AGI-lite 🤖
Netflix's deal, PhysicsWallah's IPO, and more in AI.
☀️ Morning, the weekend was short.
🗓️ The S&P shrugged off the Fed’s surprise and gained 1% on Friday. Sensex may follow today.
📈 Only 2 trading days left before the holiday break on December 25th.
And the news cycle is starting to slow down a bit.
Let’s hit it!
1 big thing: OpenAI’s smartest model yet 🤖
OpenAI unveiled its most advanced model to date, o3, a successor to the earlier o1 reasoning model.
This series is built to handle complex logic, math, and coding tasks, achieving unprecedented superiority against benchmarks.
For example, the model outperforms its predecessor (o1) by 22.8% on SWE-Bench — which simply put is a dataset that tests AI’s ability to solve software issues.
What matters: at a high level, o3’s biggest win is its ability to fact-check its own responses and course correct itself, making it more useful in complex domains like physics and math.
But this also comes at the cost of slightly longer response times, as the model takes time to check itself. This also makes the model expensive to operate.
Zoom out: OpenAI claims the model shows early signs of achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence).
FWIW, the company has a strong incentive to move toward AGI—because doing so would allow them to avoid sharing their technology with Microsoft, as per their contractual agreement.
Microsoft investors weren’t happy with the progress last week.
2. NFLX scores another live event ⚽
Netflix secured U.S. rights for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031, marking another major push into live sports.
Context: as part of its strategy to become the universal entertainment platform, Netflix has been expanding into live content for a while.
But, Netflix’s tech infrastructure has shown vulnerabilities when it comes to servicing high traffic. The November Paul-Tyson fight, for instance, was plagued by glitches, buffering, and pixelation.
Zoom out: despite these tech issues, Netflix has one key advantage—unmatched reach. The Tyson-Paul fight, for example, drew 108 million viewers, nearly four times the viewership of the Oscars.
Big picture: market isn’t overly concerned with these problems though, as long as NFLX can keep those subscribers from churning. Stock has nearly doubled this year.
3. Who got the bag? 💰
Confido Health, an AI-powered healthtech startup, bagged $3 million in its seed round led by Together Fund. Confido Health offers AI enabled products to handle tasks ranging from appointment scheduling to insurance verification and care coordination, thus effectively automating major processes in the healthcare system. The funds raised will be used to upgrade its AI tech stack and cater to specialities such as surgery, orthopedics, dental, and pediatrics.
Perplexity raised another $500 million, pushing its valuation to $9 billion. That’s quite the jump from a $1 billion the company was valued at in April of this year. Founded in 2022, the Gen AI powered answer engine is positioning itself as a key competitor to Google, and most recently brought Perplexity Shopping to market — which helps people find products they’re looking for.
4. PhysicsWallah is ready to go public 📚
While the rest of the edtech names fumble the ball, the YouTuber will see you on Dalal Street.
In the latest, PW’s board approved the conversion of the company from a Pvt. Ltd entity to a public company, in anticipation of its IPO in 2025.
What matters: the raise is expected to be in the range of $500 million, managed by Axis, Goldman, and all the heavyweights.
Backstory: what started in 2016 as a YouTube channel, PW now runs an extensive digital ecosystem that includes a mobile app with over 20M downloads, a channel with 13M+ subscribers, as well as offline coaching centers with 60+ locations across more than 30 towns nationwide.
Last year, the business made over $230 million in revenues. Most recently the company was valued at $2.8 billion in a private round.
While we are on IPOs,
Unimech Aerospace, which provides bespoke aircraft parts and tools, will open its shares for bidding today. The business made roughly 208 crores in sales last year, up more than 100% YoY, with ₹50 crores in profits. They’re looking to raise nearly 500 crores in this IPO.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
⚡ Lending crackdown: The government proposed a new law to ban unregulated lending, with penalties of up to ₹1 crore and imprisonment for offenders.
🚗 Rental push: Zoomcar is exploring chauffeur-driven cab rentals to expand its market reach.
🚨 InCred’s upgrade: InCred Finance appoints veteran Gaurav Maheshwari as CFO.
That’s a wrap! Don’t let the Monday blues get to you.
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