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- Grok goes wild with AI companions
Grok goes wild with AI companions
PLUS: Zuck reveals Meta’s AI supercluster plans
Zach Mink & Rowan Cheung
July 15, 2025
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Just days after apologizing for offensive outputs, xAI is back with a new Grok feature — AI companions.
The AI-powered avatars can hold voice conversations and develop relationships with users (with unlockable NSFW content 😳), a bold release given both recent model issues and concerns surrounding the AI companionship space.
In today’s AI rundown:
xAI launches Grok AI companions
Zuck reveals Meta’s AI supercluster plan
Automate your career growth with Tasks
Cognition snags Windsurf after Google talent grab
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
XAI
Image source: @DogeDesigner on X
The Rundown: Elon Musk’s xAI just introduced AI companions for SuperGrok subscribers, featuring animated 3D avatars powered by its Grok model that can interact in real-time through voice conversations.
The details:
Grok users can chat with fully animated avatars like Ani (a flirty anime character) and Bad Rudi (a red panda), with more options coming soon.
Users can unlock additional features, like NSFW options, by reaching higher relationship levels, adding gamification elements to the chatbot experience.
The feature launches just days after Grok faced backlash for offensive outputs, with xAI apologizing and publishing a post-mortem on what caused the issue.
The release comes amid surging use of AI avatars on platforms like Character AI, though research shows risks of children using them for companionship.
Why it matters: Grok's AI companions arrive as the industry grapples with mounting safety concerns around emotional AI relationships, particularly after recent lawsuits against Character AI. Pushing avatars capable of explicit conversation feels a bit risky given Grok’s issues last week, but certainly aligns with Elon Musk’s unfiltered vision.
TOGETHER WITH VANTA
The Rundown: As you scale your business, security needs to be more than a checkbox — it should be the foundation for customer trust and long-term growth. Vanta’s Trust Maturity Report helps you benchmark your security program against your peers so you can level up your security with confidence.
Read the report to learn:
Where your security ranks versus companies of similar size and industry
How automating frameworks can accelerate SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more
How Vanta strengthens security posture while your team stays focused on growth
META
Image source: Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck on Threads)
The Rundown: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced the company’s plans to build multiple AI superclusters in Louisiana and Ohio, set to power its new Superintelligence Labs initiatives.
The details:
Meta will launch its first 1GW supercluster called “Prometheus” in 2026, while “Hyperion” will scale from 2 to 5GW over several years.
The Hyperion facility in Louisiana will cover an area comparable to the size of Manhattan, making it one of the largest AI infrastructure projects globally.
Zuckerberg also said Meta is investing “hundreds of billions” into compute, aiming for the highest compute-per-researcher ratio in the industry.
Meta is also reportedly discussing switching its AI strategy, with the new team wanting to pivot from the open-source playbook to developing closed models.
Why it matters: Zuck certainly isn’t playing around when it comes to spending, with Meta going all out on both talent and infrastructure. The potential pivot to closed models would also be a huge reversal, signaling that the new Superintelligence team may head in a completely different direction than its Llama predecessor.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use ChatGPT's scheduled tasks feature to automate both job searching and skill development, sending you job opportunities and practice questions daily.
Step-by-step:
Head over to ChatGPT and select (preferably) a reasoning model like o3
Start your prompt with “Schedule a task” and specify details like “Search for remote software engineer positions, Python/JavaScript, $80k+, daily at 6 AM” and ***“*Generate 3 beginner Python questions with solutions, daily at 8 PM”
Regularly optimize your searches at ChatGPT Tasks by adjusting criteria and timing
Pro tip: Stagger your delivery times — morning for job opportunities when you're motivated to apply, evening for practice questions when you can focus on learning.
PRESENTED BY IBM
The Rundown: IBM’s API Agent brings agentic AI to API Connect, transforming prompts into production-ready APIs.
With API Agent, you can:
Let AI handle design, validation, and deployment to Code Engine automatically
Manage standards and cut manual steps for fast API delivery
Harness agentic AI to turn your API ideas into secured, production-ready reality
COGNITION & WINDSURF
Image source: Cognition AI
The Rundown: Cognition AI, the creator of “Devin” coding assistant, just acquired rival Windsurf, bringing in all of its remaining employees and assets just days after Google’s $2.4B move to hire key talent and license the startup’s tech.
The details:
The deal includes Windsurf's intellectual property, brand, $82M in annual revenue, and access to over $100M in remaining capital.
All Windsurf employees receive accelerated equity vesting and financial participation, with those lacking equity getting shares based on tenure.
Cognition plans to integrate Windsurf's agentic IDE with its Devin coding assistant, enabling parallel task delegation and seamless collaboration.
The deal follows a turbulent period for Windsurf, which nearly sold to OpenAI for $3B before talks collapsed due to Microsoft-related complications.
Why it matters: What a whirlwind of a week for the remaining Windsurf employees, who went from an OpenAI acquisition, being seemingly left behind in a Google deal, to now joining forces with one of the startup’s top rivals. While Cognition faced initial anger from the team, this move now feels like a great outcome given the circumstances.
QUICK HITS
🤖 Kimi K2 - Moonshot AI’s 1T parameter open model for agentic intelligence
⚡️ Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning - Microsoft’s open AI for on-device reasoning
⚙️ Kiro - AWS’ new agentic IDE for coding tasks
📖 Gemini Embedding - GA with SOTA performance and 100+ languages
AWS Imagine Conference is coming to Chicago, July 29-30 – Accelerate innovation in the public sector with cloud and AI. SLED leaders, learn more and register for free.*
SpaceX is reportedly investing $2B in xAI as part of a $5B equity raise, becoming the latest Elon Musk-owned company to intermingle with his AI startup.
Apple is reportedly facing investor pressure to pursue AI talent hiring and acquisitions, with rumored targets including Perplexity and Mistral.
Google launched featured notebooks in NotebookLM, partnering with The Economist, The Atlantic, and expert authors to offer curated collections on a variety of topics.
AWS launched Kiro, a new AI IDE that combines agentic coding with spec-driven development to bridge the gap between AI prototypes and production-ready apps.
The U.S. DoD awarded contracts of up to $200M to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI, aiming to increase AI adoption and tackle national security challenges.
*Sponsored Listing
COMMUNITY
Check out our last live workshop with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to install and use Gemini CLI to boost your productivity right from the command line.
Watch it here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.
That's it for today!Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. |
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team
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