Jul 10, 2025
Good morning AI enthusiasts & entrepreneurs,
xAI’s Grok 4 has dropped—and it might be the most controversial and compelling model we’ve seen yet.
On one hand, it’s posting record-breaking performance gains across reasoning and coding benchmarks. On the other, it’s emerging from the shadow of Grok 3’s public failures, including disturbing antisemitic outputs. Elon Musk claims Grok 4 could unlock new physics by year’s end. Critics argue it’s a dangerous acceleration of tech that hasn’t earned the public’s trust. Whatever side you’re on, one thing’s clear: this model is making noise—and the whole world is watching.
In today’s AI news:
xAI debuts Grok 4 after Grok 3’s meltdown
Perplexity launches Comet: a browser for AI-native workflows
OpenAI lands elite engineers from rivals
Top Tools & Quick News
xAI debuts Grok 4 after Grok 3’s meltdown
The News: xAI has released Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy, its most advanced reasoning-first AI models to date—launching under scrutiny following Grok 3’s controversy.
The Details:
Grok 4: Single-agent with voice, vision, and 128K-token context window (256K via API).
Grok 4 Heavy: Multi-agent orchestration for complex reasoning tasks.
Achieves SOTA performance on Arc-AGI-2 and Humanity’s Last Exam, beating Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI’s o3.
Subscriptions: $30/month for Grok 4; $300/month for Grok 4 Heavy.
API: $3M input / $15M output tokens, with 256K context and search.
Why It Matters: Grok 4 showcases the growing power of xAI’s Colossus supercomputer and its ambition to leapfrog AI incumbents. But the release is shadowed by Grok 3’s recent racist and antisemitic remarks, raising serious concerns over AI safety and guardrails. Critics cite xAI’s lack of transparency compared to peers. The controversy, paired with the departure of X CEO Linda Yarino, places Grok 4’s launch under global scrutiny.
Comet browser: AI-native web navigation
The News: Perplexity launched Comet, a new AI-powered web browser designed to shift browsing from manual navigation to intelligent, agentic interaction.
Key Features:
AI Sidebar Assistant: Understands and acts on any webpage—summarizes content, answers questions, automates actions like scheduling and emailing.
Agentic Automation: Executes complex multi-step workflows using natural language commands.
Voice and Natural Language: Enables hands-free browsing and task management through voice prompts.
Chromium-Based: Compatible with Chrome extensions, bookmarks, and settings.
Privacy and Local Processing: Hybrid model with sensitive tasks processed on-device and user-controllable privacy modes.
Why it matters: Comet isn’t just an AI-enhanced browser—it’s a step toward turning the browser into a cognitive agent. By offloading complex or repetitive digital tasks, it reimagines the browsing experience. With WASM-accelerated performance and native ad blocking, Comet challenges Chrome’s grip on the market just as alternatives like Dia and OpenAI’s browser loom. The AI-native web has arrived—and it starts with tools like this.
OpenAI recruits elite engineers from Tesla, Meta, xAI
The News: OpenAI has poached four top engineers from Tesla, xAI, and Meta to reinforce its scaling and infrastructure divisions, particularly its Stargate supercomputing project.
Details:
David Lau (ex-Tesla VP) will lead backend systems and infrastructure.
Uday Ruddarraju + Mike Dalton (formerly of xAI) were instrumental in building Colossus and now join Stargate.
Angela Fan (ex-Meta) strengthens OpenAI’s applied ML research arm.
Why it matters: This hiring spree follows Meta’s aggressive recruitment of OpenAI talent, signaling OpenAI’s first major counter-offensive in the AI talent war. Engineers from Elon Musk's xAI joining OpenAI adds fuel to the fire, as legal and public spats between Musk and OpenAI escalate. These hires represent OpenAI’s determination to maintain its leadership in infrastructure as AGI ambitions intensify across the field.
Today's Top Tools:
Marey – Filmmaker-first AI video model
Veo 3 – Google’s image + audio-to-video model
Higgsfield Soul ID – Personalized character generation
Coachvox – Clone yourself to coach others in your voice
Quick News:
OpenAI is developing a browser with a ChatGPT-style UI, promising real-time search and conversational browsing.
OpenAI’s open-weight language model is expected next week on platforms like Azure and Hugging Face.
Microsoft saved over $500M in call centers through AI, but cut 9,000 jobs as part of AI-driven restructuring.
AI2 launched FlexOlmo, enabling model training without exposing raw data—an important privacy breakthrough.
Gemini AI is rolling out to smartwatches from Pixel, Samsung, and others via Wear OS 4.
OpenAI completed its $6.5B acquisition of Jony Ive’s design firm, io Products, to drive AI-native hardware innovation.
