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Stephen Van Tran
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Today’s venture capital and startup landscape brings major shifts in the AI market, from Google’s rising challenge to ChatGPT’s dominance to innovative approaches in AI training and strategic acquisitions. The latest developments showcase both the intensifying competition among AI giants and creative new business models emerging across the tech ecosystem.

OpenAI Acquires AI Finance App Roi to Boost Personalized Consumer AI

OpenAI acquired Roi, an AI-powered personal finance app, with only CEO and co-founder Sujith Vishwajith joining the company. Roi will shut down operations by October 15. The move aligns with OpenAI’s growing focus on personalized consumer AI, following acqui-hires like Context.ai, Crossing Minds, and Alex. Roi’s adaptive AI philosophy fits OpenAI’s push into consumer products like Pulse, Sora, and Instant Checkout, as it builds apps that feel more human, personalized, and engaging.

Bezos Predicts Gigawatt Data Centers in Space

Jeff Bezos predicts that within 20 years, companies will construct enormous gigawatt data centers in space, where constant solar power and easier cooling offer an edge over Earth-based facilities. Uninterrupted by clouds or night, solar panels in Earth orbit could provide consistent energy, while the extreme cold of space offers a straightforward way to cool powerful server equipment. The project is commercially unfeasible today because launching thousands of metric tons of solar panels and radiators would require well over 150 launches and cost tens of billions of dollars.

Google Gemini Gains Ground on ChatGPT

Google Gemini is gaining significant ground in the AI market, with its share of generative AI traffic more than doubling from 6.5% to 13.7% over the last twelve months. Although ChatGPT still commands the market, its share of generative AI traffic has dropped from 87.1% to 73.8%, showing a clear decline in its overall dominance. The rest of the market remains fragmented, with competitors like DeepSeek, Perplexity, Grok, Claude, and Microsoft’s Copilot each holding less than 4% of the generative AI traffic.

Discord Breach Leaks User Data and Photo IDs

Hackers compromised a third-party customer service provider, exposing Discord users’ personally identifying information like real names, usernames, email addresses, and other contact details provided to the support team. The attackers also gained access to photos of government-issued identification documents and partial billing info, which included payment type, purchase history, and the last four credit card digits. The incident also compromised IP addresses, plus the full messages and attachments that people sent to Discord’s support agents when seeking help with their accounts.

LinkedIn Sues Company Scraping Millions of Profiles

LinkedIn filed a lawsuit against software company ProAPIs, accusing it of operating millions of fake accounts to scrape member data and then sell the information to third-party customers for a fee. The court filing claims ProAPIs creates thousands of fake accounts daily to evade detection, allowing it to copy user information located behind the social media platform’s password wall. ProAPIs allegedly charges clients up to $15,000 per month for the scraped data while also using LinkedIn’s trademark to falsely suggest that its product is endorsed by the social network.

xAI Pays Gamers $100 an Hour to Train Grok

Elon Musk’s xAI is hiring a “Video Games Tutor” to train the Grok chatbot on video game concepts, mechanics, and generation, paying between $45 and $100 per hour. The position requires proficiency in game design or computer science and the ability to analyze gaming content using proprietary software, not just experience as a proficient gamer. This job can be fully remote for people with strong self-motivation, a surprising work-from-home option for an Elon Musk company that also comes with medical coverage benefits.

What to Expect at OpenAI’s DevDay 2025

OpenAI’s third annual DevDay kicks off October 6 in San Francisco with over 1,500 attendees and a keynote from Sam Altman, followed by a fireside chat with Apple designer Jony Ive. The event may feature updates on OpenAI’s rumored AI browser, device collaboration with Ive, and potential GPT Store announcements. The keynote will stream live on OpenAI’s YouTube at 10 a.m. PT; other sessions—including Greg Brockman’s “Developer State of the Union”—will be posted later that day.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that Sora will introduce “opt-in” copyright controls, reversing its earlier opt-out approach for rightsholders. The update will give studios and creators more control over how their characters are used, allowing them to specify permissions or prohibit use entirely. Altman also hinted at a new monetization model for Sora, potentially including revenue sharing with rightsholders as the app continues its viral rise.

Notable Startup Funding

Supabase, a San Francisco-based provider of a Postgres development platform, raised $100M in Series E funding at a $5 billion valuation. The round was led by Accel and Peak XV with participation from Figma Ventures and others.

Moonlake AI, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research lab, raised $28M in Seed funding. Backers included AIX Ventures, Threshold, NVIDIA Ventures, Jeff Dean (Chief Scientist at Google Research), Steve Chen (Founder of YouTube), Naval Ravikant (Founder of AngelList), Ian Goodfellow (Inventor of GANs), Guillermo Rauch (Founder of Vercel), alongside executives from Hugging Face, Stability AI, DeepMind and OpenAI.

DualEntry, a NYC-based provider of an AI-native ERP platform, raised $90M in Series A funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures with participation from GV (Google Ventures), Contrary, and Vesey Ventures. This brings total funding raised to over $100M in the last 15 months.

New Venture Capital Funds

Wave Function Ventures, a California-based deep tech VC firm, raised $15.1 million for its debut fund. Founded by aerospace engineer and former SpaceX leader Jamie Gull, the fund will back 25 early-stage startups in areas like aerospace, robotics, and nuclear energy. Gull previously co-founded Talyn Air (acquired by Ampaire) and invested in companies like Boom Supersonic and Varda.

The combination of Google’s rising market share, innovative training approaches from xAI, and OpenAI’s strategic acquisitions signals a dynamic shift in how AI companies are positioning themselves for the next phase of competition and growth.