AI Funding Frenzy and the Global Race

Ollie Carter

Alright, welcome back to The AI Intelligence Podcast, folks! Ollie here, and as always, I'm joined by the one and only Llew Jury. This week in AI funding—honestly, it’s like someone’s just turned the money tap on and snapped the handle clean off. I mean, SpaceX dropping two billion into xAI, and that’s just part of a five billion dollar round? That’s wild. And it’s not just a paper shuffle—SpaceX is actually using xAI’s Grok chatbot for Starlink customer service. So, it’s all Musk, all the way down.

Llew Jury

Yeah, it’s a bit of a Musk-verse, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve got one Musk company investing in another, but there’s actual synergy there. And the kicker is, xAI’s next funding round could value them at two hundred billion dollars. That’s, what, bigger than most of the ASX 200 put together? And then you look at Nvidia—four trillion dollar market cap. That’s more than the GDP of, like, Australia and New Zealand combined.

Ollie Carter

And Llew, Nvidia’s stock is up seventy percent since April. It’s all about those AI chips, right? They’re powering basically every major AI system out there. And then Meta—Meta just dropped fourteen point three billion into Scale AI. It’s like, these aren’t just investments anymore, they’re strategic arms race moves. Everyone’s trying to lock in their piece of the future. It’s a proper gold rush. And you know, it reminds me—Llew, you’ve seen this from the inside, right? You’ve been on the VC side. What’s it like when you see these AI startups just, you know, skyrocket in value overnight.

Llew Jury

Oh, mate, it’s surreal. I remember this one time—this was back in, I wanna say, 2021?—we were looking at an AI startup that barely had a product, but the hype was off the charts. We passed on their seed round, and I wonder how they'd go today. That’s the thing with AI right now—valuations that would’ve seemed like science fiction a few years ago are just, going through the roof, especially for the picks and shovels. And now, with nearly half of all global VC funding going into AI, it’s not slowing down.

Ollie Carter

Yeah, and it’s not just hype anymore. These are real bets on AI as the backbone of the digital economy. I mean, SpaceX, Nvidia, Meta—they’re not mucking around. They know AI’s gonna decide who wins for decades. It’s a wild time to be in tech, that’s for sure.

Llew Jury

So, let’s shift gears a bit. The money’s wild, but the tech is just as fascinating. This week, we saw Moonshot AI out of China drop their Kimi K2 model, and apparently it’s outpacing some of the big US models in coding tasks. That’s a big deal, especially since it’s open-source. It’s like, China’s going all-in on open models while the US is, well, playing it safe—maybe too safe?

Ollie Carter

Yeah, and on the flip side, OpenAI’s delayed their open model again. They’re saying it’s for “additional safety testing,” but, I dunno, Llew, it’s starting to feel like a pattern. Meanwhile, Moonshot’s just shipping code. It’s a real shift—China’s pushing open-source, US companies are locking things down. And then you’ve got Switzerland, of all places, rolling out a public, multilingual LLM built on their national supercomputer. That’s not even commercial, it’s just for the public good. I love that.

Llew Jury

Yeah, it’s a third way, isn’t it? Not just commercial or geopolitical, but genuinely for everyone. And, mate, it takes me back to the early 2000s. I remember launching projects that were open-source tech—where you’d have these late nights, trying to wrangle code from various sources, and you never knew if you’d wake up to a breakthrough or a bug that’d take down the whole stack. But the energy, the community, the speed—it’s unbeatable. And now, with these national-scale open models, it’s like open-source has grown up.

Ollie Carter

Totally. And it’s not just about the big models, either. Liquid AI released their new models for edge devices—so, running generative AI on your phone, not just in the cloud. Three times faster training, two times faster processing on CPUs. That’s a game-changer for bringing AI to everyone, not just those with a fat internet pipe. And, get this, China’s now leading the world in AI research output—over twenty-three thousand AI papers last year. That’s more than the US, which is wild when you think about how quickly that’s changed.

Llew Jury

Yeah, and that research edge could turn into commercial edge pretty quickly. It’s not just about who’s got the biggest model, it’s who’s got the best ideas and the fastest teams. And, the open-source versus closed debate—it’s not going away. As we talked about in our last episode, it’s shaping the whole industry, from innovation to safety to who gets to play in the AI sandbox.

Ollie Carter

Alright, let’s talk about the people and the politics, because it’s been a week of musical chairs at the top. Biggest shocker—Linda Yaccarino gone as the CEO of X, just two years in. And the timing’s, well, let’s say “interesting”—right after that Grok social media controversy. Makes you wonder what’s going on behind the scenes, yeah?

Llew Jury

Yeah, it’s been a busy week, hasn't it? And then you’ve got Apple losing Ruoming Pang, their head of AI models, to Meta. That’s a huge blow for Apple, especially since they’ve been lagging in AI. Meta’s just hoovering up talent, and Google’s not sitting still either—they’ve brought in the founder of Windsurf and his team. It’s like a talent arms race, and every move matters because, let’s be honest, AI’s still about the people as much as the tech.

Ollie Carter

Absolutely. And then, on the governance side, the EU’s just dropped their draft AI Code of Practice. It’s the first real global framework—focuses on copyright and systemic risk. It’s voluntary, but if you don’t sign up, you miss out on legal certainty. And it goes live in August, so companies have to move fast. Meanwhile, the US is, well, doing the opposite—every state’s rolling their own rules, nearly seven hundred AI bills in play. It’s a patchwork, and it’s gonna be a nightmare for compliance.

Llew Jury

Yeah, it’s classic US versus EU, isn’t it? One big rulebook versus fifty little ones. And then you’ve got the UN trying to get everyone in a room to talk about AI for good. But, mate, here’s the big question: is global coordination on AI even possible? Or are we just gonna see this endless tug-of-war between countries, companies, and regulators?

Ollie Carter

I mean, I wanna be optimistic, but I reckon it’s always gonna be a bit of a tug-of-war. The tech moves too fast, and everyone’s got their own interests. But maybe, just maybe, these international forums and public-good projects can set some baselines. Otherwise, we’re in for a wild ride.

Llew Jury

Yeah, I’m with you. It’s messy, but that’s the world we live in. Alright, that’s a wrap for this week’s episode. We’ve covered billion-dollar bets, open-source showdowns, and the global chess game of AI leadership. Ollie, always a pleasure, mate.

Ollie Carter

Cheers, Llew. And thanks to everyone for tuning in. We’ll be back next week with more on the wild world of AI. Until then, stay curious, and we’ll catch you soon. See ya, Llew!

Llew Jury

See ya, Ollie. See ya, everyone!