Chips for China

$$$ for Chrome

August 13, 2025

Welcome back! OpenAI’s GPT-5 debut came with all the drama you’d expect from a flagship AI launch—a broken router that made it seem “way dumber” than it is, a potential revival of GPT-4o for Plus users, and the now-infamous “chart crime” that turned a benchmark into meme fodder. Sam Altman says fixes are already underway, rate limits are doubling, and the router’s back online.

What’s been your experience so far with GPT-5?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Nvidia to pay US 15% of China chip sales

Image Credit: Akio Kon / Bloomberg / Getty Images

In a move that’s raised eyebrows in both tech and policy circles, Nvidia and AMD will each pay the US government 15% of revenue from AI chip sales to China.

The arrangement—confirmed by the White House—is tied to newly granted export licenses for Nvidia’s H20 chips and AMD’s MI308 chips, both designed for AI applications in the Chinese market. And it’s all happening just months after the US restricted chip sales to China over national security concerns. 

Yes, this is weird. Such revenue-sharing agreements are extremely rare. Export licenses typically don’t involve fees, let alone a direct cut of sales. President Donald Trump said the deal came after a meeting with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, during which they “negotiated” the 15% figure down from 20%.

Why it matters: Proponents see the deal as a way to balance competition with control, while critics question how the funds will be used. Either way, it underscores how AI chip exports have become a high-stakes front in the US–China tech rivalry.

Perplexity takes a $34.5B swing at Chrome

Perplexity, the San Francisco–based AI search startup, has made a $34.5 billion offer to buy Google’s Chrome, a move timed just ahead of a possible US antitrust ruling that could force Google to sell its browser.

The backdrop. A federal judge ruled last year that Google illegally monopolizes search. The Justice Department’s proposed remedies include spinning off Chrome and licensing search data to rivals. A decision is expected any day now.

The pitch. Perplexity (valued at $18 billion after raising $100 million earlier this year) says multiple large funds are ready to fully finance the deal, though it’s not naming names. It’s promising $3 billion in investments over two years, jobs for much of Chrome’s team, and no “stealth modifications” to reassure users and advertisers.

Why it matters: This isn’t the first time Perplexity has moved on a major internet property before a forced transition—it also made a bid for TikTok’s US ops this year. With its own AI browser, Comet, on the way, owning Chrome would hand Perplexity a massive install base and prime positioning in the AI agent race.

An AI ‘foundation model’ for the brain

The Cleveland Clinic is teaming up with San Francisco startup Piramidal to build an AI model that could change how doctors monitor brain health in the ICU. Instead of parsing text or images, this system is trained on EEG brainwave data—the squiggly lines that track electrical activity in the brain. In intensive care, those patterns can reveal seizures, consciousness changes, or early signs of decline.

  • The problem: Reviewing a full day’s EEG data by hand can take hours, and most patients aren’t monitored in real time.

  • A potential solution: Piramidal’s model aims to fix that by continuously analyzing EEG streams and flagging abnormalities in seconds. That could let doctors act sooner—and eventually monitor hundreds of patients at once.

Built on massive data. The model draws on nearly a million hours of EEG recordings from tens of thousands of patients, both healthy and sick. Co-founders Dimitris Fotis Sakellariou (a neuroengineer and AI scientist) and Kris Pahuja (ex-Google and Spotify) see it as a “foundation model for the brain,” capable of adapting to individual differences, not unlike how a large language model can adjust to your writing style.

Beyond the ICU: Future applications could include epilepsy care and sleep monitoring. But there’s also the question of how sensitive brain data will be stored and used—a debate ethicists say should happen before these systems go mainstream.

100+ ChatGPT Prompts to Revolutionize Your Workflow [Free Guide]

Supercharge your productivity with HubSpot's comprehensive "How to Use ChatGPT at Work" guide. This free resource is your fast track to AI mastery:

  • AI Crash Course: Understand ChatGPT's capabilities in under 30 minutes

  • Industry-Specific Use Cases: 15+ real-world applications across various sectors

  • Productivity Guide: 21 best practices to 10x your efficiency with AI

  • Prompt Powerhouse: 100+ ready-to-use prompts for immediate implementation

  • Challenge Buster: Overcome common AI hurdles with expert strategies

Plus, in-depth sections on email composition, content creation, customer support, and data analysis.

Join 10,000+ professionals already leveraging this guide to revolutionize their workflows. From beginners to advanced users, this resource caters to all levels.

Turn Excel into your AI-powered financial analyst

Endex

Endex is an Excel-native AI agent for finance teams. It accelerates modeling and analysis by reasoning over all your data (from internal files to trusted external sources) with complete source citations for every output.

How you can use it:

  • Automate recurring financial models and reports

  • Pull and process SEC filings and market data instantly

  • Build reusable analytical templates for consistent workflows

  • Maintain full source traceability for every data point

Pricing: Free & paid

Build conversational AI without touching code

Release0

Release0 lets you create AI-powered chatbots for websites, WhatsApp, and more. With a Bring-Your-Own-Key setup, you can plug in models from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Groq while staying in control of costs.

How you can use it:

  • Automate lead qualification across multiple channels

  • Provide 24/7 customer support with AI chatbots

  • Streamline user onboarding workflows

  • Manage multiple branded AI experiences in one workspace

Pricing: Free, paid plans start at $31/month

Jobs, announcements, and big ideas

  • Sam Altman is reportedly cofounding a new brain-to-computer interface startup called Merge Labs.

  • Video overviews in NotebookLM are now available to all users.

  • Roblox open-sources its Sentinel AI tool to detect and block harmful chat messages.

  • Claude Sonnet 4 expands its API context window to 1 million tokens, a fivefold increase.

  • Anthropic offers Claude AI to all US government branches for $1 to encourage adoption.

  • Figure unveils a humanoid robot that can fold laundry on its own.

  • Skywork releases Matrix-Game 2.0, the first open-source real-time interactive world model.

  • xAI launches Grok 4 globally for free to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-5.

OpenAI just went open-source(ish). I recap the TL;DR of GPT-5, plus much more in a busy week of AI news.

That’s a wrap! See you Friday.

—Matt (FutureTools.io)

P.S. This newsletter is 100% written by a human. Okay, maybe 96%.