NerdNews

OpenAI has closed a $40 billion funding round, valuing the company at $300 billion post-money. The round was led by SoftBank, with participation from Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive. The funding will be used to push the frontiers of AI research, scale compute infrastructure, and deliver more powerful tools for ChatGPT's 500 million weekly users.

Apple introduces Priority Notifications, allowing AI to highlight time-sensitive notifications. Apple Intelligence expands to EU, with new features like Image Playground and Mac updates. Available in new languages, including French, German, and Spanish.

Apple introduces Apple Intelligence to the Vision Pro with visionOS 2.4, featuring AI-powered writing tools, image generation, and spatial experiences. The update also includes a new Apple Vision Pro app for iPhone and expanded language support.

Runway has released Gen-4, a new video-generating AI model that can create consistent characters, locations, and objects across scenes. The model can utilize visual references and instructions to generate new images and videos with consistent styles and subjects. Gen-4 is available to individual and enterprise customers and has the potential to disrupt the film and TV industry.

Microsoft's AI-powered Security Copilot discovered 20 previously unknown vulnerabilities in GRUB2, U-Boot, and Barebox open-source bootloaders. The flaws include integer and buffer overflows, and could allow attackers to bypass security protections and execute arbitrary code on devices. The vulnerabilities were found in a large and complex codebase, and Microsoft says Security Copilot accelerated the discovery process, saving approximately 1 week of time.

Amitai Stern presents two cluster topologies, burst index and burst cluster, to achieve cost-saving autoscaling in OpenSearch. He explains the challenges of autoscaling unstructured data systems and shares architectural patterns to optimize resource utilization and handle fluctuating loads effectively.

This article provides a tutorial on using AWS Secrets Manager to securely store and manage sensitive data such as database credentials, API keys, and other secrets. It covers the features of Secrets Manager, how to create and manage secrets, and how to access them from applications, CI workflows, and Kubernetes clusters. The article also includes a cheat sheet for common use cases and a tutorial on using the External Secrets Operator to access secrets from Kubernetes clusters.

Multicloud architecture poses unique security challenges, including greater attack surface, identity and access management issues, and lack of standardized security policies. Best practices include using centralized IAM/SSO, building centralized monitoring, using open-source cloud-agnostic tools, and implementing infrastructure-as-code security.

SOPS is an open-source encrypted files editor that automates encryption and decryption with various key management services like AWS KMS, HashiCorp Vault, and PGP. It supports multiple file formats, including YAML, JSON, and ENV, and provides features like key groups, auditing, and publishing. SOPS is not a secrets manager but can be used as a quick solution to store sensitive data in encrypted files.

This article discusses the importance of securely handling secrets in CI/CD pipelines, and provides two solutions: storing secrets within the CI/CD systems and using a secret manager with OIDC/short-lived tokens. It also provides examples with GitHub Actions and GitLab CI.

Nvidia has announced new AI PC boxes, including the DGX Station and DGX Spark, which offer high-performance computing for AI developers and data scientists. The DGX Spark is a compact desktop box with a GB10 Grace Blackwell system-on-chip and 128 GB of unified system memory, while the DGX Station is a more powerful workstation with a GB300 Blackwell Ultra desktop superchip and 784 GB of unified memory. Analysts believe Nvidia is trying to expand its reach in the enterprise market, but it's unclear if these new products will disrupt the traditional PC market.

Retym, a US chipmaker, has raised $75M in Series D funding from Spark Capital, Mayfield, and Kleiner Perkins to develop a programmable coherent digital signal processing chip for data centers, aiming to improve communication speed and efficiency in the face of rising AI workloads.

Temporal, a microservices orchestration platform, has raised $146 million in a Series C round led by Tiger Global, with a flat valuation of $1.72 billion. The company plans to use the funds to expand its R&D, sales, and marketing efforts, particularly in the area of agentic AI. Temporal's platform is used by companies like Box, Instacart, and Nvidia to manage microservices and support AI use cases.

Amazon introduces Nova Act, a general-purpose AI agent that can control a web browser, allowing it to perform simple actions like ordering food or making reservations. The Nova Act SDK is available for developers to build agent prototypes. Amazon claims Nova Act outperforms agents from OpenAI and Anthropic in internal tests.

OpenAI has raised $40 billion in a new investment round led by SoftBank, valuing the company at $300 billion. The funding will be used to support the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) that benefits all of humanity. OpenAI plans to receive $10 billion upfront and the remaining $30 billion by the end of the year, pending its conversion to a for-profit company.

The AT Protocol, underlying technology of Bluesky, is being used to develop dozens of applications for social experiences, including photo and video-sharing apps, livestreaming, feed builders, and more. These apps aim to provide an open social web alternative to centralized services, giving users control over their data and experiences.

A new malware variant called RESURGE has been discovered, exploiting a critical vulnerability in Ivanti Connect Secure appliances. The malware leverages a stack-based buffer overflow flaw to create web shells, manipulate system files, and survive system reboots. It also injects itself into legitimate processes and creates SSH tunnels for command-and-control communication. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released a Malware Analysis Report and recommends immediate action, including factory resets and credential resets, to mitigate the threat.

The EU Commission will invest €1.3bn in cybersecurity and AI projects over the next three years, focusing on cyber resilience, AI development, and digital innovation. The funding will support various initiatives, including the EU Cybersecurity Reserve, AI Factories, and European Digital Innovation Hubs.

Oura's AI-powered wellness advisor is a contextual chatbot that provides personalized advice and guidance to users. It can help users track their health and wellness, and offer suggestions for improvement. The advisor is available to current Oura subscribers and is part of the company's efforts to integrate AI into its products.

France's competition regulator has fined Apple $162 million for its App Tracking Transparency system, which it claims allows the company to abuse its dominant position in the mobile app market. The regulator argues that the system makes using third-party apps on iOS 'excessively complex' compared to Apple's first-party apps.