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

Here’s what we got for ya today:

• 🤖 Sam Altman and OpenAI's pursuit of AGI

• 👾 Nvidia announces $3,000 personal AI supercomputer

• 🐶 CES 2025: Showcases more robots and AI than ever before

• 📸 Getty Images and Shutterstock to merge

Let’s get right into it!

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STARTUPS

OpenAI's pursuit of AGI

In a blog post, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, reflects on the company's journey over the past nine years, highlighting its transition into a "next paradigm" of AI models that prioritize computing power at inference time. OpenAI's breakthrough came with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, which transformed it into a fast-scaling product company. Despite success, Altman acknowledges challenges, including his 2023 firing due to governance issues, the departure of key team members, and the immense pressure of scaling in uncharted territory.

OpenAI's pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI)—systems outperforming humans in most economically valuable tasks—has shifted to focus on agentic systems and superintelligence, which Altman believes could solve problems like curing cancer. However, this requires significant resources, as AI development is increasingly capital-intensive. Altman remains optimistic, seeing superintelligence as the next frontier to drive innovation, abundance, and prosperity, while emphasizing the importance of responsible governance to ensure AI benefits humanity.

BIG TECH

Nvidia announces $3,000 personal AI supercomputer

Nvidia has unveiled Project Digits, a personal AI supercomputer launching in May, designed to bring powerful AI capabilities to individual users, including data scientists, researchers, and students. Powered by the new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, Project Digits is compact enough to fit on a desk, yet capable of handling AI models with up to 200 billion parameters, with a starting price of $3,000.

The system offers 128GB of unified memory, up to 4TB of storage, and 1 petaflop of AI performance at FP4 precision. It supports frameworks like PyTorch and Python, and includes Nvidia’s AI software library for model development and deployment. Two systems can be linked to process models with up to 405 billion parameters. With the Grace Blackwell architecture and seamless integration with Nvidia's AI Enterprise platform, users can develop AI locally and deploy it to cloud or data center environments. This innovation democratizes AI supercomputing, empowering individuals to shape the future of AI.

TECH

CES 2025: Showcases more robots and AI than ever before

AI took center stage at CES 2025, where over 4,500 exhibitors showcased innovative gadgets like driverless tractors, smart TVs, and robots, all enhanced with cutting-edge AI. Samsung unveiled its "Home AI" roadmap, aiming to seamlessly connect household devices to anticipate user needs, alongside its long-awaited AI companion Ballie and AI-powered TVs capable of generating recipes or monitoring pets.

Other highlights included John Deere's fully autonomous farming machinery. Robotics also made a splash, with highlights like Yukai Engineering's Mirumi robot, Enchanted Tools’ caregiving Mirokai, and Tombot’s realistic puppy robots for companionship. Companies like Dell introduced unique devices, such as monitors with directional audio tracking.

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Getty Images and Shutterstock to merge

Getty Images and Shutterstock have announced a merger in a cash-and-stock deal, creating a combined entity valued at $3.7 billion. Getty Images, the larger of the two, will retain its name, with its shareholders owning 54.7% of the new company and Shutterstock shareholders owning 45.3%. As part of the deal, Shutterstock shareholders can opt for cash, Getty Images stock, or a mix of both.

The merger comes as artificial intelligence reshapes the stock image industry, presenting both opportunities, such as licensing content for AI training, and threats from generative AI tools like DALL-E and MidJourney. Getty Images CEO Craig Peters described the move as transformational, promising enhanced content offerings, event coverage, and new technologies. The deal may attract antitrust scrutiny, making its regulatory future uncertain.