Big investments are going towards AI-focused startups and companies specializing in humanoid robots. Here is a round-up of what’s happening in the world of AI.

Microsoft and OpenAI want AI to walk the talk

Microsoft and OpenAI are apparently discussing a potential investment in Figure AI, which is all about humanoid robots. According to Bloomberg, the startup is looking to raise as much as $500 million in a funding round.

One scenario involves Microsoft investing about $95 million and OpenAI, $5 million. If the deal goes through, it could value Figure AI at about $1.9 billion before the funding.

Figure AI is behind the Figure 01, a general-purpose robot, which has gone from doing nothing to dynamic walking in under a year. And the robot can do this without a tether and it comes with a slim design, meaning hardware has improved drastically.

File picture of Optimus humanoid robot when it was unveiled on September 30, 2022. Tesla

Optimus walks but not Musk’s fortune

Tesla has been developing a humanoid robot called Optimus. That is old news. Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, has posted on X (formerly Twitter) a video (labeled ‘Going for a walk with Optimus’) of Optimus walking around. Optimus is bare-bones, showing its inner workings.

The video comes soon after Musk demanded that the company’s board gives him shares worth more than $80 billion if it wants him to continue developing products around AI, the New York Times has reported.

That is one side of the story. A judge in the US state of Delaware has annulled a $55.8b pay deal awarded to Elon Musk in 2018 by Tesla because the board’s approval of the pay package was “deeply flawed” as Musk’s attorneys “were unable to prove that the stockholder vote was fully informed” and that he had “extensive ties with the persons tasked with negotiating on Tesla’s behalf”.

All this puts financial (con)strain on Musk. He has posted on X: “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.”

New York Times is exploring AI

The New York Times is exploring use cases for generative AI in the newsroom and to enable the same, the company is beginning to build a team.

Zach Seward, who was recently hired to head AI initiatives in the newsroom, posted on Threads that the team will be “focused on prototyping uses of generative AI and other machine-learning techniques to help with reporting and how the Times is presented to readers”.

Seward’s post says that the company plans to hire a machine learning engineer, a software engineer, a designer, and a couple of editors.

The job listing for associate editorial director, AI initiatives, reads: “The team, led by the editorial director for AI initiatives, will also include colleagues with a mix of engineering, research, and design talent, acting as a kind of skunkworks team within the newsroom. Together, they will partner with other teams in the news, product, and technology groups to take the best ideas from prototype to production.”