OpenAI, Amazon, and $38B

PLUS: Turn Microsoft Copilot into your personal tutor

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI just wrote Amazon a $38 billion check for compute — and that's just the latest in a spending spree that is running into the trillions (!).

With questions looming about the sustainability given the company’s revenue, CEO Sam Altman had a message for worried investors: sell your shares, he'll find a buyer.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • OpenAI’s $38B compute deal with Amazon

  • Coca-Cola doubles down on AI holiday ads

  • Turn Microsoft Copilot into your personal tutor

  • New benchmark tests AI’s freelance automation

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI & AMAZON

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI just secured a seven-year, $38B agreement with Amazon Web Services for computing infrastructure, marking the company’s largest diversification away from Microsoft’s cloud services.

The details:

  • The partnership grants OAI access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs across AWS data centers, with deployment targeted for late 2026 completion.

  • The compute will support everything from powering ChatGPT's live interactions to developing upcoming models, with flexible scaling built into the contract.

  • Last week's contract renegotiation with Microsoft removed exclusivity requirements, allowing OAI to purchase capacity from other providers.

  • The AWS agreement is part of OAI's broader $1.4T infrastructure buildout plan that includes partnerships with Oracle, Google, Nvidia, and Broadcom

Why it matters: OpenAI continues to scale its already-staggering compute commitments, with yet another giant deal coming at a time when many continue to question the sustainability of spending given the AI leader’s revenue. But CEO Sam Altman had a quick answer for the skeptics — feel free to sell your shares.

TOGETHER WITH SLACK FROM SALESFORCE

The Rundown: Stop the endless app-hopping! Workers waste 33% of their day hunting for information and switching apps approximately 1,200+ times. Slack's AI-powered search transforms chaos into clarity with one unified search bar that cuts through the noise.

With Slack Enterprise Search, you can:

  • Get instant answers from messages, files, Salesforce, OneDrive, and Google Drive

  • Ask questions in plain English and get contextual answers, not keyword chaos

  • Maintain enterprise-grade security while accessing real-time intelligence across tools

Download Slack’s free E-Book to see how AI search is revolutionizing workplace productivity.

COCA-COLA

Image source: Coca-Cola

The Rundown: Coca-Cola launched its 2025 holiday campaign featuring AI-generated versions of its iconic "Holidays Are Coming" commercials, one year after its first AI attempt sparked backlash from creatives over the tech's impact on artists.

The details:

  • Coca-Cola partnered with AI studios Silverside and Secret Level to produce new spots that swap last year’s unsettling human characters for animals.

  • The beverage giant cut production from roughly 12 months to 30 days, with one studio needing just five specialists to generate and refine 70,000+ clips.

  • Coca-Cola’s latest ad comes despite social media backlash for its 2024 Christmas ad spot, with the company also using AI for a separate ad in 2023.

  • Global VP Pratik Thakar said AI is at the center of Coca-Cola’s marketing transformation, and that the “genie is out of the bottle” with the use of the tech.

Why it matters: Given the acceleration in AI video, this is likely the last Christmas that AI’s use in video ads is even noticeable. But it’s also notable that Coca-Cola is willing to push through the early periods of backlash to experiment with the technology, with big companies potentially setting the tone for broader adoption across the ad industry.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Microsoft Copilot's Vision and Voice features to transform your desktop into an interactive learning environment where you can verbally discuss complex study materials.

Step-by-step:

  1. Install Microsoft Copilot from Microsoft Store (Windows) or App Store (macOS 14.0+/M1), open the app, and sign in with your Microsoft account

  2. Go to Settings via profile icon, toggle on "Voice Mode" and "Copilot Vision", and then open your study material (PDF, notebook, etc.) in the browser

  3. Say "Hey Copilot", click specs icon (eyeglasses) to enable Vision mode, then ask: "Walk me through this paper and give me key insights"

  4. Ask follow-ups like "Explain like I'm 15 how to use this concept daily" or "Generate a similar practice problem and solve it with me interactively"

  5. Close toolbar, then prompt: "Give me analogy-driven notes from our discussion with step-by-step concept breakdown" — export as Word Doc or edit before saving to your notes

Pro tip: Use Copilot's Deep Research feature after your session to get a comprehensive analysis and connections between concepts you've explored.

PRESENTED BY GALILEO

The Rundown: Multi-agent systems can handle more complex tasks — but are they worth the orchestration overhead, and how can they be made reliable in production?

Read Galileo’s guide for an exploration of multi-agent systems, and learn to:

  • Design scalable multi-agent architectures and improve agentic systems

  • Master context engineering for agent collaboration

  • Identify and avoid common coordination pitfalls

SCALE AI

Image source: Scale AI

The Rundown: Scale AI and the Center for AI Safety published the Remote Labor Index, a new benchmark that tests AI models on real freelance projects, revealing that even the top systems complete less than 3% of tasks at professional human standards.

The Details:

  • The benchmark collected 240 completed assignments from verified Upwork professionals across 23 work categories, including the deliverables in the task.

  • Six systems were tested on the identical projects, with AI outputs compared against the professional standards of the Upwork submission.

  • Manus topped the leaderboard at 2.5%, with Grok 4 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 at 2.1%, with nearly 97% of outputs failing to meet basic client standards.

  • Issues included poor quality, incomplete deliverables, and broken files, with AI succeeding only on narrow tasks like logo creation, audio mixing, and charts.

Why it matters: The gap between benchmark hype and real-world automation just got quantified. These results show that coordinating complex deliverables still remains beyond current AI, even as reasoning scores climb. While agents may be chipping away at smaller subtasks, a human in the loop is still very much needed (at least for now).

QUICK HITS

  • 🎨 Adobe Firefly - New Image Model 5, Prompt to Edit, and video features

  • 💡 Perplexity Patents - AI-powered patent search within Perplexity

  • 🎥 Hailuo 2.3 - MiniMax’s AI video model with upgraded realism and motion

  • ⚙️ Composer - Cursor’s new fast agentic coding model

Zendesk’s annual AI summit is on demand. Discover for free how AI is shaping service by delivering resolutions at scale.*

Apple’s upcoming AI-revamped Siri will reportedly “lean on Google’s Gemini model”, according to Bloomberg insider Mark Gurman.

Sam Altman was pressed on OpenAI’s revenue vs. spending on the Bg2 podcast, telling host Brad Gerstner: “If you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer.”

Nvidia-backed cloud startup Lambda announced a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft to build AI infrastructure featuring tens of thousands of Nvidia GB300 chips.

Anthropic signed professional services giant Cognizant as one of its three largest enterprise customers, with the firm deploying Claude to its 350,000 employees.

Japanese anime, manga, and game companies, including Studio Ghibli and Bandai Namco, wrote to OpenAI, calling to stop using their content to train Sora video models.

Microsoft announced a $15.2B investment in the UAE through 2029, including datacenter expansion with over 80,000 Nvidia GPUs.

*Sponsored Listing

COMMUNITY

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Rob M. in Grand Rapids, MI:

"We built a multimodal chat agent to conduct corporate strategic planning research company-wide and then provide critical executive committee insights across 150 employees and 30 divisions."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

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