Fake bands, Microsoft layoffs & more (July 3, 2025)

Good morning!

The AI world is evolving faster than your favorite playlist. Today, we're talking billion-dollar raises, a band that faked its way to 500k Spotify streams, and the LLM that might just know your next move better than you do.

Let’s dive in👇

💼 Big Moves, Big Money

🧑‍💻 Microsoft Cuts 9,000 Jobs to Supercharge AI

Microsoft is laying off 4% of its workforce, about 9,000 employees, to redirect spending toward AI infrastructure. With $80B committed to data centers, it's clear: GenAI is no longer an experiment, it's core strategy.

📈 Surge AI Seeks $1B Raise at $15B Valuation

Surge AI is capitalizing on the gold rush for training data. The startup, which supplies top-tier datasets for LLM tuning, is reportedly raising $1B at a $15B valuation. With AI appetite exploding, data is the new oil.

💖 Lovable Eyes $2B Valuation for Its “Vibe Coding” Platform

AI startup Lovable is reportedly closing a $150M round at a near-$2B valuation. Its vibe-centric app builder lets creators skip the code and build with feeling. It's part SaaS, part playground, and it’s catching fire.

🎸 AI in the Wild

🎧 AI Band Racks Up 500K Streams Before Getting Caught

Meet The Velvet Sundown, a band that hit 500k monthly listeners on Spotify before being exposed as a Suno-generated hoax. They used AI vocals and zero social footprint, stirring up a fresh debate: if the song slaps, does it matter who (or what) made it?

🧠 Centaur LLM Thinks Like You (Maybe Better)

Trained on millions of real human decisions, the new Centaur model simulates human judgment with eerie precision. It beat 31/32 tasks compared to traditional models and is open source for anyone to experiment with. The brain may be less mysterious than we hoped.

🎥 Baidu’s MuseSteamer Enters the Video Race

Baidu’s new MuseSteamer generates synced video, sound, and dialogue in 10-second bursts, and they just open-sourced their Ernie LLM. The global AI race isn't slowing, and China’s closing in fast.

🛠️ Tools of the Day

• Higgsfield Soul – Ultra-realistic image generation
• Olive – Prompt-to-dashboard in minutes
• Rime – Humanlike voice AI with personality
• AutoHive – AI agents for workflow automation

🎯 Prompt of the Day

Customer Research Deep Dive
“You are a customer research expert. Give me 10 frustrations, 10 deepest desires, 10 hidden thoughts… [insert your product/topic]. Include audience awareness levels.”

⚡ Quick Hits

• Perplexity’s $200/month Max plan includes Labs, Comet, and Claude Opus 4
• DeepMind teases “playable” Veo environments
• ChatGPT news searches up 212%, but news site traffic down 26%
• OpenAI locks in 4.5 GW of Oracle power capacity
• Similarweb reports AI is overtaking traditional news discovery

📌 TLDR

Lovable is raising on vibes, Microsoft is cutting for compute, Surge AI is monetizing data, and an AI band fooled Spotify, proving the future of creativity is algorithmic. Whether you're coding, listening, or thinking…AI's already there.

See you tomorrow,
David