I just got back from Japan—and while the cherry blossoms were stunning, what stuck with me most weren’t the sights, but the values.
Three timeless principles—Harmony, Duty, and Craft—have guided generations of creators, and they feel more relevant than ever for anyone navigating the chaos of startups and AI.
Meanwhile, the AI world didn’t slow down. Google dropped a wave of breakthroughs at Cloud Next 2025, Mira Murati is raising what could be the biggest seed round in history, and Amazon launched a voice model that sounds straight out of a sci-fi film.
Plus, if you’ve been thinking of building with AI, this week’s perk makes it a lot easier to get started—details inside.
In Today’s AI Simplified:
AI News: Google announces the Ironwood TPU, Gemini 2.5 Flash, and breakthroughs in quantum computing at Cloud Next 2025. Mira Murati’s new AI startup is aiming for a record-breaking $2B seed round.
AI Spotlights: Amazon launches Nova Sonic for more natural voice conversations in AI apps. Tool of the Week: GravityWrite for fast, multilingual content creation. Plus, OpenAI expands ChatGPT’s memory across past chats.
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Just back from Japan — and I returned with more than souvenirs.
I found language for values every founder should live by:
Wa – Harmony
Prioritize team unity over ego. Great companies aren’t built on individual brilliance—they’re built on collective flow. Founders must create harmony, not noise.
Giri – Duty
Act with honour, especially when it’s hard. As founders, we owe it to our teams, customers, and investors to do the right thing—consistently. Trust compounds.
Kodawari – Pursuit of Perfection
Perfection isn’t a destination—it’s a mindset. Kodawari is the quiet, relentless pursuit of excellence. Every product, every detail, every decision matters.
These aren’t just Japanese virtues—they’re startup survival skills.
At Google Cloud Next 2025 in Las Vegas, Google unveiled a suite of new infrastructure and AI advancements designed to boost enterprise performance. Key highlights include:
Ironwood TPU: The seventh-generation TPU, dubbed Ironwood, is set to deliver 3,600 times better performance than Google’s first TPU, while achieving 29 times higher energy efficiency. This chip will power the next frontier of AI models.
Cloud Wide Area Network (WAN): Google’s global private network is now available to enterprises, offering over 40% faster performance and up to 40% reduced total cost of ownership. This service, already in use by companies like Nestlé and Citadel Securities, is expected to be available to all Google Cloud customers later this month.
Research and Quantum Advances: Google announced breakthroughs including its Willow quantum chip, which significantly reduces error rates in quantum computing. Recent advancements in AI research continue to push boundaries in fields ranging from protein folding to weather forecasting.
Gemini 2.5 and Gemini 2.5 Flash: Gemini 2.5, Google’s most advanced reasoning model, has demonstrated state-of-the-art performance on industry benchmarks. Its cost-efficient variant, Gemini 2.5 Flash, offers lower latency and flexible performance balancing, with details to be shared soon.
Thinking Machines Lab, the new AI startup led by ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is reportedly targeting an unprecedented $2 billion seed round, aiming to close one of the largest seed rounds in history. According to Business Insider, this ambitious funding effort could value the company at “at least” $10 billion if it closes as planned.
Although the startup has recently emerged from stealth mode and has yet to release a product or generate revenue, its impressive roster of high-profile AI researchers is already drawing significant interest from investors. Notably, former OpenAI executives such as Bob McGrew (ex-chief research officer) and Alec Radford, who played a key role in several transformative innovations at OpenAI, have joined the team as advisers.
Thinking Machines Lab intends to develop AI systems that are “more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable” than those currently available, an ambition that may well justify the bold financial target.
Amazon has unveiled Nova Sonic, the newest addition to its Nova family available via Amazon Bedrock. Designed to simplify and enhance voice-enabled applications, Nova Sonic unifies speech understanding and generation in a single model, creating a more natural conversational experience.
Key Highlights:
Unified Processing: Combines real-time text transcription and audio generation in one model, eliminating the need for separate speech-to-text and text-to-speech systems.
Low Latency and Scalability: Built for natural interactions with a bidirectional streaming API for real-time conversational experiences.
Versatile Use Cases: Ideal for customer support, language learning, interactive education, and gaming, Nova Sonic supports function calling and integration with external services.
Developer-Friendly: for American and British English (with more languages coming soon), it can be enabled via the Amazon Bedrock console.
Responsible AI: Features built-in content moderation and watermarking, ensuring secure and ethical usage.
Tool of the Week
GravityWrite – AI content assistant for blogs, ads, emails, and more.
Scenario:
Creating content at scale—whether for marketing, product descriptions, blog posts, or email campaigns—can be time-consuming and inconsistent. Teams often need tools that speed up the writing process while maintaining clarity and tone.
Suggestion:
GravityWrite is an AI-powered writing assistant designed to support content creators, marketers, and business teams. With over 80 content templates and support for 30+ languages, it helps users quickly draft various forms of written content.
Multiple Use Cases: Blog ideas, YouTube scripts, ad copy, emails, and product descriptions.
Built-in Templates: Ready-to-use prompts for common marketing and content tasks.
SEO Suggestions: Some outputs include keywords and phrases optimized for visibility.
Multilingual Support: Useful for businesses targeting global audiences.
Social Buzz
OpenAI Introduces Expanded Memory in ChatGPT
Starting this week, ChatGPT’s memory feature can now reference all of your past chats. According to OpenAI’s announcement on X, this update allows the assistant to provide more personalized and context-aware responses, drawing on user preferences and previous interactions.
The improved memory is designed to make ChatGPT more useful for tasks like writing, getting tailored advice, and learning over time. Users can view what the model remembers, turn memory off, or delete specific entries through settings.
This feature is rolling out gradually and expected to be broadly available soon.
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Key Highlights
Expert-led sessions on generative AI, automation, and business strategy
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