Our 230th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!

Recorded on 01/02/2026

Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/

In this episode:

Nvidia's acquisition of AI chip startup Groq for $20 billion highlights a strategic move for enhanced inference technology in GPUs.
New York's RAISE Act legislation aims to regulate AI safety, marking the second major AI safety bill in the US.
The launch of GLM 4.7 by Zhipu AI marks a significant advancement in open-source AI models for coding.
Evaluation of long-horizon AI agents raises concerns about the rising costs and efficiency of AI in performing extended tasks.

Timestamps:

Applications & Business
(00:26:39) Nvidia buying AI chip startup Groq for about $20 billion, biggest deal
(00:34:28) Exclusive | Meta Buys AI Startup Manus, Adding Millions of Paying Users - WSJ
(00:38:05) Cursor continues acquisition spree with Graphite deal | TechCrunch
(00:39:15) Micron Hikes CapEx to $20B with 2026 HBM Supply Fully Booked; HBM4 Ramps 2Q26
(00:42:06) Chinese fabs are reportedly upgrading older ASML DUV lithography chipmaking machines — secondary channels and independent engineers used to soup up Twinscan NXT series

Research & Advancements
(00:54:32) Large Causal Models from Large Language Models
(00:57:33) Universally Converging Representations of Matter Across Scientific Foundation Models
(01:02:11) META-RL INDUCES EXPLORATION IN LANGUAGE AGENTS
(01:07:16) Are the Costs of AI Agents Also Rising Exponentially?
(01:11:17) METR eval for Opus 4.5
(01:16:19) How to game the METR plot

Policy & Safety
(01:17:24) New York governor Kathy Hochul signs RAISE Act to regulate AI safety | TechCrunch
(01:20:40) Activation Oracles: Training and Evaluating LLMs as General-Purpose Activation Explainers
(01:26:46) Monitoring Monitorability
(01:32:07) Sam Altman is hiring someone to worry about the dangers of AI | The Verge
(01:33:38) X users asking Grok to put this girl in bikini, Grok is happy obliging - India Today

#230 - 2025 Retrospective, Nvidia buys Groq, GLM 4.7, METR

Last Week in AI