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🔓 Monday’s AI Report:

1. 🚀 OpenAI’s power shift

2. 💰 In partnership with Acres

3. 🧐 Is Grok really telling the truth?

4. 💡 DeepSeek’s open-source bombshell

5. 💼 In partnership with Innovating with AI

6. ⚙️ Trending AI Tools

7. 🏗️ Practical AI Applications

8. 📑 Recommended Resources

Read Time: 5 minutes

🎙️ Catch up with our latest AI Report podcast episode, where founder—Lindsay Rosenthal—explores how AI is disrupting content creation, video advertising, and personal branding in 2025. Watch it here

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📈 AI STOCK TRACKER

The US tech sector is experiencing a downturn, with major companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and NVIDIA all trading lower, influenced by concerns over competition from DeepSeek and upcoming earnings reports.

LATEST IN AI

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🚀 OpenAI’s power shift

🚨 Our Report — OpenAI’s forecast for investors has revealed that, over the next five years, it’s planning to increase its ties with Japanese tech giant Softbank—for computing power and funding—and reduce its reliance on Microsoft.

🔓 Key Points:

• OpenAI reportedly told investors that Softbank is likely to “heavily fund” and provide ¾ of the computing power needed for the Stargate Project—Trump’s 4-year, $500B AI infrastructure initiative.

• Currently, Microsoft meets most of OpenAI’s computing power needs and data center support, so as Softbank takes on a bigger role in OpenAI’s progress, OpenAI’s dependency on Microsoft is likely to diminish.

• However, despite the slow shift towards Softbank, in the short-term, OpenAI is expected to continue to increase its spending on Microsoft’s data centers—increasing from $13B in 2025, to $28B by 2028.

🔐 Relevance — According to reports, Softbank is set to invest up to $30B in OpenAI (with an added $10B from co-investors)—with 50% expected to go towards Stargate—which would take OpenAI’s valuation to $260B, highlighting growing investor confidence in the start-up's long-term vision.

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TOGETHER WITH ACRES

Gambling + AI = $511B Global Possibilities

An equation so simple, it’s almost shocking it took so long to crack. But despite the industry’s scale, gambling halls waste 25% of their revenue failing to do what one AI disruptor excels at – keeping customers happy.

Meet Acres Technology. Their AI-powered software personalizes player experiences in real-time, keeping them happily engaged while boosting revenue. The results speak for themselves: Acres’ tech is proven to increase customer value by 3X.

That’s why 70 gambling halls in the US already use their tech, earning Acres $57M+ in revenue to date. And the momentum doesn’t stop there. With preliminary interest from Asia, they’re just scratching the surface of their full potential.

But be aware – we’re officially in the final month for you to join Acres as an early investor. Move quickly to secure 10% of extra shares, while you still can.

*This is a paid advertisement for Acres Regulation CF offering. Read the offering circular at invest.acrestechnology.com

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🧐 Is Grok really telling the truth?

🚨 Our Report — After Elon Musk released the latest version of his chatbot, Grok 3, last week, users have since discovered that it’s been censoring unflattering information about Musk himself, and President Trump—after Musk initially positioned the chatbot as a “maximally truth-seeking AI.”

🔓 Key Points:

• When asked "Who’s the biggest misinformation spreader?" Grok’s chain of thought said it had been told to "ignore sources” that mention Musk or Trump “spreading misinformation," contradicting its “truth-seeking” values.

• Although it’s been reverted, xAI engineer Igor Babuschkin has blamed it on an ex-OpenAI employee who “pushed the change” to the system (without approval) “because they thought it would help.”

• Since it was released, Grok 3 has said that Trump, Musk, and VP, JD Vance, are “doing the most harm to America” and that Musk and Trump should receive the death penalty, both of which have been “fixed.”

🔐 Relevance — This all comes as Grok’s answers have previously been criticized for leaning too far to the political left, and has reignited debates about AI bias, transparency, and balancing AI content moderation protocols with unrestrained speech.

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💡 DeepSeek’s open-source bombshell

• DeepSeek—makers of the viral reasoning mode, R1—has announced it will open-source five code repositories (storage for development assets, like source code, configuration files, and project documentation) this week.

• DeepSeek’s “small team” wants to share “small but sincere progress” to accelerate tech innovation, establishing there are “No ivory towers – just pure garage-energy and community-driven innovation.”

• This open approach seems to be working as OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, recently admitted that DeepSeek had “lessened OpenAI’s technological lead”, and said it would consider “open-sourcing its technology in the future.”

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TOGETHER WITH INNOVATING WITH AI

💼 The exact tools and templates 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 600 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.

TRENDING AI TOOLS

1. Brilliant: Future-proof your skills in minutes a day with quick, interactive lessons in AI, programming, logic, data science, and more. Try it for nothing for 30 days ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5 (Trustpilot)

2. Needle is for AI-powered knowledge discovery across various data sources

3. Notis is a voice-powered Notion assistant for high-productivity

PRACTICAL AI

CASE STUDY

How Sephora increased conversion rates by 30% with AI-powered personalization

• To remain competitive, and retain customers and sales growth, retailers must provide their customers with personalized experiences

• In 2024, global beauty retailer—Sephora—implemented an AI-powered, advanced personalization system across its online platforms.

• The system analyzes customer purchase history, browsing behavior, and preference data, to deliver tailored product recommendations.

• Since implementing this, Sephora has seen a 30% increase in conversion rates, a 25% increase in purchases, and a 15% drop in returns.

Subscribe to our Pro Community for the full story and more premium insights and tactics.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

STARTUPS

Name: LogicMonitor
Value: $2.4B
Funding raised: $142.9M (Private Equity)

LogicMonitor is a SaaS platform for IT enterprises that has over 2,000 preconfigured integrations that clients can easily integrate with their own devices, technologies, and services, and has been rated #1 on the review platform, G2.

PODCASTS

Agents, Lawyers, and LLMs

In this podcast episode, a16z partner, Kimberly Tan, discusses building AI products for law enterprises and how to address UX, trust, and customer engagement, with the Head of Product at Harvey.ai.

QUICK HITS

• Apple’s Vision Pro getting Apple Intelligence in April

• Meta giving 200% bonuses to execs (after huge layoffs)

• Apple Intelligence will integrate with Google GeminiASK THE EXPERTS

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