GPT-5 meltdown, $1.5B AI hedge fund & more (August 11, 2025)

👋 Good morning!

When AI launches go wrong, newsrooms turn to archives, and 3D worlds come to life. This weekend was filled with AI headlines for you to catch up on before you begin your week.

Let’s dive in.

🚨 AI in the Headlines

🆘 OpenAI’s GPT-5 Launches With Chaos

OpenAI’s GPT-5 launch was supposed to be a leap forward, but a buggy rollout left users clamoring for the return of GPT-4o. Sam Altman’s Reddit AMA addressed technical glitches, low rate limits, and a “mega chart screwup” during the livestream. OpenAI is restoring 4o for paid users and promising more transparency and customization going forward. Sometimes, benchmarks aren’t the only metric that matters, personality counts too.

💰 Ex-OpenAI Researcher Raises $1.5B for Hedge Fund

Leopold Aschenbrenner, once fired from OpenAI for allegedly leaking sensitive info, has raised $1.5B for an AI-focused hedge fund. Despite no prior investment experience, his “Situational Awareness” fund posted a 47% return in H1 2025, betting on AI-adjacent sectors like semiconductors and infrastructure. The AI gold rush is giving unconventional players a shot at outsized wins.

🛰 Google & NASA’s AI Doctor for Astronauts

Google and NASA are developing the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant, an AI that can diagnose and treat astronauts during deep-space missions with no real-time comms to Earth. Running on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI with Llama 3 and Mistral-3 Small, the system hit 88% diagnostic accuracy in tests. Beyond space, it could revolutionize remote healthcare on Earth.

💵 Tech Power Plays

🇺🇸 Nvidia & AMD to Pay $15 Each to U.S. in Chip Licensing Settlement

Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the U.S. government $15 each (symbolic) as part of a licensing arrangement to continue selling certain AI chips abroad. The move follows heightened scrutiny over export controls to countries like China. While the monetary amount is nominal, the agreement signals tighter government oversight on the global AI chip race.

🏭 SoftBank Buys Foxconn’s Ohio EV Plant for Stargate Data Center

SoftBank has acquired Foxconn’s U.S. electric vehicle plant in Ohio, with plans to convert the site into a massive data center for its Stargate AI infrastructure project. The facility will support large-scale AI computing, positioning SoftBank to compete in the global race for AI processing power. The move marks a major pivot for the plant, originally built for EV production, into the heart of SoftBank’s AI ambitions.

🎨 Microsoft Launches Copilot 3D to Instantly Turn Images into 3D Models

Microsoft’s new Copilot 3D can transform 2D images into detailed, usable 3D models in a single click. Targeted at game developers, animators, and AR/VR creators, the tool promises to streamline workflows and open creative possibilities, from rapid prototyping to immersive world-building.

🛠 Tools of the Day

• Retellio – AI agents for rapid customer research
• MiniMax Speech 2.5 – Voice cloning in 40 languages
• Jules – Google’s async coding agent, now out of beta
• Qwen-Image – Open-source image model with SOTA text rendering

💡 Prompt of the Day

"Create a concise meeting summary for a busy executive, pulling key insights from emails, calendar events, and recent news articles relevant to the meeting topic."

⚡ Quick Hits

• xAI rolls out Grok 4 for free, adds image-to-video “long press” feature
• OpenAI’s o3 sweeps Kaggle chess tourney, tops DeepSeek, Grok, and Gemini
• Tesla shuts down Dojo supercomputer team to focus on AI chips
• States of Jersey Police starting to look into using AI to help fight crime

📝 TLDR

GPT-5’s rollout woes push OpenAI into damage control, an ex-OpenAI researcher turns investor with $1.5B in AI bets, Microsoft makes 3D modeling a one-click task, and Google/NASA bring AI healthcare to space.

See you tomorrow,
David