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Analysis: Is OpenAI impact washing by becoming a public benefit corporation? | The Social Enterprise Magazine

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OpenAI’s plans to restructure into a public benefit corporation could shield CEO Sam Altman from social and environmental accountability by taking advantage of amendments to its legal structure in one state of the US, say experts.

Since it was founded in 2015 OpenAI has been controlled by a non-profit board of directors with a mission to develop artificial intelligence in a way that benefits all humanity. 

In 2019 the firm added a profit-making subsidiary funded by a US$1bn investment from Microsoft. In September, Reuters reported that OpenAI planned to restructure its core business into a for-profit benefit corporation that would no longer be controlled by its non-profit board. This would make the company more attractive to investors, although OpenAI emphasised at the time that the non-profit element would continue to exist and own a minority stake in the company.  

In October OpenAI was valued at US$157bn and, as the developer of ChatGPT, is one of the most influential AI firms in the world. But experts have raised concerns that the company’s plans indicate that it might move away from its mission to develop AI to benefit all of humanity in favour of focusing on profits for investors. 

OpenAI is currently registered in Delaware and its AI competitors Anthropic and xAI are registered as public benefit corporations in the state. Several experts have pointed out that the way that the public benefit corporation is structured in Delaware could be problematic.

Amendments to Delaware’s public benefit corporation law introduced in 2020 could give OpenAI the kudos of being seen to be committed to balancing profit with purpose, while, in fact, allowing the company to dodge accountability. And more companies might follow suit.
 

How Delaware’s legislation could enable impact washing

Public benefit corporations are traditional businesses, but with stricter obligations when it comes to purpose, accountability and transparency. Shareholders have the same rights as in a traditional corporate model, plus additional ones including the right to enforce the company’s social mission. Examples of public benefit corporations include Patagonia, Ben and Jerry’s, and Kickstarter. Public benefit corporations originated in the US but versions of the corporate model have since been adopted in countries across the world. 

Melanie Rieback, co-founder of not-for-profit computer security consultancy Radically Open Security, co-founder of ‘post-growth’ startups incubator Nonprofit Ventures and a lecturer in ‘post growth entrepreneurship’, argues that amendments to Delaware’s public benefit corporation legislation potentially give CEOs a higher level of control over whether their company is delivering a public benefit which isn’t the intention of the legislation. 

This is completely outside of the spirit of the public benefit corporation

Speaking to Pioneers Post, Rieback (pictured) said: “These changes to public benefit corporation law probably make it easier for CEOs to consolidate their hold on the company and to perform bad behaviour than if they were not a public benefit corporation, and this is completely outside of the spirit of the public benefit corporation. It’s protecting them from investors who want to call them to account for violating the ‘people and planet’ part of the triple bottom line.”

Delaware is the second smallest state in the US but is home to a disproportionate amount of businesses because of business-friendly legislation and a separate court system specifically for handling corporate cases. In 2023 Delaware said it was home to 60% of Fortune 500 companies, including Google parent company Alphabet and Amazon. In 2021 the state said more than 90% of US-based companies that went public that year were registered there.

The state introduced public benefit corporations in 2013 but amended the legislation in 2020. The 2020 amendments include the requirement that any potential plaintiff wanting to file a lawsuit to enforce the company’s public benefit obligations must own at least 2% of shares or, in the case of certain listed companies, shares with a value of at least US$2m.

If OpenAI’s planned restructure enables it to move away from its social mission while retaining the kudos of being seen as a public benefit corporation, it could set a precedent which could lead to more companies using Delaware’s amended law to disingenuously boost their reputation, or ‘impact wash’, warns Rieback.

She said: “People are paying attention. If this is an interesting way to get the benefits of being a not-for-profit, but then be able to change the governance structures to suddenly make the whole thing privately held, why wouldn’t every commercially minded person start doing this?”

 

Power-grab or increased liability?

Andrew Kassoy, co-founder and co-chair of B Lab, the nonprofit that oversees B Corp certification and helped write benefit corporation legislation, writes in the New York Times that Delaware law requires public benefit corporations registered there to report on their social impact only once every two years, using their own chosen measurements. Kassoy points out this is a much lower bar than most mainstream companies have to meet for annual audited financial reporting.

Andrew Kassoy cropped headshot

Kassoy (pictured) adds: “The future of humanity shouldn’t have to rely on unaccountable executives such as Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, to know if the company is living up to its stated principles.”

However, Luke Fletcher, partner at legal and advisory firm Bates Wells, told Pioneers Post one of the reasons some companies have historically been reluctant to become benefit corporations is due to a concern it could create new forms of liability for directors, given the relative novelty of the form and a lack of familiarity with it on the part of many legal advisers. He believes the Delaware amendments are designed to provide statutory clarification that there is no greater risk for directors of public benefit corporations than for other corporations and that the idea the form provides a safe harbour against shareholders and insulates management seems “misguided”.

Luke Fletcher

Although Fletcher (pictured) suggests the legal structure will require OpenAI directors to make some attempt to mitigate the negative social and environmental impacts of AI, he added that commitment to mission will not be as strong as in the existing non-profit structure which the firm operates. He said: “Ultimately, OpenAI seems to be the perfect case study of how power works. When push comes to shove, the powers in the land can rewrite even the most hardwired mission-locked constitution.”

Meanwhile, the Financial Times (FT) reports that restructuring to a public benefit corporation will protect Altman from hostile takeovers. The FT said because public benefit corporations are obliged to balance the best interests of shareholders, a public benefit, and stakeholders, the structure creates a “safe harbour” from activists who might claim the company is not making enough money.

But American Bar Association analysis from 2023 contradicts the FT’s assessment, stating that: “publicly traded public benefit corporations may become prime acquisition or take-over targets because of their perceived lack of profit maximisation or for having social goals contrary to a bidder’s own social goals”.

Brian Tang HKU Faculty of Law

Brian Tang (pictured), from HKU Faculty of Law’s LITE Lab and a member of the Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers, pointed out to Pioneers Post that takeovers of public benefit corporations are still untested and this scenario would only apply if/when OpenAI becomes a publicly listed company. However, he added, given the many VCs participating in OpenAI’s recent funding round it would not be unreasonable to assume that an IPO was their ultimate desired outcome.

Pioneers Post invited OpenAI to respond to the questions raised in this article. It had not responded by the time of publication.  

 

Is Altman steering OpenAI towards profit maximisation?

Tech ethicist and founder of Australian AI governance platform Ethē, James Gauci believes the move to distance OpenAI from its original mission has been inevitable since Sam Altman became CEO in 2019. He points to Altman’s career, in particular his role as partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator, which invested in companies like Airbnb and Dropbox, as a guide to the OpenAI CEO’s motivations. 

James Gauci

Gauci (pictured) told Pioneers Post: “Sam Altman has promised us the world and handed us an atlas. He’s got a track record of over-hyping. He’s got a track record of developing hyper-capitalistic businesses. The trajectory of the organisation has been really clear since he took over in 2019 as CEO and this is just the latest game that Sam Altman is playing with everybody. He’s like every venture capitalist’s idol, he is of that community.” 

The light on the hill that OpenAI previously represented is no longer lit. The lighthouse is empty. The lighthouse may have never existed

The ethical AI and machine learning community once saw OpenAI as a “paragon” of how the tech sector could deliver positive social impact, explained Gauci. But he points to the attempt to oust Altman from the company in 2023 and the recent departures of members of staff from key safety, innovation and quality assurance positions as evidence that the CEO is shifting the company towards a more “traditional Silicon Valley orientation” of profit maximisation.

“The light on the hill that OpenAI previously represented is no longer lit. The lighthouse is empty. The lighthouse may have never existed,” said Gauci. 

 

Public benefit status could give OpenAI a defence against regulation

Reports about the planned restructure of OpenAI suggested Altman could receive a 7% stake in the company, which the CEO has denied. In October OpenAI raised US$6.6bn (£5bn) in a funding round that valued the business at $157bn. Reuters reported that the investment was contingent on the corporate restructure and the removal of an existing profit cap for investors. 

In a statement announcing the investment, OpenAI said: “The new funding will allow us to double down on our leadership in frontier AI research, increase compute capacity, and continue building tools that help people solve hard problems.” The company is reportedly heading for a loss of US$5bn this year.

A company the size of OpenAI becoming a public benefit corporation will provide a stress test of the model and for the wider social enterprise movement, believes Rhodri Davies, founder and director of the Why Philanthropy Matters think tank. 

Rhodri Davies Headshot

Speaking to Pioneers Post, Davies (pictured) said: “What is their narrative about why their original structure of being set up with nonprofit oversight is sufficiently constraining that they need to do something else, and yet still constraining themselves to some extent by adopting a public benefit corporation model rather than just going fully for profit? If they were seen to be adopting the convenient mantle of a public benefit corporation in order to do what they wanted to do anyway, that could be difficult.”

OpenAI’s restructure and adoption of a governance structure emphasising social benefit potentially provides the firm, and Altman, with an ability to argue against wider regulation of the AI industry, said Davies. 

My worry is… we’ll see the social division and and outright weaponisation of technology that we saw with social media

At the end of September California’s governor Gavin Newsom vetoed an AI regulation bill which would have required tech companies to test AI for harm to society. OpenAI and other major AI companies, including Google and Meta, opposed the bill. Previously, OpenAI lobbied to water down EU AI regulation. 

Gauci said because of Silicon Valley’s prominence in the global tech sector, AI regulation in California does set a precedent for the rest of the world. While the AI companies are lobbying against regulation, Gauci believes if the technology is as powerful as the firms claim it is, then it must be heavily regulated. 

He said: “If there’s no legal recourse for [AI companies] changing their mind, my worry is we’ll get the snake oil salesmanship of the dot com boom and the crypto boom all over again and we’ll see the social division and and outright weaponisation of technology that we saw with social media.”
 

 

Image: Sam Altman at the WEF 2024. Copyright World Economic Forum : Benedikt von Loebell

 

 

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Apocalipsis Biosciencias para desarrollar Géminis para la infección en pacientes con quemaduras graves

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– Esta nueva indicación es otro paso para desbloquear todo el potencial de la plataforma Gemini –

San Diego-(Business Wire)-$ Revb #GÉMINISApocalipsis Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: RevB) (la “empresa” o “revelación”), una compañía de ciencias de la vida de etapas clínicas que se centra en reequilibrar la inflamación para optimizar la salud, anunció una nueva indicación de objetivo para Géminis para la prevención de la infección en pacientes con quemaduras graves que requieren hospitalización (el Gema-PBI programa). El uso de Géminis para la prevención de la infección en pacientes con quemaduras severas, así como la prevención de la infección después de la cirugía (el Gema-PSI programa) son parte de la revelación familiar de patentes anteriormente con licencia de la Universidad de Vanderbilt.


“Estamos muy contentos de colaborar con el equipo de Apocalipsis para el avance de Géminis para la prevención de la infección en esta población de pacientes desatendida”, dijo Dra. Julia BohannonProfesor Asociado, Departamento de Anestesiología, Departamento de Patología, Microbiología e Inmunología, Universidad de Vanderbilt. “Creemos que la actividad de biomarcador clínico observada con Gemini se correlaciona fuertemente con nuestra experiencia preclínica en modelos de quemaduras de infecciones”.

El equipo de investigación de Vanderbilt demostrado El tratamiento posterior a la quemadura reduce significativamente la gravedad y la duración de la infección pulmonar de Pseudomonas, así como un nivel general reducido de inflamación en un modelo preclínico.

“La prevención de la infección en pacientes severamente quemados es un esfuerzo importante y complementa que la revelación laboral ha completado hasta la fecha”, dijo “, dijo”, dijo James RolkeCEO de Revelation “El programa Gemini-PBI puede ofrecer varias oportunidades regulatorias, de desarrollo y financiación que la compañía planea explorar”.

Sobre quemaduras e infección después de quemar

Las quemaduras son lesiones en la piel que involucran las dos capas principales: la epidermis externa delgada y/o la dermis más gruesa y profunda. Las quemaduras pueden ser el resultado de una variedad de causas que incluyen fuego, líquidos calientes, productos químicos (como ácidos fuertes o bases fuertes), electricidad, vapor, radiación de radiografías o radioterapia, luz solar o luz ultravioleta. Cada año, aproximadamente medio millón de estadounidenses sufren lesiones por quemaduras que requieren intervención médica. Si bien la mayoría de las lesiones por quemaduras no requieren ingreso a un hospital, se admiten alrededor de 40,000 pacientes, y aproximadamente 30,000 de ellos necesitan tratamiento especializado en un centro de quemaduras certificadas.

El número total anual de muertes relacionadas con quemaduras es de aproximadamente 3.400, siendo la infección invasiva la razón principal de la muerte después de las primeras 24 horas. La tasa de mortalidad general para pacientes con quemaduras graves es de aproximadamente 3.3%, pero esto aumenta al 20.6% en pacientes con quemaduras con lesión cutánea de quemaduras y inhalación, versus 10.5% por lesión por inhalación solo. La infección invasiva, incluida la sepsis, es la causa principal de la muerte después de la lesión por quemaduras, lo que representa aproximadamente el 51% de las muertes.

Actualmente no hay tratamientos aprobados para prevenir la infección sistémica en pacientes con quemaduras.

Sobre Géminis

Géminis es una formulación propietaria y propietaria de disacárido hexaacil fosforilada (PHAD (PHAD®) que reduce el daño asociado con la inflamación al reprogramarse del sistema inmune innato para responder al estrés (trauma, infección, etc.) de manera atenuada. La revelación ha realizado múltiples estudios preclínicos que demuestran el potencial terapéutico de Géminis en las indicaciones objetivo. Revelación anunciado previamente Datos clínicos positivos de fase 1 para el tratamiento intravenoso con Géminis. El punto final de seguridad primario se cumplió en el estudio de fase 1, y los resultados demostraron la actividad farmacodinámica estadísticamente significativa como se observó a través de los cambios esperados en múltiples biomarcadores, incluida la regulación positiva de IL-10.

Géminis se está desarrollando para múltiples indicaciones, incluso como pretratamiento para prevenir o reducir la gravedad y la duración de la lesión renal aguda (programa Gemini-AKI), y como pretratamiento para prevenir o reducir la gravedad y la duración de la infección posquirúrgica (programa GEMINI-PSI). Además, Gemini puede ser un tratamiento para detener o retrasar la progresión de la enfermedad renal crónica (programa Gemini-CKD).

Acerca de Apocalipsis Biosciences, Inc.

Revelation Biosciences, Inc. es una compañía de ciencias de la vida en estadio clínico centrada en aprovechar el poder de la inmunidad entrenada para la prevención y el tratamiento de la enfermedad utilizando su formulación patentada Géminis. Revelation tiene múltiples programas en curso para evaluar Géminis, incluso como prevención de la infección posquirúrgica, como prevención de lesiones renales agudas y para el tratamiento de la enfermedad renal crónica.

Para obtener más información sobre Apocalipsis, visite www.revbiosciences.com.

Declaraciones con avance

Este comunicado de prensa contiene declaraciones prospectivas definidas en la Ley de Reforma de Litigios de Valores Privados de 1995, según enmendada. Las declaraciones prospectivas son declaraciones que no son hechos históricos. Estas declaraciones prospectivas generalmente se identifican por las palabras “anticipar”, “creer”, “esperar”, “estimar”, “plan”, “perspectiva” y “proyecto” y otras expresiones similares. Advirtemos a los inversores que las declaraciones prospectivas se basan en las expectativas de la gerencia y son solo predicciones o declaraciones de las expectativas actuales e involucran riesgos, incertidumbres y otros factores conocidos y desconocidos que pueden hacer que los resultados reales sean materialmente diferentes de los previstos por las declaraciones de prospección. Apocalipsis advierte a los lectores que no depositen una dependencia indebida de tales declaraciones de vista hacia adelante, que solo hablan a partir de la fecha en que se hicieron. Los siguientes factores, entre otros, podrían hacer que los resultados reales difieran materialmente de los descritos en estas declaraciones prospectivas: la capacidad de la revelación para cumplir con sus objetivos financieros y estratégicos, debido a, entre otras cosas, la competencia; la capacidad de la revelación para crecer y gestionar la rentabilidad del crecimiento y retener a sus empleados clave; la posibilidad de que la revelación pueda verse afectada negativamente por otros factores económicos, comerciales y/o competitivos; riesgos relacionados con el desarrollo exitoso de los candidatos de productos de Apocalipsis; la capacidad de completar con éxito los estudios clínicos planificados de sus candidatos de productos; El riesgo de que no podamos inscribir completamente nuestros estudios clínicos o la inscripción llevará más tiempo de lo esperado; riesgos relacionados con la aparición de eventos de seguridad adversos y/o preocupaciones inesperadas que pueden surgir de los datos o análisis de nuestros estudios clínicos; cambios en las leyes o regulaciones aplicables; Iniciación esperada de los estudios clínicos, el momento de los datos clínicos; El resultado de los datos clínicos, incluido si los resultados de dicho estudio son positivos o si se puede replicar; El resultado de los datos recopilados, incluido si los resultados de dichos datos y/o correlación se pueden replicar; el momento, los costos, la conducta y el resultado de nuestros otros estudios clínicos; El tratamiento anticipado de datos clínicos futuros por parte de la FDA, la EMA u otras autoridades reguladoras, incluidos si dichos datos serán suficientes para su aprobación; el éxito de futuras actividades de desarrollo para sus candidatos de productos; posibles indicaciones para las cuales se pueden desarrollar candidatos de productos; la capacidad de revelación para mantener la lista de sus valores en NASDAQ; la duración esperada sobre la cual los saldos de Apocalipsis financiarán sus operaciones; y otros riesgos e incertidumbres descritos en este documento, así como aquellos riesgos e incertidumbres discutidos de vez en cuando en otros informes y otras presentaciones públicas con la SEC por Apocalipsis.

Contactos

Mike Porter

Relaciones con inversores

Porter Levay & Rose Inc.

Correo electrónico: mike@plrinvest.com

Chester Zygmont, III

Director financiero
Apocalipsis Biosciences Inc.

Correo electrónico: czygmont@revbiosciences.com

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Why Google’s search engine trial is about AI : NPR

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An illustration photograph taken on Feb. 20, 2025 shows Grok, DeepSeek and ChatGPT apps displayed on a phone screen. The Justice Department’s 2020 complaint against Google has few mentions of artificial intelligence or AI chatbots. But nearly five years later, as the remedy phase of the trial enters its second week of testimony, the focus has shifted to AI.

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Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

When the U.S. Department of Justice originally broughtand then won — its case against Google, arguing that the tech behemoth monopolized the search engine market, the focus was on, well … search.

Back then, in 2020, the government’s antitrust complaint against Google had few mentions of artificial intelligence or AI chatbots. But nearly five years later, as the remedy phase of the trial enters its second week of testimony, the focus has shifted to AI, underscoring just how quickly this emerging technology has expanded.

In the past few days, before a federal judge who will assess penalties against Google, the DOJ has argued that the company could use its artificial intelligence products to strengthen its monopoly in online search — and to use the data from its powerful search index to become the dominant player in AI.

In his opening statements last Monday, David Dahlquist, the acting deputy director of the DOJ’s antitrust civil litigation division, argued that the court should consider remedies that could nip a potential Google AI monopoly in the bud. “This court’s remedy should be forward-looking and not ignore what is on the horizon,” he said.

Dahlquist argued that Google has created a system in which its control of search helps improve its AI products, sending more users back to Google search — creating a cycle that maintains the tech company’s dominance and blocks competitors out of both marketplaces.

The integration of search and Gemini, the company’s AI chatbot — which the DOJ sees as powerful fuel for this cycle — is a big focus of the government’s proposed remedies. The DOJ is arguing that to be most effective, those remedies must address all ways users access Google search, so any penalties approved by the court that don’t include Gemini (or other Google AI products now or in the future) would undermine their broader efforts.

Department of Justice lawyer David Dahlquist leaves the Washington, D.C. federal courthouse on Sept. 20, 2023 during the original trial phase of the antitrust case against Google.

Department of Justice lawyer David Dahlquist leaves the Washington, D.C. federal courthouse on Sept. 20, 2023 during the original trial phase of the antitrust case against Google.

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AI and search are connected like this: Search engine indices are essentially giant databases of pages and information on the web. Google has its own such index, which contains hundreds of billions of webpages and is over 100,000,000 gigabytes, according to court documents. This is the data Google’s search engine scans when responding to a user’s query.

AI developers use these kinds of databases to build and train the models used to power chatbots. In court, attorneys for the DOJ have argued that Google’s Gemini pulls information from the company’s search index, including citing search links and results, extending what they say is a self-serving cycle. They argue that Google’s ability to monopolize the search market gives it user data, at a huge scale — an advantage over other AI developers.

The Justice Department argues Google’s monopoly over search could have a direct effect on the development of generative AI, a type of artificial intelligence that uses existing data to create new content like text, videos or photos, based on a user’s prompts or questions. Last week, the government called executives from several major AI companies, like OpenAI and Perplexity, in an attempt to argue that Google’s stranglehold on search is preventing some of those companies from truly growing.

The government argues that to level the playing field, Google should be forced to open its search data — like users’ search queries, clicks and results — and license it to other competitors at a cost.

This is on top of demands related to Google’s search engine business, most notably that it should be forced to sell off its Chrome browser.

Google flatly rejects the argument that it could monopolize the field of generative AI, saying competition in the AI race is healthy. In a recent blog post on Google’s website, Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote that since the federal judge first ruled against Google over a year ago, “AI has already rapidly reshaped the industry, with new entrants and new ways of finding information, making it even more competitive.”

In court, Google’s lawyers have argued that there are a host of AI companies with chatbots — some of which are outperforming Gemini. OpenAI has ChatGPT, Meta has MetaAI and Perplexity has Perplexity AI.

“There is no shortage of competition in that market, and ChatGPT and Meta are way ahead of everybody in terms of the distribution and usage at this point,” said John E. Schmidtlein, a lawyer for Google, during his opening statement. “But don’t take my word for it. Look at the data. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of downloads by ChatGPT.”

Competing in a growing AI field

It should be no surprise that AI is coming up so much at this point in the trial, said Alissa Cooper, the executive director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute, a nonpartisan tech research and policy center at Georgetown University focusing on AI, disinformation and data privacy.

“If you look at search as a product today, you can’t really think about search without thinking about AI,” she said. “I think the case is a really great opportunity to try to … analyze how Google has benefited specifically from the monopoly that it has in search, and ensure that the behavior that led to that can’t be used to gain an unfair advantage in these other markets which are more nascent.”

Having access to Google’s data, she said, “would provide them with the ability to build better chatbots, build better search engines, and potentially build other products that we haven’t even thought of.”

To make that point, the DOJ called Nick Turley, OpenAI’s head of product for ChatGPT, to the stand last Tuesday. During a long day of testimony, Turley detailed how without access to Google’s search index and data, engineers for the growing company tried to build their own.

ChatGPT, a large language model that can generate human-like responses, engage in conversations and perform tasks like explaining a tough-to-understand math lesson, was never intended to be a product for OpenAI, Turley said. But once it launched and went viral, the company found that people were using it for a host of needs.

Though popular, ChatGPT had its drawbacks, like the bot’s limited “knowledge,” Turley said. Early on, ChatGPT was not connected to the internet and could only use information that it had been fed up to a certain point in its training. For example, Turley said, if a user asked “Who is the president?” the program would give a 2022 answer — from when its “knowledge” effectively stopped.

OpenAI couldn’t build their own index fast enough to address their problems; they found that process incredibly expensive, time consuming and potentially years from coming to fruition, Turley said.

So instead, they sought a partnership with a third party search provider. At one point, OpenAI tried to make a deal with Google to gain access to their search, but Google declined, seeing OpenAI as a direct competitor, Turley testified.

But Google says companies like OpenAI are doing just fine without gaining access to the tech giant’s own technology — which it spent decades developing. These companies just want “handouts,” said Schmidtlein.

On the third day of the remedy trial, internal Google documents shared in court by the company’s lawyers compared how many people are using Gemini versus its competitors. According to those documents, ChatGPT and MetaAI are the two leaders, with Gemini coming in third.

They showed that this March, Gemini saw 35 million active daily users and 350 million monthly active users worldwide. That was up from 9 million daily active users in October 2024. But according to those documents, Gemini was still lagging behind ChatGPT, which reached 160 million daily users and around 600 million active users in March.

These numbers show that competitors have no need to use Google’s search data, valuable intellectual property that the tech giant spent decades building and maintaining, the company argues.

“The notion that somehow ChatGPT can’t get distribution is absurd,” Schmidtlein said in court last week. “They have more distribution than anyone.”

Google’s exclusive deals 

In his ruling last year, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said Google’s exclusive agreements with device makers, like Apple and Samsung, to make its search engine the default on those companies’ phones helped maintain its monopoly. It remains a core issue for this remedy trial.

Now, the DOJ is arguing that Google’s deals with device manufacturers are also directly affecting AI companies and AI tech.

In court, the DOJ argued that Google has replicated this kind of distribution deal by agreeing to pay Samsung what Dahlquist called a monthly “enormous sum” for Gemini to be installed on smartphones and other devices.

Last Wednesday, the DOJ also called Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer, to testify that Google has effectively cut his company out from making deals with manufacturers and mobile carriers.

Perplexity AIs not preloaded on any mobile devices in the U.S., despite many efforts to get phone companies to establish Perplexity as a default or exclusive app on devices, Shevelenko said. He compared Google’s control in that space to that of a “mob boss.”

But Google’s attorney, Christopher Yeager, noted in questioning Shevelenko that Perplexity has reached a valuation of over $9 billion — insinuating the company is doing just fine in the marketplace.

Despite testifying in court (for which he was subpoenaed, Shevelenko noted), he and other leaders at Perplexity are against the breakup of Google. In a statement on the company’s website, the Perplexity team wrote that neither forcing Google to sell off Chrome nor to license search data to its competitors are the best solutions. “Neither of these address the root issue: consumers deserve choice,” they wrote.

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai departs federal court after testifying in October 2023 in Washington, DC. Pichai testified to defend his company in the original antitrust trial. Pichai is expected to testify again during the remedy phase of the legal proceedings.

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai departs federal court after testifying in October 2023 in Washington, DC. Pichai testified to defend his company in the original antitrust trial. Pichai is expected to testify again during the remedy phase of the legal proceedings.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America


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What to expect next

This week the trial continues, with the DOJ calling its final witnesses this morning to testify about the feasibility of a Chrome divestiture and how the government’s proposed remedies would help rivals compete. On Tuesday afternoon, Google will begin presenting its case, which is expected to feature the testimony of CEO Sundar Pichai, although the date of his appearance has not been specified.

Closing arguments are expected at the end of May, and then Mehta will make his ruling. Google says once this phase is settled the company will appeal Mehta’s ruling in the underlying case.

Whatever Mehta decides in this remedy phase, Cooper thinks it will have effects beyond just the business of search engines. No matter what it is, she said, “it will be having some kind of impact on AI.”

Google is a financial supporter of NPR.

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API de Meta Oleleshes Llama que se ejecuta 18 veces más rápido que OpenAI: Cerebras Partnership ofrece 2.600 tokens por segundo

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Meta anunció hoy una asociación con Cerebras Systems para alimentar su nueva API de LLAMA, ofreciendo a los desarrolladores acceso a velocidades de inferencia hasta 18 veces más rápido que las soluciones tradicionales basadas en GPU.

El anuncio, realizado en la Conferencia inaugural de desarrolladores de Llamacon de Meta en Menlo Park, posiciona a la compañía para competir directamente con Operai, Anthrope y Google en el mercado de servicios de inferencia de IA en rápido crecimiento, donde los desarrolladores compran tokens por miles de millones para impulsar sus aplicaciones.

“Meta ha seleccionado a Cerebras para colaborar para ofrecer la inferencia ultra rápida que necesitan para servir a los desarrolladores a través de su nueva API de LLAMA”, dijo Julie Shin Choi, directora de marketing de Cerebras, durante una sesión de prensa. “En Cerebras estamos muy, muy emocionados de anunciar nuestra primera asociación HyperScaler CSP para ofrecer una inferencia ultra rápida a todos los desarrolladores”.

La asociación marca la entrada formal de Meta en el negocio de la venta de AI Computation, transformando sus populares modelos de llama de código abierto en un servicio comercial. Si bien los modelos de LLAMA de Meta se han acumulado en mil millones de descargas, hasta ahora la compañía no había ofrecido una infraestructura en la nube de primera parte para que los desarrolladores creen aplicaciones con ellos.

“Esto es muy emocionante, incluso sin hablar sobre cerebras específicamente”, dijo James Wang, un ejecutivo senior de Cerebras. “Openai, Anthrope, Google: han construido un nuevo negocio de IA completamente nuevo desde cero, que es el negocio de inferencia de IA. Los desarrolladores que están construyendo aplicaciones de IA comprarán tokens por millones, a veces por miles de millones. Y estas son como las nuevas instrucciones de cómputo que las personas necesitan para construir aplicaciones AI”.

Una tabla de referencia muestra a Cerebras Processing Llama 4 a 2,648 tokens por segundo, superando drásticamente a los competidores Sambanova (747), Groq (600) y servicios basados ​​en GPU de Google y otros, explicando la elección de hardware de Meta para su nueva API. (Crédito: Cerebras)

Breaking the Speed ​​Barrier: Cómo modelos de Llama de Cerebras Supercharges

Lo que distingue a la oferta de Meta es el aumento de la velocidad dramática proporcionado por los chips de IA especializados de Cerebras. El sistema de cerebras ofrece más de 2.600 fichas por segundo para Llama 4 Scout, en comparación con aproximadamente 130 tokens por segundo para ChatGPT y alrededor de 25 tokens por segundo para Deepseek, según puntos de referencia del análisis artificial.

“Si solo se compara con API a API, Gemini y GPT, todos son grandes modelos, pero todos se ejecutan a velocidades de GPU, que son aproximadamente 100 tokens por segundo”, explicó Wang. “Y 100 tokens por segundo están bien para el chat, pero es muy lento para el razonamiento. Es muy lento para los agentes. Y la gente está luchando con eso hoy”.

Esta ventaja de velocidad permite categorías completamente nuevas de aplicaciones que antes no eran prácticas, incluidos los agentes en tiempo real, los sistemas de voz de baja latencia conversacional, la generación de código interactivo y el razonamiento instantáneo de múltiples pasos, todos los cuales requieren encadenamiento de múltiples llamadas de modelo de lenguaje grandes que ahora se pueden completar en segundos en lugar de minutos.

La API de LLAMA representa un cambio significativo en la estrategia de IA de Meta, en la transición de ser un proveedor de modelos a convertirse en una compañía de infraestructura de IA de servicio completo. Al ofrecer un servicio API, Meta está creando un flujo de ingresos a partir de sus inversiones de IA mientras mantiene su compromiso de abrir modelos.

“Meta ahora está en el negocio de vender tokens, y es excelente para el tipo de ecosistema de IA estadounidense”, señaló Wang durante la conferencia de prensa. “Traen mucho a la mesa”.

La API ofrecerá herramientas para el ajuste y la evaluación, comenzando con el modelo LLAMA 3.3 8B, permitiendo a los desarrolladores generar datos, entrenar y probar la calidad de sus modelos personalizados. Meta enfatiza que no utilizará datos de clientes para capacitar a sus propios modelos, y los modelos construidos con la API de LLAMA se pueden transferir a otros hosts, una clara diferenciación de los enfoques más cerrados de algunos competidores.

Las cerebras alimentarán el nuevo servicio de Meta a través de su red de centros de datos ubicados en toda América del Norte, incluidas las instalaciones en Dallas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Montreal y California.

“Todos nuestros centros de datos que sirven a la inferencia están en América del Norte en este momento”, explicó Choi. “Serviremos Meta con toda la capacidad de las cerebras. La carga de trabajo se equilibrará en todos estos diferentes centros de datos”.

El arreglo comercial sigue lo que Choi describió como “el proveedor de cómputo clásico para un modelo hiperscalador”, similar a la forma en que NVIDIA proporciona hardware a los principales proveedores de la nube. “Están reservando bloques de nuestro cómputo para que puedan servir a su población de desarrolladores”, dijo.

Más allá de las cerebras, Meta también ha anunciado una asociación con Groq para proporcionar opciones de inferencia rápida, brindando a los desarrolladores múltiples alternativas de alto rendimiento más allá de la inferencia tradicional basada en GPU.

La entrada de Meta en el mercado de API de inferencia con métricas de rendimiento superiores podría potencialmente alterar el orden establecido dominado por Operai, Google y Anthrope. Al combinar la popularidad de sus modelos de código abierto con capacidades de inferencia dramáticamente más rápidas, Meta se está posicionando como un competidor formidable en el espacio comercial de IA.

“Meta está en una posición única con 3 mil millones de usuarios, centros de datos de hiper escala y un gran ecosistema de desarrolladores”, según los materiales de presentación de Cerebras. La integración de la tecnología de cerebras “ayuda a Meta Leapfrog OpenAi y Google en rendimiento en aproximadamente 20X”.

Para las cerebras, esta asociación representa un hito importante y la validación de su enfoque especializado de hardware de IA. “Hemos estado construyendo este motor a escala de obleas durante años, y siempre supimos que la primera tarifa de la tecnología, pero en última instancia tiene que terminar como parte de la nube de hiperescala de otra persona. Ese fue el objetivo final desde una perspectiva de estrategia comercial, y finalmente hemos alcanzado ese hito”, dijo Wang.

La API de LLAMA está actualmente disponible como una vista previa limitada, con Meta planifica un despliegue más amplio en las próximas semanas y meses. Los desarrolladores interesados ​​en acceder a la inferencia Ultra-Fast Llama 4 pueden solicitar el acceso temprano seleccionando cerebras de las opciones del modelo dentro de la API de LLAMA.

“Si te imaginas a un desarrollador que no sabe nada sobre cerebras porque somos una empresa relativamente pequeña, solo pueden hacer clic en dos botones en el SDK estándar de SDK estándar de Meta, generar una tecla API, seleccionar la bandera de cerebras y luego, de repente, sus tokens se procesan en un motor gigante a escala de dafers”, explicó las cejas. “Ese tipo de hacernos estar en el back -end del ecosistema de desarrolladores de Meta todo el ecosistema es tremendo para nosotros”.

La elección de Meta de silicio especializada señala algo profundo: en la siguiente fase de la IA, no es solo lo que saben sus modelos, sino lo rápido que pueden pensarlo. En ese futuro, la velocidad no es solo una característica, es todo el punto.

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