SoftBank and OpenAI announce ‘Cristal Intelligence’

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. SoftBank just announced an enormous $3B annual commitment to OpenAI alongside ‘Cristal Intelligence’’ a three way partnership to bring customized AI tools exclusively to Japanese businesses.

With Stargate’s $500B data centers and now Cristal Intelligence, are we witnessing Japan’s big move in the worldwide AI race?

Community note: We’re hosting a live workshop today at 3 PM EST going in-depth how you can construct and deploy complete mobile apps with AI. RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

• SoftBank and OpenAI announce ‘Cristal Intelligence’

• Anthropic challenges hackers to interrupt its AI

• Automate meeting prep with AI Agents

• EU invests $56M to construct open-source AI rival

• 4 recent AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

SOFTBANK

🇯🇵 SoftBank and OpenAI announce ‘Cristal Intelligence’

The Rundown: SoftBank just announced a $3 billion annual commitment to OpenAI’s technology while launching ‘Cristal Intelligence,’ a three way partnership to bring customized OpenAI tools exclusively to Japanese businesses.

The small print:

• SoftBank will spend $3B annually on OpenAI technology across its subsidiaries, including Arm and PayPay.

• Cristal Intelligence will offer a specialized business version of ChatGPT and OpenAI’s API, which is exclusively available in Japan.

• The three way partnership goals to supply secure, customized enterprise integrations, potentially competing with traditional consulting firms.

• This partnership follows SoftBank’s involvement in “Stargate,” a $500B data center initiative with OpenAI and Oracle.

Why it matters: This massive investment ($3B per YEAR) signals Japan’s serious push into the worldwide AI race through SoftBank’s growing alliance with OpenAI. With their recent Stargate partnership and now Cristal Intelligence, SoftBank goes all in on constructing the infrastructure to dominate AI deployment across Asia.

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ANTHROPIC

🔒 Anthropic challenges hackers to interrupt its AI

The Rundown: Anthropic just unveiled Constitutional Classifiers, a brand new AI safety system with promising results, and is inviting the general public to assist stress-test it after surviving over 3,000 hours of unsuccessful bug bounty attempts.

The small print:

• The system uses AI to generate training data in multiple languages and writing styles, helping it catch diverse jailbreak attempts.

• In testing against 10,000 advanced jailbreak attempts, it blocked 95.6% of attacks, in comparison with just 14% for unprotected Claude.

• 183 bug bounty hunters spent over 3,000 hours attempting to break the system for a $15,000 reward, but none succeeded in fully jailbreaking it.

• Anthropic is inviting the general public to test the system until February 10.

Why it matters: As AI models turn into increasingly powerful, it’s crucial to forestall them from being manipulated to cause harm. While most firms rely mainly on training for AI safety, Anthropic’s recent approach of using AI to catch jailbreaks shows promise, and opening it to public testing flaunts their commitment to creating AI safer.

AI TRAINING

🤖 Automate meeting prep with AI Agents

The Rundown: Lindy AI allows anyone to create AI agents with no code, corresponding to a ‘Pre-meeting Prep Agent‘ that robotically researches attendees, gathers email history, and sends you a comprehensive pre-meeting temporary before every meeting.

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1. Visit Lindy AI and create a brand new automation from scratch, or select a starting template.

2. Arrange ‘Calendar Event Began trigger’ (customize timing for pre-meeting briefs).

3. Add conditions to envision for external attendees and configure research actions, e.g., web search or email history.

4. Arrange email temporary delivery with all of the gathered information.

5. Your AI agent can send briefs quarter-hour pre-meeting, saving you time to prep in between tight windows.

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EUROPEAN UNION

🇪🇺 EU invests $56M to construct open-source AI rival

The Rundown: The European Union has announced a $56M investment to develop OpenEuroLLM, a brand new open-source large language model that works with all 30 European languages.

The small print:

• The project will leverage EU supercomputers like Spain’s Mare Nostrum and Italy’s Leonardo.

• While $56M is tiny in comparison with OpenAI’s reported $40B raise, it’s 10x what DeepSeek claimed to have spent on their breakthrough model.

• The initiative guarantees fully open models, software, and data that might be fine-tuned for specific sectors like healthcare and banking.

• The goal is to create an open-source LLM that European firms and governments can construct upon, with EU values “baked in.”

Why it matters: After years of scrutiny specializing in AI regulation, the EU is finally moving into the AI race (…form of). While $56M is puny in comparison with major AI giants investing billions, the EU may achieve specialized, industry-specific AI, especially following DeepSeek’s recent success with low-budget open-source models.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🧠 OpenAI Deep Research – A brand new ChatGPT Pro plan feature that does extensive web research and delivers detailed reports with citations

• 🕵️ Geospy AI – Finds the situation from any photo by analyzing its pixels

• 📝 Tana – An AI-native workspace that turns notes into work tasks

• 🔥 Open Deep Research – An open-source alternative to Gemini and OpenAI Deep Research

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🤖 The Rundown – Author (Robotics/Tech)

• 🌏 Palantir Technologies – Global Mobility Specialist

• 👥 OpenAI – Recruiting Manager, Go To Market & Sales

• 🛠️ Together AI – Summer 2025 Engineering Intern

📰 Every little thing else in AI today

ARC Prize found OpenAI’s recent o3-mini AI model to patch o1 on its ARC-AGI-1 Semi-Private Test Set while being 100x less the price.

Meta published its Frontier AI Framework, emphasizing its commitment to open-source development while specializing in mitigating cybersecurity and weapon risks.

The Beatles won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance with “Now and Then,” an AI-enhanced song that used noise reduction to scrub up an old Lennon demo.

OpenAI expanded ChatGPT’s WhatsApp integration globally, adding image uploads and voice message support just by texting 1-800-CHATGPT (1-800-242-8478).

UK researchers developed self-healing asphalt using biomass waste and Google Cloud’s AI, potentially solving the country’s ‘pothole crisis’.

Microsoft is forming a brand new unit called the Advanced Planning Unit (APU) inside its AI division to check AI’s implications for society, health, and work.

COMMUNITY

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team