#230 - 2025 Retrospective, Nvidia buys Groq, GLM 4.7, METR

Our 230th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 01/02/2026
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov (twitter.com/andrey_kurenkov) and Jeremie Harris (linkedin.com/in/jeremieharris)
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.comand/or hello@gladstone.ai
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In this episode:
• Nvidia's acquisition of AI chip startup Groq for $20 billion highlights a strategic move for enhanced inference technology in GPUs.
• New York's RAISE Act legislation aims to regulate AI safety, marking the second major AI safety bill in the US.
• The launch of GLM 4.7 by Zhipu AI marks a significant advancement in open-source AI models for coding.
• Evaluation of long-horizon AI agents raises concerns about the rising costs and efficiency of AI in performing extended tasks.

Timestamps:
• (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
• (00:01:58) 2025 Retrospective

• Tools & Apps
• (00:24:39) OpenAI bets big on audio as Silicon Valley declares war on screens | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2026/01/01/openai-bets-big-on-a…)

• Applications & Business
• (00:26:39) Nvidia buying AI chip startup Groq for about $20 billion, biggest deal (cnbc.com/2025/12/24/nvidia-buying-ai-chip-star…)
• (00:34:28) Exclusive | Meta Buys AI Startup Manus, Adding Millions of Paying Users - WSJ (wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-buys-ai-startup-manus-add…)
• (00:38:05) Cursor continues acquisition spree with Graphite deal | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2025/12/19/cursor-continues-acq…)
• (00:39:15) Micron Hikes CapEx to $20B with 2026 HBM Supply Fully Booked; HBM4 Ramps 2Q26 (trendforce.com/news/2025/12/18/news-micron-hik…)
• (00:42:06) Chinese fabs are reportedly upgrading older ASML DUV lithography chipmaking machines — secondary channels and independent engineers used to soup up Twinscan NXT series (tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/…)

• Projects & Open Source
• (00:47:52) Z.AI launches GLM-4.7, new SOTA open-source model for coding (testingcatalog.com/z-ai-launches-glm-4-7-new-s…)
• (00:50:11) Evaluating AI’s ability to perform scientific research tasks (openai.com/index/frontierscience)

• Research & Advancements
• (00:54:32) Large Causal Models from Large Language Models (arxiv.org/abs/2512.07796)
• (00:57:33) Universally Converging Representations of Matter Across Scientific Foundation Models (arxiv.org/abs/2512.03750)
• (01:02:11) META-RL INDUCES EXPLORATION IN LANGUAGE AGENTS (arxiv.org/abs/2512.16848)
• (01:07:16) Are the Costs of AI Agents Also Rising Exponentially? (tobyord.com/writing/hourly-costs-for-ai-agents)
• (01:11:17) METR eval for Opus 4.5 (metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-…)
• (01:16:19) How to game the METR plot (shash42.substack.com/p/how-to-game-the-metr-plot)

• Policy & Safety
• (01:17:24) New York governor Kathy Hochul signs RAISE Act to regulate AI safety | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2025/12/20/new-york-governor-ka…)
• (01:20:40) Activation Oracles: Training and Evaluating LLMs as General-Purpose Activation Explainers (arxiv.org/abs/2512.15674)
• (01:26:46) Monitoring Monitorability (arxiv.org/abs/2512.18311)
• (01:32:07) Sam Altman is hiring someone to worry about the dangers of AI | The Verge (theverge.com/news/850537/sam-altman-openai-hea…)
• (01:33:38) X users asking Grok to put this girl in bikini, Grok is happy obliging - India Today (indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/x-users-as…)
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