Watch the "Blue Ghost" lunar lander attempt its moon landing.

The actual landing is scheduled to happen at 3:34 a.m. Eastern time, according to CNN, while "The first images from the mission should be delivered about a half hour after..." Success is not guaranteed... [B]roadly speaking, about half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure. Jason Kim, Firefly's CEO, told CNN in December that his company's experience building rockets has given him a high degree of confidence in Blue Ghost's propulsion systems. "We're using (reaction control system) thrusters that we've built, developed in-house, that are designed by the same people that design our rocket engines. That reduces risk," Kim said. "All that gives us high confidence when we have people that do rocket engines really, really well — some of the best in the world."
But the New York Times notes that Blue Ghost, built by Austin, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, is just one of three robotic spacecraft "in space right now that are aiming to set down on the moon's surface." Blue Ghost has performed nearly perfectly. For the first 25 days, it circled Earth as the company turned on and checked the spacecraft's systems. It then fired its engine on a four-day journey toward the moon, entering orbit on February 13. The spacecraft's cameras have recorded close-up views of the moon's cratered surface...

On the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched Blue Ghost to orbit was Resilience, a lunar lander built by Ispace of Japan. The two missions are separate, but Ispace, seeking a cheaper ride to space, had asked SpaceX for a rideshare, that is, hitching a ride as a secondary payload... Although Resilience launched at the same time as Blue Ghost, it is taking a longer, more fuel-efficient route to the moon and is expected to enter orbit around the moon in early May.
The third lunar lander heading to the moon is Athena (from Intuitive Machines), which launched Thursday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, "marking the first time humanity has had three lunar landers en route to the Moon at the same time," according to a statement from the company. Space.com notes that "To date, just one private spacecraft has ever landed successfully on the moon — Intuitive Machines' Odysseus, which did so in February 2024." Athena launched with several other spacecraft last night, including Odin, a scouting probe built by the asteroid-mining company Astroforge, and NASA's water-hunting Lunar Trailblazer. Lunar Trailblazer is also moon-bound, though it's headed for orbit rather than the surface...

Alphabet's X division has developed a silicon photonic chip for its Taara project, which transmits internet via laser beams instead of fiber optic cables. The system delivers 20Gbps through "light bridges" that establish line-of-sight connections between transceiver units. The second-generation technology miniaturizes previous mechanical components -- including gimbals, mirrors, and lenses -- into solid-state circuitry the size of a fingernail.

This chip enables a single laser transmitter to potentially pair with multiple receptors, significantly reducing costs from the current ~$30,000 per bridge setup. Taara has already demonstrated real-world viability by connecting Brazzaville and Kinshasa across the Congo River, providing the latter with five-fold cheaper internet access, and supplementing bandwidth at Coachella 2024. Project leader Mahesh Krishnaswamy claims Taara can deliver "10, if not 100 times more bandwidth" than Starlink in dense areas. X's Astro Teller suggests this technology could form the foundation for 7G networks as radio frequency bands become increasingly congested. Taara will soon "graduate" from X and seek external funding, with Alphabet maintaining a significant stake.

Further reading: Official blog post.

At its "Second Gen" event today, Framework detailed three new computers: an updated Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300, a 4.5-liter Mini-ITX desktop powered by Ryzen AI Max, and a colorful, convertible Framework Laptop 12 designed with students in mind. The latter is defined by Framework as a "defining product." Tom's Hardware reports: Framework Desktop: The Framework Desktop is a 4.5L Mini-ITX machine using AMD's Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" chips with Radeon 8060S graphics. While this is a mobile chip, Framework says putting it in a desktop chassis gets it to 120W sustained power and 140W boost "while staying quiet and cool." Framework says this should allow 1440p gaming on intense titles, as well as workstation-class projects and local AI. [...] The base model, with a Ryzen AI Max 385 and 32GB of RAM, starts at $1,099, while the top-end machine with a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 128GB of RAM begins at $1,999. Framework is only doing "DIY" editions here, so you'll have to get your own storage drive and bring your own operating system (the company is calling it "the easiest PC you'll ever build"). The mainboard on its own will be available from $799. Pre-orders are open now, and Framework expects to ship sometime in Q3.

Framework Laptop 12: The Laptop 12 is designed to bring the flexibility from the Laptop 12 but make it smaller, cheaper, and in more colors (with an optional stylus to match). These machines are made of ABS plastic molded in thermoplastic polyurethane, all around a metal frame. Framework says that it's "our easiest product ever to repair," but that more information on that will come closer to its launch in mid-2025. I'm really looking forward to this repair guide. It comes in five colorways: lavender, sage, gray, black, and bubblegum. The laptop will come with 13th Gen Intel Core i3 and i5 processors, which aren't the latest, but better than entry-level junk. You'll get up to 48GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and Wi-Fi 6E. It has a 1920 x 1200 touch screen that the company claims will surpass 400 nits of brightness. There's no pricing information yet, and Framework says there's more to share on pricing and specs later in the year. Pre-orders will open in April ahead of the mid-year launch.

Framework Laptop 13: The Framework Laptop 13 is getting a significant refresh with AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series. It doesn't look all that different on the outside, with a 13.5-inch design that largely resembles the one from way back in 2021. But there are new features. Beyond the processors, the Framework Laptop 3 is getting bumped up to Wi-Fi 7 and is getting a new thermal system, a "next-generation" keyboard, and new colorways for the Expansion Cards and bezels (though I still don't know why you would want a bezel in anything other than black). [...] The new Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 starts at $899 for a DIY Edition without storage or an OS, and $1,099 for a pre-built model. If you're buying the mainboard to put in an old system, that's $449. (Framework is keeping the Ryzen 7040 systems around starting at $749). No word for now on any new Intel models.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is speeding up the release of its R2 model following the success of January's R1, which outperformed many US competitors at a fraction of the cost and triggered a $1 trillion-plus market selloff. The Hangzhou-based firm had planned a May release but now wants R2 out "as early as possible," Reuters reported Tuesday.

The upcoming model promises improved coding capabilities and reasoning in multiple languages beyond English. DeepSeek's competitive advantage stems from its parent company High-Flyer's early investment in computing power, including two supercomputing clusters acquired before U.S. export bans on advanced Nvidia chips. The second cluster, Fire-Flyer II, comprised approximately 10,000 Nvidia A100 chips. DeepSeek's cost-efficiency comes from innovative architecture choices like Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) and multihead latent attention (MLA).

According to Bernstein analysts, DeepSeek's pricing was 20-40 times cheaper than OpenAI's equivalent models. The competitive pressure has already forced OpenAI to cut prices and release a scaled-down model, while Google's Gemini has introduced discounted access tiers.

The Washington Post looks at a new kind of battery that "could make American EVs cheaper and safer, experts say." If you bought an EV with a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, you could expect lower car payments, less fire risk and more years of use out of your car — but you wouldn't be able to go as far on a single charge as you could with the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries commonly found in American and European electric cars. That trade-off has made LFP batteries the go-to choice for standard-range EVs in China, helping to make electric cars more affordable and limit pollution. Now, American companies are starting to build their own LFP batteries to catch up to their Chinese rivals... But there are plenty of barriers for U.S. companies that want to adopt a technology dominated by Chinese firms. Tariffs and tax credit restrictions have made it too expensive for most American automakers to import LFP batteries from China, and national security concerns have made it hard for American companies to partner with Chinese battery makers to build factories in the United States...

Although American scientists invented LFP batteries in 1997, U.S. automakers didn't invest in the technology. Instead, they bet on NMC batteries because they have longer range, a big concern for American EV buyers. "Everyone in the West thought LFP was a nonstarter five or six years ago," said Adrian Yao, who founded STEER, a technology research group within Stanford University. "We really did have a myopic focus on" range, he added. That left the door open for Chinese companies to perfect LFP batteries, which have a few advantages. Instead of pricey nickel and cobalt, they use iron, which makes them 20 percent cheaper than NMC batteries, according to the International Energy Agency. While NMC batteries can be recharged up to about 1,000 times before they go kaput — which is enough to put 200,000 miles on most EVs — LFP batteries can last two or three times as long, according to Moura. Plus, LFP batteries' chemistry makes them less likely to catch fire and easier to extinguish. An NMC battery, on the other hand, is so flammable that "you could put it underwater or in space, and it'll keep burning because the oxygen it needs to keep the flame going is embedded within itself," Moura said.

That safety advantage is key, because Chinese firms figured out they could pack LFP cells closer together inside a battery pack without risking a fire. That meant they could cram more energy into LFP batteries and nearly catch up to the range of NMC batteries. Last year, the Chinese battery giant CATL made the first LFP battery with more than 600 miles of range. Since LFP batteries are made from common materials and last longer, they also have a smaller environmental footprint than NMC batteries.
Ford used LFP batteries in its Mach-E sedan (2023) and F-150 Lightning pickup trucks (2024), according to the article, "while Rivian began using them in the basic trims of its R1S SUV and R1T pickup truck this year... American LFP factories are slated to open this year in St. Louis and next year in Arizona." And an environmental engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley predicts LFP battery factories in the U.S. will "grow quite rapidly over the next five to 10 years."

A new family of superconductors is exciting physicists. Compounds containing nickel have been shown to carry electricity without resistance at the relatively high temperature of 45 kelvin (-228C) -- and without being squeezed under pressure. Nature: Physicists at the Southern University of Science and Technology (Sustech) in Shenzhen, China, observed the major hallmarks of superconductivity in a thin film of crystals of nickel oxide, which they grew in the laboratory. They published their work in Nature on 17 February. "There's a huge hope that we could eventually raise the critical temperature and make [such materials] more useful for applications," says Dafeng Li, a physicist at the City University of Hong Kong.

Nickelates now join two groups of ceramics -- copper-based cuprates and iron-based pnictides -- as 'unconventional superconductors' that operate at room pressure and temperatures as high as 150K (-123C). This new data point could help physicists to finally explain how high-temperature superconductors work, and ultimately to design materials that operate under ambient conditions. This would make technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging, radically cheaper and more efficient.

How unconventional superconductors operate at warmer temperatures remains largely a mystery, whereas the mechanism behind how some metals can carry electricity without resistance at colder temperatures, or extreme pressures, has been understood since 1957. The ability of the Sustech researchers to precisely engineer the material's properties is huge boon in trying to use nickelates to unravel the theory behind unconventional superconductivity, says Lilia Boeri, a physicist at the Sapienza University of Rome. "The idea that you have a system that you can sort of tune experimentally, is something quite exciting."

"A robotic lander from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is now in orbit around the Moon," reports Spaceflight Now, "and going through its final preparations to land in the coming weeks." Its arrival comes nearly a month after the spacecraft launched onboard a Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. This is the third mission launched as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, an initiative designed to bring science and technology demonstrations to the Moon at a cheaper cost...

Manifested on this lander are 10 NASA payloads, which cover a range of objectives. Those include the Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) instrument, which will drill between 2- to 3-meters into the Moon's surface to study the heat flow; and the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) 1.1 instrument, which will use a series of cameras to capture the plume generated at landing to help create a three-dimensional model... "We saw that for the type of advanced scientific or engineering measurements we wanted to make, the instruments were small enough and compact enough that we could actually fly 10," [said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for Exploration in NASA's Science Mission Directorate], "if someone could actually schedule them to get all of their operations done over the 14 Earth day lunar daytime."

Firefly Aerospace ended up winning that bid and carries with it the most NASA instruments manifested on a single Commercial Lunar Payload Services lander so far.
Friday on X.com Firefly Aerospace wished a happy Valentine's Day to "all those on Earth who dare to Dream Big."

"Blue Ghost has been capturing stunning imagery of our planet throughout its journey," Spaceflight Now says in a 12-minute video.

And Friday on X.com Firefly posted Blue Ghost's first spectacular shots of the moon as it approaches — along with its special message for Valentine's Day. "I love you to the Moon, but not back — I'm staying there."

A hedge fund startup that uses AI to do work typically handled by analysts has outperformed the global stock market in its first six months while slashing research costs. From a report: The Sydney-based firm, Minotaur Capital, was founded by Armina Rosenberg and Thomas Rice. Rosenberg previously managed a global equities portfolio for tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and ran Australian small-company research for JPMorgan Chase & Co. when she was 25. Rice is a former portfolio manager at Perpetual. The duo's bets on global stocks returned 13.7% in the six months ending January, versus 6.7% for the MSCI All-Country World Index. Minotaur has no analysts on staff, with Rosenberg saying AI models are far quicker and cheaper.

"We're looking at about half the price" in terms of cost of AI versus a junior analyst salary, Rosenberg, 37, said of the firm's program. Minotaur is among a growing number of hedge funds experimenting with ways to improve returns and cut expenses with AI as the technology becomes increasingly sophisticated. Still, the jury is still out on the ability of AI-driven models to deliver superior returns over the long run.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: In 2021, NASCAR unveiled its Next Gen platform that included a number of rule changes from the previous iteration. Now fully symmetrical and using composite body panels instead of metal, the latest NASCAR vehicles are more like the street versions of the Chevrolet Camaro, the Ford Mustang, and the Toyota TRD Camry. Race car driving isn't an inexpensive sport, and one of the goals for the Next Gen platform was to reduce operating costs and create parity across the board. Technique Chassis, the sole chassis manufacturer for the NASCAR Cup Series, builds a modular offering in three parts. As a result, everyone is starting with the same platform, and finding a competitive advantage is in the tiniest details. One smart way to differentiate from the competition is 3D-printed parts. But this isn't your hobbyist level 3D printing.

Minnesota-based Stratasys specializes in "additive manufacturing," the process of creating an object by building it one layer at a time. Stratasys Senior Global Director of Automotive & Mobility Fadi Abro explains that this term is synonymous with 3D printing. However, the industry often reserves that description for hobby-level projects on smaller, non-industrial printers, while additive manufacturing represents robust industrial solutions. Additive manufacturing is the exact inverse of subtractive manufacturing, which requires cutting away at a solid chunk of material to achieve a final product. In art terms, additive manufacturing would be like sculpting with modeling clay while subtractive is akin to carving a shape from a block of marble. As it relates to NASCAR, Stratasys provides parts like ducts, covers, brackets, and tubing. Together with the racing organization, Stratasys reviews the current driver needs and makes recommendations for other parts and modifications. [...]

The kind of printers Stratasys builds aren't the type you buy at your local electronics store, either. Each industrial-grade 3D printer costs anywhere from $20,000 to $600,000. Using this kind of equipment isn't without precedent, and builds at SEMA's annual extravaganza feature 3D parts we wouldn't have dreamed of a few years ago. [...] In the past few months, Stratasys has been on a roll, signing an extension to its 20-year partnership with the Joe Gibbs Racing team and earning the title of "Official 3D Printing Partner of NASCAR." Competition for this market continues to heat up, however, as there are startups and legacy companies pushing hard. Around the world, 3D printing companies abound. Stratasys has one major factor on its side: 35 years of experience. What's new is that today's printing is more accurate, it's faster, the materials are more robust, Abro says. "I think what's changed drastically over the past five to seven years has been all about material development," Abro explains. "We're seeing materials that are just incredible, whether it's how resistant to heat they are or how strong they are compared to how much they weigh."

"It's better, faster, cheaper. It's faster to print something than to mill it, and then it's certainly cheaper in a multitude of different ways. Number one, there's not as much skill required for 3D printing as there is in CNC machining; you need a more traditional manufacturing method."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Telegraph: Volkswagen has teased plans for a "China-killer" electric vehicle that will cost just €20,000 ($20,664 USD or £16,700) as the German carmaker gears up to take on a flood of Beijing-backed low-cost rivals. The company on Thursday shared its first images of a new vehicle expected to be called the ID.1, which will go into production from 2027.

The low-cost EV is intended to go head to head with all-electric brands from Chinese carmakers such as BYD, which overtook Tesla in British sales for the first time last month. Previous images of the vehicle suggest it will be an electric hatchback. Thomas Schäfer, the VW chief executive, said the new model would be "an affordable, high-quality, profitable electric Volkswagen from Europe, for Europe". Quentin Willson, the motoring journalist and founder of FairCharge, said the car could be a "possible China EV killer". Dan Caesar, of Electric Vehicles UK, added: "Cheaper EVs are exactly what legacy auto-makers need to be competitive during this critical time. We would expect the ID.1 to be warmly welcomed by motorists." Ginny Buckley, of consumer advice website Electrifying, said Volkswagen had been "clear about its intent to compete with China's low-cost EVs"...

The German carmaker is planning to cut 35,000 jobs by 2030 as it grapples with stalled demand for EVs in Europe and growing competition from Chinese rivals.
Volkswagen executives describe the upcoming EV will be a "true Volkswagen for everyone," according to the article

It also notes that the number of EVs sold across Europe "fell by 3% to 3 million during 2024, according to data from analysts Rho Motion."

Software companies are under pressure to invest in new AI capabilities without denting profits. One increasingly popular strategy to keep costs low is to shift hiring outside the US. From a report:Â Salesforce and Workday are simultaneously cutting jobs and highlighting the cost savings from adding workers internationally. "Do we need to hire everybody in San Francisco?" Salesforce Chief Operating Officer Brian Millham said at an event hosted by Barclays in December. "Or can we think about other locations that are cheaper where we can get really incredible labor like India and Mexico City."

US-based employees at Salesforce dropped to 51% from 58% in the four years ending in January 2024. In early 2023, it announced a reduction of roughly 8,000 jobs. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that the San Francisco-based software company would cut more than 1,000 positions in large part to make room for new AI-focused hiring. [...] Human resources software maker Workday, based in Pleasanton, California, announced Wednesday that it would eliminate about 1,750 jobs. Last year, Chief Executive Officer Carl Eschenbach emphasized a new focus on expanding margins, saying hiring more in countries like Costa Rica would help in this effort.Â

DeepSeek's AI app will highly likely face a US consumer ban after topping download charts on Apple's App Store and Google Play, according to analysts at US investment bank Jefferies. The US federal government, Navy and Texas have already banned the app, and analysts expect broader restrictions using legislation similar to that targeting TikTok.

While consumer access may be blocked, US developers could still be allowed to self-host DeepSeek's model to eliminate security risks, the analysts added. Even if completely banned, DeepSeek's impact on pushing down AI costs will persist as US companies work to replicate its technology, Jefferies said in a report this week reviewed by Slashdot.

The app's pricing advantage remains significant, with OpenAI's latest o3-mini model still costing 100% more than DeepSeek's R1 despite being 63% cheaper than o1-mini. The potential ban comes amid broader US-China tech tensions. While restrictions on H20 chips appear unlikely given their limited training capabilities, analysts expect the Biden administration's AI diffusion policies to remain largely intact under Trump, with some quota increases possible for overseas markets based on their AI activity levels.

An anonymous reader writes: Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries via their digital catalogs, forcing librarians who are already understaffed to either sort through a functionally infinite number of books to determine what is written by humans and what is generated by AI, or to spend taxpayer dollars to provide patrons with information they don't realize is AI-generated.

Public libraries primarily use two companies to manage and lend ebooks: Hoopla and OverDrive, the latter of which people may know from its borrowing app, Libby. Both companies have a variety of payment options for libraries, but generally libraries get access to the companies' catalog of books and pay for customers to be able to borrow that book, with different books having different licenses and prices. A key difference is that with OverDrive, librarians can pick and choose which books in OverDrive's catalog they want to give their customers the option of borrowing. With Hoopla, librarians have to opt into Hoopla's entire catalog, then pay for whatever their customers choose to borrow from that catalog. The only way librarians can limit what Hoopla books their customers can borrow is by setting a limit on the price of books. For example, a library can use Hoopla but make it so their customers can only borrow books that cost the library $5 per use.

On one hand, Hoopla's gigantic catalog, which includes ebooks, audio books, and movies, is a selling point because it gives librarians access to more for cheaper price. On the other hand, making librarians buy into the entire catalog means that a customer looking for a book about how to diet for a healthier liver might end up borrowing Fatty Liver Diet Cookbook: 2000 Days of Simple and Flavorful Recipes for a Revitalized Liver. The book was authored by Magda Tangy, who has no online footprint, and who has an AI-generated profile picture on Amazon, where her books are also for sale. Note the earring that is only on one ear and seems slightly deformed. A spokesperson for deepfake detection company Reality Defender said that according to their platform, the headshot is 85 percent likely to be AI-generated. [...] It is impossible to say exactly how many AI-generated books are included in Hoopla's catalog, but books that appeared to be AI-generated were not hard to find for most of the search terms I tried on the platform. "This type of low quality, AI generated content, is what we at 404 Media and others have come to call AI slop," writes Emanuel Maiberg. "Librarians, whose job it is in part to curate what books their community can access, have been dealing with similar problems in the publishing industry for years, and have a different name for it: vendor slurry."

"None of the librarians I talked to suggested the AI-generated content needed to be banned from Hoopla and libraries only because it is AI-generated. It might have its place, but it needs to be clearly labeled, and more importantly, provide borrowers with quality information."

Sarah Lamdan, deputy director of the American Library Association, told 404 Media: "Platforms like Hoopla should offer libraries the option to select or omit materials, including AI materials, in their collections. AI books should be well-identified in library catalogs, so it is clear to readers that the books were not written by human authors. If library visitors choose to read AI eBooks, they should do so with the knowledge that the books are AI-generated."

Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a bill that would criminalize the import, export, and collaboration on AI technology with China. What this means is that "someone who knowingly downloads a Chinese developed AI model like the now immensely popular DeepSeek could face up to 20 years in jail, a million dollar fine, or both, should such a law pass," reports 404 Media. From the report: Hawley introduced the legislation, titled the Decoupling America's Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from China Act, on Wednesday of last year. "Every dollar and gig of data that flows into Chinese AI are dollars and data that will ultimately be used against the United States," Senator Hawley said in a statement. "America cannot afford to empower our greatest adversary at the expense of our own strength. Ensuring American economic superiority means cutting China off from American ingenuity and halting the subsidization of CCP innovation."

Hawley's statement explicitly says that he introduced the legislation because of the release of DeepSeek, an advanced AI model that's competitive with its American counterparts, and which its developers claimed was made for a fraction of the cost and without access to as many and as advanced of chips, though these claims are unverified. Hawley's statement called DeepSeek "a data-harvesting, low-cost AI model that sparked international concern and sent American technology stocks plummeting." Hawley's statement says the goal of the bill is to "prohibit the import from or export to China of artificial intelligence technology, "prohibit American companies from conducting AI research in China or in cooperation with Chinese companies," and "Prohibit U.S. companies from investing money in Chinese AI development."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: To cap off a day of product releases, OpenAI researchers, engineers, and executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, answered questions in a wide-ranging Reddit AMA on Friday. OpenAI the company finds itself in a bit of a precarious position. It's battling the perception that it's ceding ground in the AI race to Chinese companies like DeepSeek, which OpenAI alleges might've stolen its IP. The ChatGPT maker has been trying to shore up its relationship with Washington and simultaneously pursue an ambitious data center project, while reportedly laying groundwork for one of the largest financing rounds in history. Altman admitted that DeepSeek has lessened OpenAI's lead in AI, and he also said he believes OpenAI has been "on the wrong side of history" when it comes to open-sourcing its technologies. While OpenAI has open-sourced models in the past, the company has generally favored a proprietary, closed-source development approach.

"[I personally think we need to] figure out a different open source strategy," Altman said. "Not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it's also not our current highest priority [] We will produce better models [going forward], but we will maintain less of a lead than we did in previous years." In a follow-up reply, Kevin Weil, OpenAI's chief product officer, said that OpenAI is considering open-sourcing older models that aren't state-of-the-art anymore. "We'll definitely think about doing more of this," he said, without going into greater detail.

OpenAI today launched o3-mini, a specialized AI reasoning model designed for STEM tasks that offers faster processing at lower costs compared to its predecessor o1-mini. The model, priced at $1.10 per million cached input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens, performs fact-checking before delivering results to reduce errors in technical domains like physics and programming, the Microsoft-backed startup said. (A million tokens are roughly 750,000 words)

OpenAI claims that its tests showed o3-mini made 39% fewer major mistakes than o1-mini on complex problems while delivering responses 24% faster. The model will be available through ChatGPT with varying access levels -- free users get basic access while premium subscribers receive higher query limits and reasoning capabilities.

France's Mistral AI is facing mounting pressure over its future as an independent European AI champion, as competition intensifies from U.S. tech giants and China's emerging players. The Paris-based startup, valued at $6.5 billion and backed by Microsoft and Nvidia, has struggled to keep pace with larger rivals despite delivering advanced AI models with a fraction of their resources.

The pressure increased this week after China's DeepSeek released a cutting-edge open-source model that challenged Mistral's efficiency-focused strategy. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch dismissed speculation about selling to Big Tech companies, saying the firm hopes to go public eventually. However, one investor told the Financial Times that "they need to sell themselves."

The stakes are high for Europe's tech ambitions. Mistral remains the region's only significant player in large language models, the technology behind ChatGPT, after Germany's Aleph Alpha pivoted away from the field last year. The company has won customers including France's defense ministry and BNP Paribas, but controls just 5% of the enterprise AI market compared to OpenAI's dominant share.

Alibaba has unveiled a new version of its AI model, called Qwen2.5-Max, claiming benchmark scores that surpass both DeepSeek's recently released R1 model and industry standards like GPT-4o and Claude-3.5-Sonnet. The model achieves these results using a mixture-of-experts architecture that requires significantly less computational power than traditional approaches.

The release comes amid growing concerns about China's AI capabilities, following DeepSeek's R1 model launch last week that sent Nvidia's stock tumbling 17%. Qwen2.5-Max scored 89.4% on the Arena-Hard benchmark and demonstrated strong performance in code generation and mathematical reasoning tasks. Unlike U.S. companies that rely heavily on massive GPU clusters -- OpenAI reportedly uses over 32,000 high-end GPUs for its latest models -- Alibaba's approach focuses on architectural efficiency. The company claims this allows comparable AI performance while reducing infrastructure costs by 40-60% compared to traditional deployments.

Hugging Face researchers are attempting to recreate DeepSeek's R1 artificial intelligence model in an open-source format, just days after the Chinese AI lab's release sent markets soaring. The project, called Open-R1, aims to replicate R1's reasoning capabilities while making its training data and code publicly available. DeepSeek's R1 model, which matches or surpasses OpenAI's o1 on several benchmarks, was released with a permissive license but keeps its underlying architecture private. Hugging Face will use its research server with 768 Nvidia H100 GPUs for the effort.

Nvidia shares plunged 17% on Monday, wiping nearly $600 billion from its market value, after Chinese AI firm DeepSeek's breakthrough, but analysts are questioning the cost narrative. DeepSeek said to have trained its December V3 model for $5.6 million, but chip consultancy SemiAnalysis suggested this figure doesn't reflect total investments. "DeepSeek has spent well over $500 million on GPUs over the history of the company," Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis said. "While their training run was very efficient, it required significant experimentation and testing to work."

The steep sell-off led to the Philadelphia Semiconductor index's worst daily drop since March 2020 at 9.2%, generating $6.75 billion in profits for short sellers, according to data group S3 Partners. DeepSeek's engineers also demonstrated they could write code without relying on Nvidia's Cuda software platform, which is widely seen as crucial to the Silicon Valley chipmaker's dominance of AI development.