The times have changed: VCs used to fight over talent, now VCs fight over…?

📦 a16z "Snatches" Thousands More GPUs for Portfolio Companies

🛠️ Anthropic Launches Prompt Evaluation Tools

🖼️ Stable Assistant Adds New Features

🏫 Shanghai Jiao Tong University Establishes Intelligent Computing Research Institute

🔍 Alibaba's Xinliu AI Search Assistant Goes Live

📈 Apollo Go Drives Baidu Stock Up 10%

📈 Captions Valued at $500 Million

👑 "Venture Queen" Kathy Xu Stays in Primary Market

🎨 Claude: Powering Every AI Creative Idea

a16z Snatches Thousands More GPUs for Portfolio Companies

Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is expanding its AI investments, having stockpiled thousands of GPUs including NVIDIA H100s, with plans to grow its hoard to over 20,000. The goal: rent them out to AI startups. This GPU lending program, codenamed "Oxygen," signals a16z's determination to push deeper into generative AI.

Through the program, a16z offers GPU rentals to its AI portfolio companies at below-market rates in exchange for equity stakes.

This strategic move is especially critical for small AI startups, which typically struggle to compete with cash-rich tech giants for GPU access. a16z's GPU service helps these companies acquire compute at lower cost, fueling their development and innovation.

Other VCs have spotted the same need. Conviction partners with cloud providers to secure GPU server access, then subleases to AI startups. Index Ventures struck a deal with Oracle to rent GPU servers for its portfolio companies.

Anthropic Launches Prompt Evaluation Tools

Anthropic rolled out new features to streamline AI app development. The updates include tools in the Anthropic Console for generating, testing, and evaluating prompts, plus automatic test case generation and output comparison.

With these tools, developers can describe a task to Claude 3.5 Sonnet — say, "classify incoming customer support requests" — and Claude generates a high-quality prompt automatically. The Console's built-in prompt generator[1] simplifies the process of writing effective prompts. Users can leverage Claude's new test case generation to create input variables, like customer support messages, then run the prompt to see Claude's response.

To strengthen testing, Anthropic introduced test suite generation. Users can manually add test cases, import from CSV, or use Claude's auto-generation feature. Run all test cases with one click and adjust parameters as needed. Anthropic also provides tools for evaluating model responses and iterating on prompts, helping users improve quickly. Side-by-side output comparison and expert grading options are designed to boost model performance.

Stable Assistant Adds New Features

Stability AI launched two new capabilities for Stable Assistant: "Search & Replace," which lets users identify and seamlessly swap objects in images — a boon for creative professionals who need to modify visuals without breaking composition; and "Stable Audio," focused on generating up to three minutes of high-quality stereo audio. Its 2.0 version was trained on a licensed dataset from the AudioSparx music library, offering a powerful tool for music production. These additions expand Stable Assistant's scope and deliver a more diverse, professional user experience.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Establishes Intelligent Computing Research Institute

Shanghai Jiao Tong University formally launched its Intelligent Computing Research Institute, appointing Professor Dongdong Ge as director. The institute aims to deepen AI research and attract top-tier talent. Tan Puzhen, a Shanghai Municipal Party Committee Organization Department official and deputy director of the Municipal Talent Bureau, expressed hopes that the institute will rapidly become a world-class research center for intelligent optimization algorithms and an industry-academia demonstration base, supporting Shanghai's AI industry development and talent aggregation.

Housed within the Antai College of Economics and Management, the institute targets advancing localization of critical industrial and management software, building a CUDA-like library function ecosystem, and providing fully domestic technology alternatives for intelligent computing in national major projects. Director Ge stated that through the institute and its symposiums, the team will strive to become a bellwether in intelligent computing, particularly in decision and optimization tools and algorithm development.

Alibaba's Xinliu AI Search Assistant Goes Live

"Xinliu" [2], a large-model application launched under Alibaba, officially debuted. Designed for researchers, university faculty and students, and professionals, this AI search assistant integrates intelligent search, Q&A, smart reading, and assisted creation to boost work and learning efficiency.

Xinliu's AI search and Q&A excels at intelligent dialogue and long-text analysis, with particular strength in efficiently retrieving, reading, analyzing, and summarizing academic papers — even outlining paper structures — making it ideal for specialist users. Xinliu aims to improve knowledge acquisition efficiency, accurately grasping user needs and delivering precise assistance whether for daily news or specialized academic content. In R&D and academic domains, Xinliu builds on a 100-billion-level professional knowledge graph and large-scale knowledge fusion learning to enhance reasoning capabilities and effectively answer complex questions.

Apollo Go Drives Baidu Stock Up 10%

Baidu's autonomous ride-hailing service "Apollo Go" [3] has been making waves lately — trending on Weibo hot search and pushing Baidu's stock up nearly 10%. The service now covers 11 cities, with Wuhan serving as a true driverless demonstration operation. As Baidu deploys more unmanned vehicles there, Apollo Go's visibility and attention keep climbing. Per plans, by 2024 Apollo Go will fully cover Wuhan, with an expected 1,000 sixth-generation mass-produced robotaxis in operation. As deployment scales up, per-vehicle operating costs should drop significantly, with economies of scale gradually materializing.

Despite ongoing debates over autonomous driving safety and impacts on traditional drivers, Guotai Junan Securities' research report takes an optimistic view of Apollo Go's profit prospects, arguing its driverless ride-hailing model holds clear advantages in cost and user experience. Baidu expects Apollo Go to break even in 2024 and turn profitable in 2025. Continued advances in autonomous driving technology could reshape the industry, while Tesla's upcoming Robotaxi service will likely accelerate sector development further.

Captions Valued at $500 Million

AI startup Captions announced a $60 million funding round led by Index Ventures, with notable participants including Kleiner Perkins, a16z, Sequoia Capital, and actor Jared Leto.

This round brings Captions' total funding to $100 million, at a $500 million valuation. Founded in 2021, Captions uses AI to help users create, edit, and distribute video content.

"Venture Queen" Kathy Xu Stays in Primary Market

Kathy Xu, known as the "Venture Queen," denied recent rumors that she was exiting the primary market. She made clear that Capital Today has not withdrawn from primary market investing, and recently backed early-stage project Sand AI. Sand AI was founded by Cao Yue, who co-founded Huiwen Wang's Lightyears Away and previously served as a lead researcher at Microsoft Research Asia. He was also a 2021 ICCV Best Paper Award recipient.

Additionally, Capital Today was an early investor in large-model startup Moonshot AI, reportedly putting in roughly $20 million. Moonshot AI's latest valuation sits around $3 billion. Capital Today's AI investments also include Today Talent, Zhipu AI, and XYZ Robotics.

Claude: Powering Every AI Creative Idea

Claude is powering the spread of every AI creative idea. Now, apps generated using Claude's Artifacts feature can be shared directly and published anywhere. Others can click through and remix the work.

Truly the spirit of open source, with sharing etched into the product's DNA. Try out this mini-game built with Claude Artifacts[4] and customize your own Remix Game 2.0.

Life belongs to each person's own feelings, not to anyone else's opinions.

— Yu Hua

Editor: Yuki Design: Ivan

For business partnerships, add on WeChat: Rwkfbcianvd

References

[1] Prompt Generator: https://www.anthropic.com/news/prompt-generator

[2] "Xinliu": https://iflow.cn/new

[3] "Apollo Go": https://www.apollo.auto/robotaxi

[4] Mini-game built with Claude Artifacts: https://claude.site/artifacts/c55cf857-d456-4520-8ee2-206697dfa2a3