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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
Samsung is betting big on bipedal robots, and its latest $181M Rainbow Robotics acquisition shows that it’s dead serious about bringing humanoids into the home.
With the Korean tech giant ready to combine its AI-infused products with advanced robotics, your next home assistant might just walk on two legs. Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
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Samsung makes big robotics move
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ByteDance ups image generation efficiency
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Create AI product videos with Ingredients
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Rubik’s AI releases first model family of 2025
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5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
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More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
SAMSUNG
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Image source: Rainbow Robotics
The Rundown: Samsung Electronics just a major investment into Rainbow Robotics, expanding its presence in humanoid robotics development and positioning itself as a serious competitor in the increasingly crowded sector.
The details:
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The tech giant will invest $181M to become Rainbow’s controlling shareholder, bringing the Korean robotics firm under its corporate umbrella.
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A newly created Future Robotics division will report directly to Samsung’s CEO, and pioneering roboticist Dr. Jun-Ho Oh will head the initiative.
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The move unites Samsung’s AI tech with Rainbow’s robotics background, which includes breakthroughs in bipedal movement with its Hubo robot.
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Samsung also plans to implement Rainbow’s robotic systems in manufacturing facilities while advancing humanoid development.
Why it matters: While competition in robotics has grown fierce, Samsung’s vast resources and web of consumer products seem like a perfect match for levelling up toward their own practical humanoid robots. While it sounds like sci-fi, consumers will likely soon have no shortage of household humanoid robots to choose from.
TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT
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The Rundown: Maximize your workplace potential with HubSpot’s ChatGPT guide – your roadmap to AI-driven success for curious minds.
With this guide, you’ll learn to:
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Streamline daily tasks with AI, from inbox management to product planning
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Apply ChatGPT effectively and ethically in our work environment
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Stay ahead of the curve by integrating AI tools into your skill set
now and start transforming your workday with ChatGPT.
BYTEDANCE
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Image source: ByteDance
The Rundown: ByteDance researchers just 1.58-bit FLUX, a new approach to AI model compression that dramatically reduces the computational demands of state-of-the-art image generation while maintaining output quality.
The details:
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The team compressed the FLUX system to three simple values (positive, negative, or zero) instead of complex numbers, reducing storage by 8x.
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Specialized software helps the compressed system run using 5x less computer memory while producing faster generation speeds.
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The compression works without requiring access to training images; instead, it uses self-supervision from the original model.
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Despite extreme compression, tests on industry benchmarks like GenEval and T2I Compbench show comparable image quality to the full model.
Why it matters: While AI systems across the board continue to accelerate in capabilities, equally important is ensuring compute requirements don’t become a bottleneck for real-world use cases. This breakthrough, at least for images, shows AI can drastically reduce requirements without compromising quality.
AI TRAINING
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The Rundown: Pika Labs’ new Ingredients feature lets you upload specific subjects, products, and styles to generate consistent AI marketing videos.
Step-by-step:
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Head over to the Pika Labs’ .
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Locate the Ingredients feature and upload your product images, style references, and backgrounds.
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Write a clear prompt describing your desired scene.
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Generate your video using Creative or Precise modes to tell Pika how much to limit its creative interpretation.
Pro tip: For best results, use high-quality images of your product against a clean background.
RUBIK’S AI
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Image source: Rubik’s AI
The Rundown: Rubik’s AI just 2025 with the first model launch of the year, and its Sonus-1 family of AI models features four versions designed for various use cases while achieving performances that rival top competitors on key benchmarks.
The details:
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The Sonus-1 family includes four model varieties: Mini (speed), Air (everyday use), Pro (complex tasks), and Reasoning (advanced problem-solving).
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Sonus-1 Reasoning excels at math problem-solving, achieving 97% on the GSM-8k benchmark and 91.8% on advanced mathematics tests.
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In general knowledge tests, the Pro version with Reasoning reaches 90.15% on MMLU, surpassing many leading competitors and nearly matching o1.
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The system also integrates real-time search capabilities and Flux image generation, allowing for up-to-date info and visual creation within the platform.
Why it matters: The first model release of 2025 is impressive, coming from a completely unknown company (there is basically zero information about it, so take these benchmarks with a grain of salt for now). However, if the capabilities hold, this type of performance may be an early preview of how wild 2025 will be.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
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🎁 – Exa-powered AI analyzes your Twitter profile and gives you a 2024 recap of favorite topics, top tweets, and more
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🤝 – Turn any job on LinkedIn into a mock interview instantly with AI-guided scenarios
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📊 – Create personalized, no-code dashboards and portals connected with your favorite tools like Jira, Google, Microsoft Teams and more
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⚙️ – Streamline data workflows and automate pipelines effortlessly with real-time AI-powered transformations
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🗣️ – Generate engaging podcasts to understand GitHub repositories
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💬 – Junior Conversational AI Design, Intern
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🛠️ – Design Verification Engineer
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🌎 – Global Technical Support Manager
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☁️ – Cloud Alliance Partner Manager
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🧠 – AI Engineer, Large-Scale Training
QUICK HITS
LG its new line of AI-powered gram laptops, featuring both on-device and cloud-based AI capabilities — with the 2025 lineup including new Pro models powered by Intel’s next-gen processors and Microsoft’s Copilot+.
Samsung is with Instacart to enable direct grocery ordering from its 2025 Bespoke refrigerator screens, which will utilize ‘AI Vision Inside’ tech to recognize and reorder food items for same-day delivery.
X Elon Musk’s previously reported end-of-2024 release for Grok-3, with recently discovered code potentially at a possible 2.5 release planned instead.
AI startup Rembrand a $23M Series A funding round to expand its AI-powered virtual product placement tech from social media to connected TV, with the company planning to launch both self-service and professional models.
Google is reportedly Anthropic’s Claude to benchmark and evaluate Gemini’s performance, with internal documents revealing detailed response comparisons between the competing models.
An AI-powered robot named Captcha the first humanoid to teach a class, taking students at a high school in Germany through a day of lectures and debates.
THAT’S A WRAP
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team
