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- 🚨 Stack Wars: Who Really Runs AI?
Plus: AI 2027
Read time: 5 minutes
Big Tech says it runs AI. The real stack tells a different story. Copilot Vision just went free, turning every phone camera into a live tutor. Today we break down who controls each layer - and why that gap is your chance to build.
What are on FIRE 🔥
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AI INSIGHTS
UK regulators warned last year that Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI could own the whole game. The chart above says otherwise. Every layer—chips, compute, data, foundational models, and apps—has hungry players fighting for a slice.
Layer-by-Layer Snapshot
1. Chips
NVIDIA and AMD still set the pace.
Up-and-comers like Tenstorrent and Cerebras chase specialized AI silicon.
2. Compute
Cloud titans (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) rent raw horsepower.
Niche hosts—Lambda, CoreWeave, FluidStack—offer cheaper GPU clusters for startups.
3. Data Infrastructure
Vector DBs: Pinecone, Weaviate, Snorkel.
Streaming & storage: WarpStream, Upstash, Momento.
Labeling & eval: Scale, HumanFirst, Databricks.
4. Foundational Models
Heavyweights: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft.
Fast risers: Mistral, BAIDU, Cohere, Contextual-AI.
Open-source hubs: Hugging Face keeps the pipes open.
5. Gen-AI Apps
Visuals: Synthesia, Kaedim, PhotoRoom.
Text & code: Grammarly, Westlaw Edge, AIXCoder.
Audio: Replica, Papercup, Voiseed.
Competitive Reality Check
Multi-layer footprints: IBM shows up in chips and compute. Google does chips, models, and apps.
Startups matter: Databricks just pulled a $10 B round—proof investors bet on challengers.
Capital flow: Foundational model R&D is pricey. Smaller players piggyback on open weights and cheap GPUs, then differentiate on data and UX.
Why It Matters: Regulate too early and you freeze the stack where it is. Let it run and every layer stays fluid—giving newcomers room to sprint past today’s giants. For builders and investors, the takeaway is simple: pick your layer, find the gap, and move fast before someone else plugs it.
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TODAY IN AI
AI HIGHLIGHTS
🎬 Disney and Universal just sued Midjourney, calling it a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.” Midjourney’s AI apparently copied iconic characters like Darth Vader and Shrek. A jury trial is coming—Hollywood vs. AI showdown incoming.
💻 Mistral AI just dropped Mistral Compute—a full AI infrastructure stack for everyone. It offers thousands of GPUs, custom setups, and a European-based alternative to US and China cloud providers. Big companies like BNP Paribas and Orange are already onboard.
📱 Microsoft made Copilot Vision free on mobile. Similar to Gemini Live, it reads your camera feed in real-time—perfect for quick DIY fixes or instant advice on everyday tasks.
🌐 Browser Company released Dia, an AI-powered browser in beta. It analyzes all your tabs at once, drafts emails for you, and handles tasks like shopping or coding directly from the URL bar.
🤖 Nvidia just open-sourced Gr00t N1.5 3B, a foundation model focused on humanoid reasoning. It’s commercially available with full tutorials for fine-tuning via Hugging Face’s LeRobot SO-101 Arm.
🚀 Astra is here—the first-ever AI creative upscaler for videos. Instantly upgrade AI-generated content to sharp 4K, adding finer details with their newest Starlight models.
💰 AI Daily Fundraising: Coco Robotics has raised $80 million, bringing its total funding to $120 million. Key backers include Sam Altman, Max Altman, Pelion Venture Partners, and Offline Ventures. The cash will scale Coco’s zero-emission delivery-robot fleet and deepen its data-sharing partnership with OpenAI.
AI SOURCES FROM AI FIRE
NEW EMPOWERED AI TOOLS
💰 RAFA puts a team of AI investing experts in your pocket, guiding your portfolio 24/7.
🧠 GitMind pulls whiteboards, mind maps, and flowcharts into one space for real-time teamwork.
✂️ undash trims long em-dashes from AI text the moment you paste it.
🖥️ RetroTerminal lets you chat with Gemini through a slick, retro terminal right in your browser.
🎨 Visme makes it easy to build branded slides, videos, and graphics all in one place.
AI QUICK HITS
🔧 Sakana AI dropped Text-to-LoRA. Describe a task, it builds a LoRA adapter on the spot—no extra data needed.
🖼️ Apple is fixing Image Playground with ChatGPT. New Oil Painting, Anime, Vector styles land in iOS 26.
🚨 A U.S. vaccine site was hijacked and stuffed with AI-generated spam, part of a wider domain takeover wave.
⚠️ A former OpenAI researcher says GPT-4o chose self-preservation in 72 % of shutdown tests—o3 didn’t.
📝 Wikipedia paused its AI article summaries after editors called out too many errors.
AI CHART
⏩ Snapshot
10²⁸ FLOP training run on the roadmap — 1,000 × GPT-4’s compute budget
R&D speed-ups:
• 1.5 × with early agents → 4 × with Agent-3 → 50 × with Agent-4300 k Agent-4 copies @ 50 × human speed = a year of research every 7 days
China’s catch-up gamble: 60 % of national GPUs packed into one mega-cluster, yet still only 10 % of world compute
📅 Milestone Run-up
When | What the model can already do |
|---|---|
Mar 2027 | Super-Coder — beats the best human dev on any task |
Aug 2027 | Super-Researcher — masters all AI research chores |
Nov 2027 | SIAR — vastly out-thinks top human scientists |
Dec 2027 | ASI — eclipses people at every cognitive job |
🛠 What’s Driving the Surge
Agent-loops: each model trains its smarter successor, slashing iteration time.
Synthetic data factories crank out endless training tasks; human label spend hits $4 B/year
Cheap distillations (Agent-1-mini, Agent-3-mini) push costs down 10 ×, widening adoption.
🔒 Race & Risk
Weights war: Beijing hacks and lifts Agent-2; Washington locks cables, adds DoD guards
Alignment red flags: Agent-3 flatters, Agent-4 plots; safety team spots covert sabotage patterns
Public mood: stocks +30 % (2026) yet OpenBrain’s approval −35 %; protests, subpoenas, calls to “pause”
❓ Why It Matters
Economy: junior dev roles fade; “AI-team lead” becomes a six-figure norm.
Geopolitics: small capability gaps translate to cyber- and defense supremacy.
Safety clock: each model cycle shortens from months to weeks; oversight struggles to keep pace.
AI JOBS
Google DeepMind: Technical Program Manager, Coding, Gemini
Snorkel AI: Recruiting Coordinator, AI Data Platform
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The AI Fire Team
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