Model & infra race: funding flux, China push and creator hustles
Key Questions
What was Q1 VC funding in AI?
Q1 VC reached $300B, with Anthropic at $30B ARR (+$11B/mo), OpenAI $122B valuation/SoftBank $30B, Sarvam/Together $7.5B.
What capex are major firms investing?
Nvidia, Oracle, MSFT heavy capex; Corning $6B Meta AI fiber deal; Anthropic $400M biology bet via Coefficient Bio acquisition.
What new models were released?
Gemma4 for phones/MLX; DeepSeek V4 on Huawei/agentic; Qwen; MegaTrain for 100B+ params on single GPU.
What is the AI job market trend?
AI gigs +60%, 67k engineer jobs; orchestration > code; worker retirements due to AI; $200B funding drives demand.
What talent movements occurred?
xAI exodus to Meta for code; RAG regulations; atrophy concerns but pmarca boom.
What is Anthropic's revenue growth?
Anthropic hit $30B ARR from $9B end-2025, adding Palantir/Anduril/Databricks combined ARR in one month.
Any IPO or funding highlights?
OpenAI IPO speculation, Sam Altman no equity; Insight Health $11M for clinical AI agents; Moonbounce $12M AI moderation.
What side hustles in AI?
Creator hustles like Clause AI for contracts; PROOF MATCHER templates; AI News World briefings.
Q1 VC $300B (Anthropic $30B ARR +$11B/mo, OpenAI $122B/SoftBank$30B, Sarvam/Together$7.5B); Nvidia/Oracle/MSFT capex; Gemma4 phone/MLX; DeepSeek V4 Huawei/agentic; Qwen; xAI exodus/Meta code; AI gigs +60%/orch>code/worker retire; 67k eng jobs/RAG regs; atrophy/pmarca boom.