Welcome back to Daily Zaps, your regularly-scheduled dose of AI news ⚡️ 

Here’s what we got for ya today:

• 🤖 DOGE deploys chatbot for Federal workers

• 💸 AI Startup CoreWeave sets IPO at $2.7B

• ⚖️ Apple sued for false advertising over AI delays

• 📏 Measuring AI’s ability to complete long tasks

Let’s get right into it!

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GOVERNMENT

DOGE deploys chatbot for Federal workers

The General Services Administration (GSA) has launched a new internally developed artificial intelligence tool to assist federal employees with daily tasks, with plans to expand its use across other agencies. Built over 18 months under the Biden administration, the tool emphasizes security and privacy, addressing concerns about relying on commercial AI products.

While staff use is currently optional, GSA sees the tool as a major step forward, comparing it to the introduction of personal computers in the workplace. The Trump administration has expressed support for the tool, and its early rollout is intended to gather feedback for improvements. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, a top adviser to President Trump, has also emphasized AI’s role in making government more efficient, though he denied reports of using AI to assess federal employees’ responses to a recent internal email.

STARTUPS

AI Startup CoreWeave sets IPO at $2.7B

CoreWeave, a cloud AI startup backed by Nvidia, is planning to raise up to $2.7 billion through an IPO, valuing the company at $26 billion, with shares priced between $47 and $55. Microsoft and OpenAI play key roles in CoreWeave’s growth—Microsoft accounted for 62% of 2024 revenue, and OpenAI will receive $350 million in stock as part of a $11.9 billion infrastructure deal.

Founded in 2017, CoreWeave offers high-performance GPU cloud services for AI workloads and reported $1.9 billion in 2024 revenue (a 737% increase from 2023) despite a net loss of $863 million. The company has 32 data centers and around 550 employees and is expanding into Europe with a $2.2 billion investment. CoreWeave, known for launching Nvidia GPUs ahead of competitors, is positioning itself as the go-to cloud platform for large-scale AI projects.

BIG TECH

Apple sued for false advertising over AI delays

Apple is facing a federal class action lawsuit accusing the company of false advertising and unfair competition over its promotion of delayed Apple Intelligence features, including an enhanced Siri. Filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, the lawsuit claims Apple misled consumers by heavily marketing AI features that were not available at launch, driving excitement and premium device sales under false pretenses.

The suit highlights a now-pulled September ad featuring actor Bella Ramsey and argues Apple failed to retract similar misleading claims. Brought by the Clarkson Law Firm, which has also sued Google and OpenAI, this case focuses on AI features that were promised but never delivered.

RESEARCH

Measuring AI’s ability to complete long tasks

A team of researchers at the startup METR has created a new way to measure how capable AI systems are, called the "task-completion time horizon" (TCTH). Instead of just describing what AI models can do, this new method compares how long it takes an AI to finish tasks versus how long it takes a human. For example, older AI models couldn’t complete tasks that humans could finish in one minute, but newer models like Claude 3.7 Sonnet can now complete half of the tasks that usually take humans nearly an hour.

The researchers found that AI is getting better quickly, especially at longer and more complex tasks like programming, cybersecurity, and general reasoning. This new metric could help track AI progress over time and might show when AI is ready to take on even bigger challenges, like helping with scientific discoveries or engineering projects.