Meta Bets $15 Billion On AGI 🤖!

Word on the street is that Scale AI needs a new CEO soon, and Meta has 15 billion reasons why this happened 😏. 

Forward thinkers, welcome to issue #111 of the Neural Frontier. 

Today, we’re gonna unpack Meta’s $15 billion bet on AGI, Apple’s new AI features, and an AI-first browser, from the makers of Arc. 

A pretty weird match-up? Yes. But what’s the fun in normal? 😉

In a rush? Here's your quick byte: 

💰 Meta bets $15 billion on AGI!

🤖 Apple unveils new AI features at WWDC 2025.

🌐 The Browser Company unveils its AI-first browser, Dia!

🎭 AI Reimagines: Patrick Nagel Meets Anime!

🎯 Everything else you missed this week.  

⚡ The Neural Frontier’s weekly spotlight: 3 AI tools making the rounds this week.

💰 Meta bets $15 billion on AGI!

Meta has unveiled ambitious plans to create a new AI research lab focused on developing superintelligence, a theoretical AI capability surpassing human cognitive abilities. 

This strategic effort includes recruiting Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and involves a major $15 billion investment in Scale AI, securing Meta’s position in the intensifying AI race.

Here’s the scoop: 

🔥 Why It Matters: Meta’s substantial investment demonstrates the critical importance the company places on achieving breakthroughs in advanced AI technologies. As tech giants, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and OpenAI, aggressively pursue similar capabilities, Meta aims to leapfrog the competition and redefine the future of AI-driven products.

🌟 New "Superintelligence" AI Lab: The goal is to develop AI technology beyond artificial general intelligence (AGI)—creating systems capable of surpassing human cognitive capabilities. Additionally, Alexandr Wang, 28-year-old founder and CEO of Scale AI, will join Meta’s new lab, bringing significant industry expertise and credibility.

💸 $15 Billion Investment in Scale AI: Meta’s nearly $15 billion investment in Scale AI grants it a 49% stake, marking the largest external investment in Meta’s history. This deal not only cements a strategic partnership but also enhances Meta’s ability to leverage Scale AI’s expertise in data training and AI infrastructure.

📈 Meta’s Strategic AI Reorganization: Recent internal struggles and product development setbacks have compelled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reorganize and bolster the company’s AI capabilities.

Meta’s AI products, such as Meta AI and Llama, have seen mixed success, highlighting the need for innovation and reliable leadership in AI initiatives.

⚠️ Challenges & Controversies: Internal management issues and employee churn have impacted Meta’s AI momentum, along with criticism over exaggerated performance claims for the Llama models.

Regulatory scrutiny persists, especially with ongoing FTC legal actions related to past acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta’s deal with Scale AI, structured as an investment rather than an acquisition, may mitigate some antitrust concerns.

🤖 Apple unveils new AI features at WWDC 2025.

At WWDC 2025, Apple revealed several AI-powered enhancements across its ecosystem. While not as expansive as last year’s announcements, the new features showcase practical applications of Apple Intelligence designed to make daily tasks smarter and simpler.

Here’s what you need to know: 

📸 Visual Intelligence: Apple’s image-analysis tool, Visual Intelligence, now interacts directly with your screen content. Whether identifying clothing items in social media photos or providing quick information on landmarks, the feature leverages Google Search and ChatGPT to offer richer, context-driven experiences, available with iOS 16.

🖼️ ChatGPT Comes to Image Playground: Apple’s image generation tool, Image Playground, now integrates ChatGPT, enabling users to create AI-generated images in diverse artistic styles like anime, oil painting, and watercolor. Users can also enhance creativity by asking ChatGPT to produce related images based on prompts.

🏃‍♂️ Workout Buddy: The new AI-driven Workout Buddy feature acts like your personal trainer, providing motivational prompts and real-time insights during exercise. It tracks your milestones, such as fastest runs and heart rate data, and summarizes achievements post-workout, making fitness tracking more personalized and interactive.

🌐 Live Translation: Apple is introducing real-time translation powered by Apple Intelligence for Messages, FaceTime, and phone calls. This technology provides live translated captions during video calls and spoken translations during phone calls, removing language barriers and enhancing global communication.

📞 AI-Assisted Call Features: Two significant updates arrive for handling phone calls:

• Call Screening: AI answers calls from unknown numbers in the background, identifying the caller and reason for calling before you answer.
  

• Hold Assist: Automatically detects hold music and allows you to multitask, alerting you when a live agent becomes available.

🗳️ Poll Suggestions in Messages: Messages now uses Apple Intelligence to suggest creating polls based on conversational context. Ideal for quickly resolving group decisions like choosing restaurants or activities, this feature simplifies group interactions.

⚡ AI-Powered Shortcuts: Apple’s Shortcuts app gains AI capabilities, enabling users to easily integrate tasks like summarization and content analysis using Apple Intelligence when building custom shortcuts, further automating daily workflows.

One setback: the highly anticipated AI enhancements for Siri won’t be available until next year, leaving many attendees curious about Apple's longer-term plans for its voice assistant amid growing AI competition.

🌐 The Browser Company unveils its AI-first browser, Dia!

 The Browser Company, known for its enthusiast-oriented browser Arc, is shifting gears by launching Dia, its new AI-driven web browser now available in invite-only beta.

With the rising dominance of AI tools reshaping web interactions, Dia aims to integrate powerful AI capabilities directly into everyday browsing, eliminating the need to toggle between tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude.

Here's what you can expect:

💡 AI At Your Fingertips: Dia, built on Google's Chromium framework, offers a familiar user experience but with AI deeply integrated into its core. Its standout feature is a smart URL bar, which serves as an intuitive interface for both search and AI chat functions. Dia can:

• Perform web searches, summarize uploaded files, and answer queries about currently open tabs.
  

• Generate drafts or summaries based on your tab content.

🗣️ Chatbot Customization: Users can interact conversationally with Dia's chatbot to tailor settings, such as:

• Tone of voice
  

• Writing style
  

• Coding preferences

An optional "History" feature enables Dia to leverage your last seven days of browsing as context for improved responses.

🛠️ Customizable shortcuts ("Skills"): Dia introduces "Skills," mini-code snippets functioning similarly to Siri shortcuts. These allow users to swiftly automate browser customizations—like creating personalized reading layouts—with a simple request to the browser.

While AI chatbots within browsers aren't new, with competitors like Opera Neon and Google Chrome incorporating similar features, The Browser Company hopes Dia’s intuitive design and robust capabilities will position it uniquely within the evolving browser market.

🎭 AI Reimagines: Patrick Nagel Meets Anime!

The title says it all. This week’s showcase is clearly inspired by Patrick Nagel’s reputable illustrations, with an anime-esque twist. 

Our take? A pretty great execution. See for yourself!

🎯 Everything else you missed this week. 

🧠 Sam Altman shares his vision for how AI will change the human experience. 

🫨 OpenAI releases the o3-pro model. 

⛈️ Google’s new AI model can forecast tropical storms. 

🍟 NVIDIA teams up with Mistral AI as part of European AI push.

🔎 Exa AI releases research agent that outperforms Perplexity. 

🤖 Android 16 has arrived with interesting updates.

✍️ Anthropic shuts down AI-generated blog, Claude Explains. 

⚡ The Neural Frontier’s weekly spotlight: 3 AI tools making the rounds this week. 

1. 🔍 ARI: ARI is an advanced AI research agent that generates comprehensive, professional-grade research reports in under 5 minutes from simple prompts. 

2. 🎯 Huntr: Huntr is a comprehensive job search management platform that streamlines the entire application process from resume creation to interview scheduling. 

3. 📊 Scoop: Scoop is an AI-powered data analytics platform that transforms business data into actionable revenue insights without requiring technical expertise.

All in all…

The AGI race is on, and Meta is doubling down. Who’s gonna make a power play next? The folks at OpenAI? Google? Microsoft? Anhropic? 

Only time will tell. Till then, we’ll keep scouring so you’re on top of any happenings in the space. 

If you’ve enjoyed today’s issue, pass this along to a friend who needs to see what’s next in AI, and be sure to hit subscribe if you haven’t already. 

Catch you on the flip side! 😅