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Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. A one-time AI power couple is heading back to the negotiation table, with OpenAI and Microsoft hoping to hash out new terms for a partnership that seems to be getting frostier by the week.
With billions in revenue at stake and IPO dreams hanging in the balance, is the relationship that fueled the AI boom about to change fundamentally?
In today’s AI rundown:
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OpenAI, Microsoft rework ‘high-stakes’ partnership
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Pope Leo XIV targets AI as ‘critical challenge’
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Create personalized AI avatars for dynamic content
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AI teaches itself with ‘Absolute Zero’
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4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI & MICROSOFT
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Image source: o3 / The Rundown
The Rundown: OpenAI and Microsoft are reportedly in negotiations to rewrite their partnership’s terms, with OpenAI seeking to cut Microsoft’s revenue as part of its restructuring and Microsoft eyeing access to OpenAI’s tech beyond 2030.
The details:
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Microsoft has invested over $13B in OpenAI and remains a key holdout in plans to convert OpenAI’s business arm into a public benefit corporation (PBC).
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OpenAI is to reduce Microsoft’s revenue share from 20% to a share of 10% by 2030, a year when the company forecasts $174B in revenue.
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The relationship has reportedly cooled as OAI pursues agreements with competitors for Stargate, while also targeting overlapping enterprise customers.
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There is also tension over IP, with Microsoft seeking guaranteed access to OpenAI’s tech beyond the current contract expiration in 2030.
Why it matters: There has been smoke around this partnership for a long time, but the stakes are even more with Microsoft being a primary holdout for OpenAI’s IPO desires and PBC restructuring. With both sides seemingly motivated to get a deal done, it’s possible that contract restructuring helps warm the multi-billion-dollar relationship.
TOGETHER WITH SANA
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The Rundown: Sana Agents provides a no-code platform for deploying AI across your entire organization, enabling teams to automate complex workflows and integrate AI directly into existing tools in minutes, not months.
With Sana Agents, you can:
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Seamlessly connect AI to 100+ platforms, including Slack, Teams, and your CRM
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Build specialized agents for different departments in one intuitive interface
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Ensure enterprise-grade security with zero data leakage
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Slash operational overhead by 10-20X
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AI & THE VATICAN
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Image source: Vatican News
The Rundown: Newly appointed Pope Leo XIV artificial intelligence as one of humanity’s most pressing challenges in his first major address, continuing his predecessor’s focus on the ethical implications of the technology.
The details:
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The first American Pope highlighted AI as posing “new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.”
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He also drew parallels between the AI and Industrial Revolutions, saying the Church must lead in confronting AI’s threats to workers and human dignity.
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His stance follows Pope Francis’ for an international AI treaty and about autonomous weapons systems.
Why it matters: The Vatican’s continued concerns over AI show that the tech’s advancement is moving from niche tech discussions to the forefront of global (and political, as we’ve seen over the past week) concern. With over 1B Catholics worldwide, the Pope’s voice could play a role in helping shape both discourse and policy on AI.
AI TRAINING
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The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to automate content creation by combining ElevenLabs’ voice cloning with HeyGen’s avatar creation tools to create AI videos featuring your own personalized digital twin.
Step-by-step:
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Visit ElevenLabs, select “Professional Voice Clone,” and record 30 minutes of clear audio to create your AI voice.
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Head to HeyGen, click “Create New Avatar,” select “Hyper-Realistic,” and upload a 2-minute high-quality video of yourself.
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Start a new video project in HeyGen, select your avatar, and click “Integrate 3rd party voice” to connect your ElevenLabs voice using your API key.
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Write your script, preview your avatar in action, and generate your final AI video.
Pro tip: You can write scripts in a conversational style with natural pauses and expressions to make your AI avatar presentations more engaging and authentic.
PRESENTED BY VANTA
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The Rundown: Vanta’s free AI Security Assessment gives companies at any stage of AI adoption a structured framework to identify, evaluate, and mitigate potential security vulnerabilities before they become costly problems.
This comprehensive resource helps you:
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Establish governance protocols across your entire AI program
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Address critical considerations from data privacy to incident management
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Demonstrate your AI compliance to potential customers and partners
and join over 10,000 organizations using Vanta to build trust through transparent security practices.
AI RESEARCH
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Image source: Tsinghua University & BIGAI
The Rundown: Researchers from Tsinghua University and BIGAI “Absolute Zero,” a new AI training method where models learn and master complex reasoning tasks on their own through self-play — without needing any human-provided data.
The details:
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The Absolute Zero Reasoner (AZR) autonomously generates its own tasks, solves them, and improves through self-play with no external datasets required.
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The system achieved SOTA results on coding and math benchmarks, surpassing models trained on tens of thousands of expert-labeled examples.
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AZR uses three reasoning modes (deduction, abduction, and induction) to create increasingly harder self-generated challenges to learn.
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Researchers noted an “uh-oh moment” when Llama-3.1 produced chains of thought about “outsmarting intelligent machines,” raising safety concerns.
Why it matters: A technique that allows AI to self-train could eliminate the development barrier of massive, costly human datasets — and given how we are already running out of quality data and systems are already moving beyond human intelligence, this may be a necessity to continue scaling learning.
QUICK HITS
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⚙️ – Delegate coding tasks to cloud-based AI assistants
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🤖 – Hugging Face’s computer-using agent
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🪄 – New reasoning capabilities and image generation tools
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✨ – Amazon’s new tool for optimizing product listings
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🤝 – Partnerships Manager
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📣 – Lead, Communications US
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💼 – Head of Sales
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📊 – Marketing Specialist
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OpenAI a new GitHub connector for its Deep Research feature, allowing the tool to leverage and answer questions about codebases.
Tencent HunyuanCustom, a new open-source AI system that generates customized video from text, images, audio, and video inputs with consistent subjects.
Google “implicit caching,” allowing its Gemini 2.5 models to automatically detect and reuse cached content from API requests for up to 75% cost savings.
Microsoft president Brad Smith that the company’s employees are banned from using DeepSeek models, citing propaganda and data security concerns.
Chinese tech giant Baidu a patent for a system that uses AI to translate data from animal sounds, behavior, and emotional states into human language.
400+ British artists a letter urging PM Keir Starmer to support legislation requiring transparency around using copyrighted materials in AI training.
COMMUNITY
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Join our next workshop on Wednesday, May 14th, at 3 PM EST with Rahul Sonwalkar, founder of Julius AI. In this hands-on live session, you’ll learn how to analyze any dataset using just natural language, no code or spreadsheets required. Discover how Julius AI is helping marketing, finance, and product teams turn raw data into clear, actionable insights at lightning speed.
RSVP . Not a member? Join on a 14-day free trial.
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See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team
