Good morning,

The AI world is waking up from the Black Friday frenzy with fresh records, new model launches, platform changes, and heavyweight funding conversations. Today’s lineup spans consumer behavior, enterprise AI, airline integrations, and the business model realities shaping OpenAI’s future.

Let's dig in👇

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🧭 AI Industry Moves

🛍️ Black Friday Just Hit an $11.8B Online Spending Record

Adobe reported Black Friday online sales hit $11.8 billion thanks to major discounting and surging demand across electronics, apparel, and gaming. The performance shows consumers are still prioritizing deals even with mixed economic signals. It also suggests retailers will lean even harder on AI-driven recommendations and logistics to sustain the momentum into December.

💬 Are Ads Coming to the Free Version of ChatGPT?

OpenAI leak suggests that ads will appear in the free ChatGPT tier starting soon. The shift helps offset rising compute costs and nudges users toward paid plans. It also signals a pivotal moment where AI adopts the same monetization playbook that shaped social media and search.

✈️ OpenAI Partners With Australian Airline

OpenAI is bringing ChatGPT to a major Australian airline’s flight search interface. Travelers will be able to use natural language to find routes, compare options, and generate trip recommendations. It underscores how airlines are accelerating toward conversational booking systems powered by AI copilots.

💸 Big Money, Big Models

🧱 Databricks Is in Talks to Raise $5B at a $134B Valuation

Databricks is reportedly discussing a $5 billion raise at a $134 billion valuation. The raise would cement its position as one of the highest-valued companies in AI infrastructure. If finalized, it could set the tone for one of the largest tech IPOs of the decade.

🧮 HSBC Says OpenAI Is Unlikely to Be Profitable Before 2030

HSBC warned that OpenAI is unlikely to reach profitability before 2030 because its trillion-dollar computing power bill outpaces projected revenue. The analysis suggests that even with enterprise growth and new product lines, the economics of frontier-scale models remain deeply challenged. It adds fuel to the debate over whether massive, compute-heavy LLMs are sustainable without major breakthroughs in efficiency.

🧮 DeepSeek Drops a New Math-Specific AI Model

DeepSeek unveiled its OpenMath model built for symbolic reasoning and structured problem solving. The release gives engineers, scientists, and researchers a specialized tool for theorem proving and algorithmic work. It shows how we’re shifting from generic LLMs to domain-tuned systems that outperform on narrow, high-value tasks.

🧰 Tools of the Day

→ CyberCut, AI-powered code cleanup and optimization
→ Taskade, collaborative AI workspace for multi-device teams
→ Cocoon, smart personal knowledge hub with automated clustering

✏️ Prompt of the Day

“Explain this news article in a single paragraph, then rewrite it as a punchy newsletter story with a 3-sentence limit and a hyperlinked opening phrase.”

⚡ Quick Hits

→ Black Forest Labs raises $300M at a $3.25B valuation.
→ Nvidia partnerswith Synopsys on engineering and marketing collaboration.
→ Opera launches a new AI-powered browser generation.
→ Raindrop raises $15M to detect AI agent failures.
→ Deutsche Telekom signals rising demand for European AI gigafactories.

🧩 TLDR

Black Friday delivered an $11.8B online spending record, DeepSeek launched a precision-tuned math model, and OpenAI is expanding into airline search while preparing to show ads to free-tier users. Databricks is shooting for a massive raise, and HSBC says OpenAI may not see profitability until well into the next decade due to compute costs. The story across all fronts: AI keeps accelerating, but the economics behind it are getting louder.

Closing,
David