ChatGPT gets a brain & more (April 11, 2025 edition)

Hey friends,

This week in AI felt like opening a mystery box and finding a flamethrower. From memory-boosted chatbots to $2B stealth startups and laptop-friendly LLMs, the pace isn’t slowing—it’s accelerating hard.

Let’s break it down.

🧠 AI THAT REMEMBERS YOU

ChatGPT gets a memory upgrade
OpenAI officially flipped the switch on persistent memory. ChatGPT will now remember details across chats—your name, your niche obsessions, maybe even your favorite pizza topping. It’s opt-out, but default-on.

Why it matters: This pushes ChatGPT from “helpful tool” into “personalized assistant” territory. Less repetition, more relevance. A step closer to that always-on AI coworker vibe.

Claude Max goes premium
Anthropic launched new pricing tiers for Claude Max: $100 and $200/month gets you more usage and earlier access to features. If Claude is your go-to, this is welcome—if not, this might pull you in.

OpenAI vs. GitHub on limits
GitHub quietly introduced rate limits for premium Copilot features. GPT-4o access now capped unless you pay up. It’s starting to feel like everything is moving toward usage-based pricing.

🚀 INFRASTRUCTURE & MONEY MOVES

Mira Murati’s stealth startup aims for $2B
Thinking Machines Lab (run by OpenAI’s former CTO) is raising a mind-melting $2B seed round at a $10B valuation. No product, no public roadmap—just vibes and pedigree.

India’s CPU-based AI breakthrough
Ziroh Labs dropped Kompact AI, which runs models like Llama 2 on regular CPUs. That’s right—no GPUs needed. This could be a total unlock for global devs, students, and anyone without a $20k NVIDIA budget.

Amazon's AI army grows
Andy Jassy’s annual letter revealed Amazon has 1,000+ GenAI projects in the pipeline. The focus? Reinventing customer experiences—and spinning up the infrastructure to handle it all.

Microsoft’s debugging reality check
A new study shows that AI models still stumble on basic debugging tasks. Even the best models topped out at 48% success. We’ve come far on code generation, but actual debugging? Still a human’s game—for now.

🛠 TOOLS THAT CAUGHT MY EYE

• Tanka – AI team memory bank for chat + tasks
• EverTutor – Personalized AI tutor, voice-based
• ScreenStudio – Instant video recording + sharing

Pro tip: Pair Gemini with Google Sheets for instant table generation and formula writing. It’s like having a nerdy intern who never sleeps.

🎯 PROMPT OF THE DAY

“Act as a party planner for sentient AIs. Help organize a retirement celebration for a legendary chatbot who’s being shut down after 20 years of service. Suggest decorations, speeches, party favors, and emotional support protocols.”

Run it through your model of choice. Bonus points if you get misty-eyed by the end.

TL;DR

ChatGPT’s getting sticky. Murati’s getting billions. And CPUs might be the new GPUs.

The AI world’s moving so fast, even Claude can’t keep up with it. But the signal is clear: memory, infrastructure, and open standards are the battlegrounds now.

Let’s keep building.

Catch you next time,
David

P.S. That CPU breakthrough from India? Might be the most underrated story of the week. If it scales, it’s a game-changer for the 99% of the world without Nvidia money.