Google DeepMind and robotics company Apptronik have announced a collaboration to combine their technical expertise in developing AI humanoid robots capable of operating in complex dynamic environments. This partnership aims to advance the deep integration of robotic hardware and artificial intelligence, exploring broader possibilities for robots in both industrial and everyday applications. Apptronik has been independently operating since 2016, spun off from the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, and has developed 15 different robot models to date, including the...

Today, in response to rumors that ByteDance might initiate a price war for large models, Douyin Vice President Li Liang issued a statement on social media, clearly stating that this is not a price war. Li Liang pointed out that the Doubao large model has reduced costs through technological innovation, with significant optimizations in algorithms, software engineering, and hardware solutions. He mentioned that the pricing of 0.3 yuan per 1,000 tokens not only has a considerable gross profit but also follows a transparent pricing strategy, which is not the traditional 'list price discount' model.

IBM has officially launched its next-generation open-source large language model, Granite3.1, aiming to secure a leading position in the enterprise AI sector. This series of models features an extended context length of 128K, embedding models, built-in hallucination detection capabilities, and significant performance improvements. IBM claims that the Granite8B Instruct model outperforms its open-source competitors of similar scale, including Meta's Llama3.1, Qwen2.5, and Google's Gemma2.

On December 18, 2024, ZhiYuan Research Institute signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Tencent Group, aiming for in-depth collaboration in several areas, including large model research and development, exploration of cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies, and open-source ecosystem construction. According to the cooperation agreement, ZhiYuan Research Institute and Tencent will leverage their respective strengths to promote the deep integration of large model technology and industrial scenarios, and explore technological solutions for large model training and inference optimization in diverse computing environments. Both parties are also committed to building an open and innovative hardware and software ecosystem to foster the development and application of technologies.

AI drug development company Genesis Therapeutics recently announced that it has secured additional investment from Nvidia's venture capital arm, NVentures, though the specific amount remains undisclosed. This move marks a further deepening of the collaboration between the two parties, aimed at accelerating the development of Genesis's AI platform GEMS (Genesis Exploration of Molecular Space), which focuses on utilizing physics-based AI for structure-driven drug design.

At the 2024 Volcano Engine FORCE Power Conference in Winter, ByteDance also launched the Global AI Search on Volcano Engine. This service integrates contextual search recommendations, enterprise private domain information integration, and connected Q&A services, closely aligning enterprise information, business needs, and user demands to help businesses achieve more precise recommendations and broader information discovery.