In partnership with
Today: OpenAI moves into custom silicon with its first in-house inference chip, ByteDance pushes AI video toward longer and higher-resolution clips, and dealmaking continues across chips, healthcare, and fintech. Here are five developments worth knowing from the past two days.
A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
Fast browsing. Faster thinking.
Your browser gets you to a page. Norton Neo gets you to the answer. The first safe AI-native browser built by Norton moves with you from idea to action without slowing you down. Magic Box understands your intent before you finish typing. AI that works inside your flow, not beside it. No prompting. No copy-pasting. No switching apps.
Built-in AI, instantly and for free. Privacy handled by Norton. Built-in VPN and ad blocking protect you by default. No configuration. No extra apps. Nothing to think about.
Fast. Safe. Intelligent. That's Neo.
Hardware & Infrastructure
OpenAI and Broadcom unveil Jalapeño, OpenAI's first custom AI chip. On June 24, OpenAI and Broadcom introduced Jalapeño, an accelerator OpenAI designed specifically for inference — the work of serving trained models to users in products such as ChatGPT — rather than for training. The companies said the chip went from initial design to manufacturing tape-out in about nine months, which they described as among the fastest such cycles in advanced semiconductors, and Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said early testing pointed to roughly 50% cost savings versus typical AI GPUs. OpenAI and Broadcom plan to begin deploying the chip by the end of 2026 and expand in the years after. (OpenAI) (CNBC) (TechCrunch)
Models & Media
ByteDance previews Seedance 2.5, a longer-form AI video model. ByteDance showed Seedance 2.5, the next version of its video-generation model, at its Volcano Engine FORCE conference on June 23. The company says the model can produce a single 30-second clip at 4K resolution without stitching separate shots together, accept up to roughly 50 reference inputs in one generation, and support region-level editing within a scene. ByteDance described the release as a preview and is targeting a public launch in early July; its predecessor, Seedance 2.0, had its global rollout paused earlier in 2026 amid copyright disputes with Hollywood studios. (The Decoder) (TNW)
Deals & Funding
Qualcomm signs a definitive deal to buy Modular for about $3.9 billion. Qualcomm agreed on June 24 to acquire AI software company Modular in an all-stock transaction valued at roughly $3.9 billion, firming up talks that Bloomberg had reported two days earlier. Modular, founded by Chris Lattner, makes the Mojo programming language and the MAX inference platform; Qualcomm said it would issue up to 19.2 million shares, with the deal expected to close in the second half of 2026 subject to regulatory approval. The purchase extends Qualcomm's move beyond smartphone chips into data-center AI software. (Bloomberg) (MLQ)
Assort Health raises $120 million for healthcare AI. Assort Health disclosed a $120 million Series C round on June 24, backed by investors including Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Felicis. The San Francisco company builds AI agents that handle patient phone calls and communications for healthcare providers, and said the round brings its total funding to more than $222 million. (Tech Startups)
Taktile raises $110 million for AI decisioning. Taktile said on June 24 that it raised a $110 million Series C round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with participation from Balderton Capital, Index Ventures, Tiger Global, and others. The New York-based company, which also has offices in Berlin and London, sells a platform for building and running automated decisioning workflows used heavily in financial services, and said the round brings its total raised to about $184 million. (Tech Startups)
That's today's edition of AI Current. Reply with what you're seeing in AI, and forward this to a colleague who would find it useful. See you tomorrow.
A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
Free Weekly AI Sessions for Experienced Software Engineers.
Every Wednesday at 5 PM CT, Gauntlet AI professors teach a live, hands-on AI engineering session — completely free. If you're nontechnical, this isn't for you. New topic every week, built for engineers who want to build, not just watch. See upcoming sessions.
A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
Wispr Flow sits at the system level — no plugins, no extensions, no setup per app. Speak your prompts anywhere you type and get clean, paste-ready text. 4x faster than typing. Start flowing free.