In partnership with

GM! It’s Brett again. Ryan Gilbert from workspaces.xyz reached out recently to feature my workspace in the newsletter. But frankly it doesn't stack up to the other beautiful workspaces in the newsletter, so I'm looking to make it better. Does anyone have any recommendations for standing desks and chairs?

🏠 AI

Vidu

We now have a new Chinese text-to-video model called Vidu developed by ShengShu-AI and Tsinghua University. It's clearly competing with Sora, and doesn't feel like it's "miles behind".

The core technology behind Vidu is the Universal Vision Transformer (U-ViT) architecture, which integrates diffusion and transformer models – somewhat similar to Sora (but we don't know the exact technical details behind how Vidu works).

It's currently able to generate 16-second videos at 1080p.

Their demo reel featured some shots similar to what Sora had generated.

One particular example that stands out is the "Sora lady" walking on a Tokyo street at night – a scene that both Sora and Vidu have generated.

Vidu’s version is at 00:42. This is Sora’s version.

Sora's version appears more realistic, but Vidu's interpretation is still commendable.

Interesting times ahead. We'll know better once we can access both Sora and Vidu.

The Big Picture: China is catching up quickly - in the last week alone they launched the Astribot (a household robot that can cook, clean, and do laundry), a new version of their LLM (which beats GPT4 on nearly all benchmarks), and now this new text-to-video model, Vidu.

Modernize your marketing with AdQuick

AdQuick unlocks the benefits of Out Of Home (OOH) advertising in a way no one else has. Approaching the problem with eyes to performance, created for marketers with the engineering excellence you’ve come to expect for the internet.

Marketers agree OOH is one of the best ways for building brand awareness, reaching new customers, and reinforcing your brand message. It’s just been difficult to scale. But with AdQuick, you can easily plan, deploy and measure campaigns just as easily as digital ads, making them a no-brainer to add to your team’s toolbox.

Learn more now.

🤝 THE LATEST IN…

TECH

• Meta loses $200B in value after zuck’s cash-bleeding plans.

• AWS, Google to deploy more than $14B in Indiana for their data centers.

• Elon heads to China for self-driving approvals for Tesla.

• What happens when a social media app like TikTok is banned.

AI

• Apple in talks with OpenAI to integrate gen AI into the next iPhone OS, iOS 18.

• Top tech CEOs, including Sam Altman, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, and Jensen Huang, join an AI safety board to advise the U.S. government on protecting critical services from AI-related disruptions.

• Saudi Arabia is investing billions to become a leading force in AI and tech.

• Adobe plans to integrate full AI image generation into Photoshop later this year.

SCIENCE

• A study from the University of Warwick suggests that dietary choices significantly impact brain health, with a balanced diet linked to better cognitive function and overall well-being.

• New synthetic cells with DNA-based cytoskeletons mimic living cells and offer the potential for advanced synthetic biology applications.

• The Chinese Academy of Sciences has released highly detailed geological maps of the Moon which will aid in lunar research and exploration.

• Study reveals varying trust levels in scientists across 45 fields, hinging on competence and morality.

CRYPTO

• Runes, a new Bitcoin-based protocol that can support fungible tokens like meme coins, has surged in popularity.

• Bitcoin falls below $63,000 amidst stagflation fears.

• There's a $1.25 billion Pyth token unlock next month.

• Lone bitcoin miner wins the full $219,000 block reward.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

Raise: Augment, an AI coding assistant startup, raised $227M in Series B funding to accelerate product development and expand its capabilities to compete with GitHub’s Copilot.

Stat: 39%. The percentage decrease in pre-seed/seed stage investments during Q1 2024 compared to Q1 2023.

Rabbit Hole: Should you be the CEO? (Garry Tan)

🤩 MONDAY MOTIVATION

“Most of our regrets are acts of omission, they're things we didn't try."

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

The best resources we recently came across that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

🌐 Garple helps you pick from a portfolio of short, memorable and easy-to-say domain names that nobody else is using.

📞 Paragon turns your sales calls into CRM data automatically.

⚙️ Duckie can be the next AI technical support that you can hire.

❓️ AI GENERATED OR NOT

Last week’s answer: If you guessed AI-generated… you were wrong.

REACH 40K+ FOUNDERS, INVESTORS & OPERATORS

If you’re interested in advertising with us, send an email over to [email protected] with the subject “Homescreen Ads”.