Nothing But a G7 Thang

AI leaders meet at G7 summit: A group including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and several leaders of G7 countries took place on Wednesday, during the big summit in Évian-les-Bains, France. (US leaders in attendance included President Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.) According to CNBC, Amodei and Hassabis called for a US-led coalition, that would produce a set of rules and standards for global AI development, while encouraging international collaboration. This could include “structured access” to frontier models, and loosened trade restrictions around chips and other critical components, along with a joint effort to stem the risks of cyberattacks, bioterrorism, and other threats. (Notably, China would not be included in this theoretical coalition.) This is, of course, all happening as Anthropic remains deep in negotiations with the US government over the public release of its Fable/Mythos 5 models, which have been blocked by the Commerce Dept. due to national security concerns. The New York Times suggests that many Anthropic employees suspect that their models are being singled out due to a grudge by the Trump administration, or in their own words, that they’re being “bullied based on bad vibes.”

Odyssey enters unicorn territory: The world model startup raised a $310 million Series B at a $1.45B valuation; Natural Capital led with Amazon, AMD’s venture arm, and others along for the ride. (The Amazon collab goes even deeper; Odyssey committed to using AWS as its preferred cloud provider, and optimizing its models for Amazon’s bespoke Trainium chips.) Unlike LLMs, world models map the physical world and attempt to understand how objects move through it. They’re essential for training and directing the self-driving cars, robots, and other hardware controlled by AI brains, but occupying physical space alongside humans. Speaking of which, Odyssey comes to us from a pair of autonomous vehicle veterans: CEO Oliver Cameron, formerly of the startup Voyage (which was acquired by General Motors), and CTO Jeff Hawke, a former engineer from UK self-driving firm Wayve.

Snap debuts long-awaited AR Specs: This marks the first take on Snap’s Spectacles line released for public consumption since 2019. Back then, they were still just sunglasses with a 3D/video camera built in. All the releases since the pandemmy have been for developers only. But co-founder Evan Spiegel showed off the new iteration on CNBC this week, designed from the ground up for an augmented reality experience. (In Spiegel’s words, the new Specs introduce “a way to use computing together in shared experiences in the real world, looking up through see-through lenses rather than at an opaque screen.” There are also multiplayer games, a video player offering a 51-degree field of view, and of course the ability to check your email. Spiegel also debuted the somewhat surprising $2,195 price tag, making these feel more akin to the insiders-only Apple Vision Pro headset than an everyday consumer device all your friends are likely to impulse buy. Though many of the internet commentariat were feeling snarky, JCal took a more optimistic view. He argues that Spiegel & Co. are likely just “one or two generations away” from finally making AR glasses that everyday people want to buy.

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