment from Big Tech companies like Meta and Google, last year small-player Anthropic secured the #2 spot in terms of the most exciting AI companies, behind OpenAI. Anthropic has also created what is probably the best AI model currently on the market, Claude Sonnet 3.5.

And now they're reportedly taking $2 billion in new funding at a $60 billion valuation. For comparison, OpenAI was valued at $157 billion in October, so it's a pretty big deal that investors see Anthropic has ~half as valuable as OpenAI/ChatGPT, especially since it's much less of a household name.

That said, the actual value of having the best large language model is something closer to infinity ♾️. That's why we'll see every big tech company invest billions in the race for smarter AI this year – there is just so much upside to becoming an AI leader that money is almost a non-issue for these large companies.

#3 – John Deere is going to build you an AI lawnmower

In perhaps the most exciting development in decades for my plans on summer afternoons, John Deere is taking a page from driverless taxis and building autonomous tractors, which may also eventually become autonomous consumer lawnmowers.

Would you let AI mow your lawn? I would. I can literally think of nothing more joyous than setting up a lawn chair, grabbing a Diet Coke and watching an AI lawnmower mow my lawn. Is that weird?

(Side note: There's another fascinating John Deere story [in which they're the bad guys] around the right to repair their equipment, which is worth reading if you're into tech law.)

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That's all for today!

As always, if you have any questions or topic ideas, just reply.

Have a great day,

– Rob Howard
Founder of Innovating with AI
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PS. My friend Zack Arnold, the Hollywood editor who's worked on Cobra Kai and Glee, just launched The Creative's (Free) Guide to Writing a Killer Brand Story – he teaches you how to stand out in today's crowded job market as a creative professional. Grab the free guide here.