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Thursday’s issue is in partnership with…

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🔓 Thursday’s AI Report:

1. 💥 Microsoft’s quantum computer breakthrough

2. 💼 In partnership with Innovating with AI

3. 🔪 Trump slashes 500 AI jobs

4. 🐇 Rabbit reveals AI agent

5. 🔏 In partnership with Incogni

6. ⚙️ Trending AI Tools

7. 🏗️ Practical AI Applications

8. 📑 Recommended Resources

Read Time: 5 minutes

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📈 AI STOCK TRACKER

AI and tech stocks experienced some modest gains, with the S&P 500 rising 0.2% to a record close, driven by a 1.25% increase in Microsoft shares following advancements in quantum computing, while other major tech stocks saw slightly mixed performances.

LATEST IN AI

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💥 Microsoft’s quantum computer breakthrough

🚨 Our Report — Microsoft has revealed the world’s first quantum chip—Majorana 1—that’s powered by a new material (called a topoconductor) that uses the principles of quantum mechanics to process information and perform calculations much faster than regular chips in regular computers can, taking us a step closer to developing quantum computers which can solve industrial-scale, real-world problems—like unlocking discoveries in drugs or chemistry, for example—which was something which many experts (including NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang) felt was decades away, not years, as Microsoft now believes, with its huge breakthrough.

🔓 Key Points:

• Microsoft's topoconductor material creates a new state of matter (that’s not a solid, liquid, or gas) that can produce quick, small, reliable, and scalable qubits—the delicate building blocks for quantum computers.

• Qubits are unscaleable/prone to error, so Microsoft believes this breakthrough is the pathway to developing quantum systems that can scale to 1M qubits (the threshold for quantum computers to deliver real-world solutions).

• The Majorana 1 chip isn’t ready for commercialization, as Microsoft is running a small-scale production operation (instead of using a 3rd-party), but it will be collaborating with Labs/Universities to continue its research.

🔐 Relevance — Microsoft has spent nearly two decades researching and developing this chip, and its topoconductor material has the potential to be as revolutionary as the development of the semiconductor—which made smartphones, computers, and electronic devices possible—although experts feel more data is needed before the significance of this breakthrough and the effect on quantum computing can be properly determined.

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TOGETHER WITH INNOVATING WITH AI

💼 Want to become an AI Consultant?

The AI consulting market is about to grow by a factor of 8X – from $6.9B to $54.7B in 2032.

But how does an AI enthusiast become an AI consultant?

How well you answer that question makes the difference between just “having AI ideas” and being handsomely compensated for your contribution to an organization’s AI transformation.

Thankfully, you don’t have to go it alone – our friends at Innovating with AI have welcomed 300 new students into The AI Consultancy Project, their new program that trains you to build a business as an AI consultant.

Some of the highlights current students are excited about:

• The tools and frameworks to find clients and deliver top-notch services

• A 6-month plan to build a 6-figure AI consulting business

• Students getting their first AI client in as little as 3 days

And as a reader of The AI Report, you get early access to the next enrollment cycle.

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🔪 Trump slashes 500 AI jobs

🚨 Our Report — After reversing Bidens AI Executive Order on his first day at the White House, and calling Biden’s $53B AI CHIP initiative “so bad,” President Trump is preparing to make huge staff cuts across The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which was responsible for implementing key initiatives under the Biden administration, including the AI CHIP initiative and setting standards for safe AI development.

🔓 Key Points:

• Reportedly, around 500 NIST staff are "bracing to be fired imminently," which is expected to gut the entire AI Safety Institute (AISI), which was responsible for evaluating the security of emerging AI models.

• The cuts will impact more than AI safety and regulation, as those involved in the CHIPS initiative (which incentivized and funded AI chip manufacturing and development in the US) are also facing the chop.

• Trump noticeably didn’t include any staff from the AISI at the Paris AI Summit last week—which focused on AI safety—and the cuts come just weeks after the AISI Director stepped down, due to political pressure.

🔐 Relevance — Many have been left confused by Trump’s decision—especially if “most staff” working on the CHIPS initiative will be fired—as Trump has previously been very vocal about AI chip production being the key to gaining an AI advantage over China.

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🐇 Rabbit reveals AI agent

• As Humane and its AI Pin die a slow death, Rabbit, the makers of the Rabbit R1 (also positioned as a smartphone alternative) have shown they’re very much alive and kicking after revealing a “versatile, Android agent.” 

• Engineers showed how the agent can control apps on Android tablets (which the R1 was supposed to do a year ago, but couldn’t), although they didn’t use an R1 device to demo this, they inputted commands via a laptop.

• The demo showed the agent finding videos, searching for recipes, and adding items to a Google Keep shopping list, however, it was slow at times and was prone to error, indicating there’s still work to be done.

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TOGETHER WITH INCOGNI

AI is fueling a scammer's paradise. Protect your personal info—get it off the web now!

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Scammers use your personal data, often bought legally from data brokers who sell your phone number, DOB, SSN, and more. Incogni scrubs your data from the web, taking on 200+ data brokers on your behalf.

Unlike others, Incogni deletes your info from all broker types, including people search sites where anyone can get your details for a few bucks.

Plus: AI Tool Report readers get an exclusive 55% off all annual plans with the code AITOOL

TRENDING AI TOOLS

1. Clay combines data from 100+ data sources to enable deep customer research so you can target customers with fewer messages ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5 (G2)

2. Kin is a personal AI that provides personalized support and guidance

3. Theo collates business information into an AI-ready format

PRACTICAL AI

LIVE Q&A

❗ Tomorrow: Live Q&A with AI Agent Expert: Jake George

❓ Who: Jake George. Jake is an AI agent expert and founder of Agentic Brain, which builds custom AI agents that understand your business and are trained on cutting-edge data and tactics, so you can automate your pipeline without increasing headcount.

⌚ When: Friday 21st February, at 11 AM EST

🎓 Where: Skool

🙋‍♂️ What: Tomorrow, and every Friday, AI agent expert, Jake George, will be going Live, on Skool, to answer any question you have about AI agents.

‼️For more information about this, and our future Live AI Q&A sessions, visit us at Skool.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

STARTUPS

Name: Read AI
Value: $450M
Funding raised: $31M (Series A)

Read AI is a tool that measures the engagement of online meeting attendees with AI, NLP, and computer vision technology with a real-time dashboard that includes detailed insights like attendee engagement scores, talk-time of each participant, and live sentiment analysis.

PODCASTS

Deep Research: Perplexity vs Google vs OpenAI

This podcast is a deep-dive into three of the most popular AI models—developed by Perplexity, Google, and OpenAI—specifically comparing each model’s deep research features.

QUICK HITS

• Meta reveals route for global AI subsea cable

• Mistral’s Le Chat gets 1M downloads in 14 days

• Google releases “Career Dreamer” to explore jobs

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