Latest AI News
Amazon hopes to challenge Nvidia more directly by selling its AI chips
If Amazon Web Services has its way, the cloud giant is going to push even deeper into Nvidia’s market, in what might be one of the biggest challenges to Nvidia’s AI chip dominance we’ve seen so far. Amazon’s AI chief Peter DeSantistold Bloombergthat AWS is in talks to sell its AI chip Trainium to other companies for use in data centers. DeSantis declined to specify which companies could be the buyers of such chips. Such talks about selling chips are in the early stages, the company tells TechCrunch, and stem from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’sannual shareholder letterin early April, in which he said the company’s homegrown AI chips were so coveted that he was thinking about selling them. “If our chips business was a standalone business, and sold chips produced this year to AWS and other third parties (as other leading chips companies do), our annual run rate would be ~$50 billion. There’s so much demand for our chips that it’s quite possible we’ll sell racks of them to third parties in the future.” How much of a challenge to Nvidia could Amazon be? A $50 billion competitor wouldn’t exactly tank Nvidia — which is currently on a $326 billion revenue run rate —if it keeps delivering quarters like the last one. But it’s akin toIntel’s annual revenues. AWS has so far resisted selling its AI chips for a lot of reasons. The biggest is that the money AWS actually makes on its chips is a waterfall effect. Sure, it charges customers directly for the AI tokens those chips process on its cloud, but it also gets to charge for a host of other services companies need for their AI apps, including storage, security, networking, and monitoring services. Equally importantly, Amazon has touted the capacity of its chips has been selling out faster than it can produce them. In that same shareholder letter in April,Jassy saidthe current Trainium chip capacity had sold out almost instantly. So too, he said, had the capacity for the next one, Trainium4, which won’t even be available for more than a year. This was before AWSformally added OpenAI to the models it was serving up. So selling its chips to others means it would likely have to leave current customers on waiting lists, unless it could somehow manufacture a surplus of chips through its manufacturing partners such as TSMC. But it would have to miraculously elbow Nvidia out of the way to do that with TSMC, which has recentlysupplanted Appleto become the foundry’s largest customer. AWS spokesperson Doron Aronson (who hosted me during a recent private tour of the AWS chip design facility) also confirmed that AWS may sell these chips. “While we’ve historically declined requests to sell chips directly, Andy noted it’s quite possible we’ll sell racks of them to third parties in the future.” So while Nvidia’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang recently declared thathe’s found a brand new $200 billion market for Nvidiain selling CPUs for AI, not just GPUs — thereby moving into Intel and AMD territory — Jassy clearly has his own chip ambitions: a $50 billion market that would put elbow more directly into Nvidia’s world.
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Pixi’s new iOS app turns text messages into interactive AR experiences
Forget stickers, GIFs, and emoji reactions.Pixiis betting that the next evolution of messaging is interactive augmented reality (AR). The startup launched its messaging-native app on theApp Storeon Wednesday, allowing users to send AI-powered AR characters through iMessage. Instead of appearing as static media, the characters come to life through the recipient’s iPhone camera, where they can react to their surroundings, interact with people, and respond in real time. While AR isn’t new and shiny anymore—companies likeSnaphave created AR filters and lenses for years—Pixi believes its approach is different. By combining AR with on-device AI, its characters can understand what’s happening around them and behave accordingly. A virtual cat, for example, reacts when a real dog walks past. (According to the company, all visual and audio processing remains on the device to preserve user privacy.) Pixi founder Mark Drummond (ex-DreamWorks Animation and ex-Apple) says the app is designed to bring a greater sense of presence and spontaneity to digital conversations. Rather than sending a text to wish someone a Happy Birthday, users can send characters that create a shared experience, turning a simple message into something closer to a digital gift or playful interaction. “The consumer problem we’re solving is thinking of a friend when they’re not present,” he told TechCrunch. “Sometimes the psychology is called pebbling or creative gifting. You’re sharing tokens of affection, basically cards, e-cards, and gifts. That’s your dad, or, in some cases, your granddad’s media. We can do better. We can do something that’s digitally native, and that uses everything we learned about AR on the iPhone.” Earlier this week, Drummond demonstrated the app for us, selecting the cat character, which performed a series of stand-up jokes on his desk. Notably, the cat appeared to respond to Drummond’s facial expressions. For instance, the experience concluded when he smiled, showcasing the character’s ability to perceive emotional cues. At launch, users will have access to a robot, a cat, and an animated envelope character that can react to their voice and “attack” their friends in a playful way. If they move, the envelope will chase them. There are also games like tic-tac-toe and whack-a-mole. Pixi plans to expand beyond just a few characters. The goal is to create a marketplace where studios, brands, and independent creators can share their unique characters for users to choose from. The company envisions this being used for events like movie premieres or product launches, allowing characters to generate excitement, such as when M&Ms release a new flavor. Drummond also mentioned introducing Alice in Wonderland as a character option, as she is an open intellectual property. He pointed out that “our Alice character needs to react to objects that she sees on your desktop in an ‘Alice-consistent’ way,” to demonstrate to partners how their creations will interact with the technology. In the future, Pixi hopes to allow users to create their own characters and personalities. “Part of our plan is to open up those generative AI capabilities to our [users], so they can prompt their way to say something, like, ‘I want a blue blob that threatens my friend and growls at them and keeps chasing them on the phone,’” Drummond explained. To send a character to your friend, download the app on iOS and use iMessage by tapping the plus sign button in the lower left corner. No installation is required to receive a Pixi message. Initially, the app will be available only for iPhone models 11 and newer, but there are plans to expand to Android devices and messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram in the future. Also, while the app is free for users, brands will have the option to charge for their characters if they choose. “We’re going to encourage people to do it for free, because then people become your own brand ambassadors. You’re putting them in charge of using your characters to tell their own stories,” Drummond said.
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Inside Indian Hospitals' Multi-Billion Dollar AI Pivot
Hospitals across India are integrating AI into clinical and administrative workflows, but adoption remains uneven.
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Pramaana Labs Raises $27 Million in Seed Round Led by Khosla Ventures
Pramaana Labs has raised $27 million in a seed round led by Khosla Ventures to build AI verification systems for regulated industries.
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Niqo Robotics To Represent India at Bharat Innovates 2026 in France
Indian agricultural robotics firm Niqo Robotics has been selected to represent India at the government’s flagship deep-tech conclave in France.
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Midjourney Enters Healthcare With 60-Second Full-Body Scanner and Spa Concept
Midjourney aims to deploy more than 50,000 scanners globally by 2031, with a capacity of up to 1 billion scans per month.
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Mistral AI Wants to Help India Build Sovereign AI, Says CEO After Meeting PM Modi
Mensch said Mistral AI is working to develop sovereign AI capabilities across different regions and sees an opportunity to support India’s ambitions in the space.
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Indian IT is Tearing Up Its Billing Manual, But Unsure What to Charge Next
As AI strips away the visible effort behind a line of code or a closed ticket, Indian IT is busy figuring out whether outcome-based pricing is the best fit.
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Reliance Taps Databricks to Build Intelligence as Ambani Commits to Democratising AI
Reliance Industries is working with Databricks to unify enterprise data across its businesses in India.
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How Avataar.ai Built an AI Video Model That Costs Just 48 Paise Per Second
Built on Alibaba’s Wan 2.2, Varya cuts video generation time from roughly 1,230 seconds to 45 seconds through a novel distillation approach.
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Anthropic Becomes First AI Startup to Join Frontier's Carbon Removal Initiative
Anthropic joined Frontier, a carbon-removal coalition backed by major technology companies, as the group announced an additional $915 million in funding commitments.
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AI Already Performs 37% of Entry-Level Tasks in India, Cognizant-Pearson Study Finds
In India, 63% of organisations have allocated time for AI training, compared with 49% in the United States.
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