Nvidia shows off new chips for 2025

Top News

• Nvidia presents new AI chips: During its annual GTC Conference on Tuesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled a first look at Blackwell Ultra, the company’s latest chip line, along with its next-generation GPUs “Vera Rubin.” (Moving forward, the company hopes to continue introducing new, more powerful chips on an annual basis.) The Vera Rubin GPUs are named after a famed American astronomer who studied galactic rotation curves; next year’s releases will honor famed physicist Richard Feynman.

• Stability model gives 2D images depth and perspective: The company’s new model, Stable Virtual Camera, transforms regular static images into brief video clips tracking through three-dimensional space. The clips can “move” through the fake scene along a pre-set path or dynamically, though some kinds of images will generate errors. Currently, the system — available via the Hugging Face platform — is capped at generating clips up to 1,000 frames.

• Google intros its own Canvas: Google introduced a new interactive AI workspace called Canvas, designed to make collaborations with Gemini on coding and writing projects easier and more efficient. Coincidentally (or not!), OpenAI has a similar tool that also happens to be called Canvas. (Anthropic ALSO has this sort of workspace feature, which it calls “Artifacts”). Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai introduced the new feature with a video demo, creating a simple Tic-Tac-Toe game entirely via text prompts.

TWiST500

Alphabet announced what will potentially rank as its largest-ever acquisition this week, taking over Israeli cybersecurity firm — and TWiST 500 members — Wiz for $32 billion. The current record is held by Google’s 2012 takeover of Motorola Mobility for $12.5B.

Alphabet has long sought to add Wiz to its Google Cloud empire. There were talks of a $23 billion acquisition last summer that fell apart, as Wiz investors were worried about possible antitrust investigations, and CEO Assaf Rappaport opted to explore an IPO possibility instead. (Everyone involved apparently assumes Donald Trump’s FTC will look more favorably on these kinds of mega-deals, though Bloomberg suggests it the proposal could still draw major scrutiny in Washington.)

Perhaps hoping to preempt those antitrust worries, Google already announced that it’s dedicated to maintaining Wiz as a “multicloud platform,” keeping their products available across Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon Web Services and other third-party services.

Google Cloud remains #3 in a hotly-competitive market for cloud computing services, behind both Microsoft and Amazon. The hope is that Wiz, which experienced fast growth over just a few years as companies increasingly moved to cloud-based infrastructures, will provide a competitive edge. - Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2098: We had to record early before Jason got snowed in! So on a special Sunday night This Week in Startups, hear Jason, Alex, and Lon talk Klarna’s big IPO, and whether their interest rates are usurious… PLUS is $300 million too much for a Netflix Original movie? Is the era of remote work, and even remote job interviews, over for good? AND was Mark Rober’s Tesla self-driving experiment entirely fair? All that and MORE on a brand new TWiST!

E2097: Jason and Alex chat with British VC Harry Stebbings about his Project Europe initiative, hoping to return good vibes to the European startup space. PLUS Jason digs into his 2024 startup funding strategies and angel investment advice, and gives his unfiltered thoughts on Sam Altman and OpenAI’s latest maneuver to get around copyright protections.

E2096: This was an episode SO PACKED with fresh news, we needed 3 co-hosts. Jason, Alex, and Lon take on the return of Gawker’s Nick Denton, who now has “skin in the game” and lots of thoughts about EVs. Then there’s serious disagreement about Project Europe: an exciting moment for continental innovation, or just another Y Combinator riff? PLUS Anthropic’s huge revenue jump, Pokémon Go heads to Saudi Arabia, why are X and xAI still different companies, and much much more.

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Angel University

Angel University is back! Jason and Mike, President at LAUNCH, are hosting our next live Angel.University workshop in person on Wednesday, April 23rd, in NYC. Jason will be teaching the strategies he’s used to invest $100M+ in 300+ startups over the past decade. Register at: angel.university.

Founder University

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LAUNCH Accelerator

Applications are open for the 34th cohort of the LAUNCH Accelerator; a 14-week program focused on fundraising and growth. We invest $125K in our accepted companies and help them raise their pre-seed or seed round. Submit your application at LAUNCH Accelerator.

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