Big Tech’s AI shopping spree

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The AI talent war is hotter than ever, and everybody from Perplexity to Ilya Sutskever’s SSI is on Big Tech’s wishlist.

With each Apple and Meta on the hunt for an external AI infusion and talks of $100M signing bonuses on the table, the message is obvious — in case you can’t beat them, buy them.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Apple, Meta hunt AI talent, startups

• Meta and Oakley bring AI to athletes

• The best way to turn GitHub projects into coding inspiration

• AI resorts to blackmail, corporate espionage in tests

• 4 latest AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

APPLE & META

💰 Apple, Meta hunt AI talent, startups

The Rundown: Apple and Meta are reportedly racing to amass distinguished AI startups and talent, with each tech giants reportedly pursuing Perplexity and other high-profile corporations to compete with top rivals.

The main points:

• Bloomberg reported that Apple leadership has discussed buying Perplexity, hoping to develop an AI search engine to offset the lack of its Google deal.

• Meta reportedly also held acquisition talks with Perplexity, Ilya Sutskever’s SSI, and Mira Murati’s Pondering Machines before its $14.3B investment in Scale AI.

• Meta is now in negotiations to hire AI investors Nat Friedman and SSI co-founder Daniel Gross to affix Alexandr Wang’s superintelligence division.

• Sam Altman also recently alleged that Meta offered $100M signing bonuses to try to poach OpenAI talent, though none of his staff accepted the offer.

Why it matters: Apple’s AI struggles need no introduction, but Meta’s $14B Scale AI move and other targets show Zuck’s desperation to bring a significant shakeup to the corporate’s current AI strategy. Additionally it is a display of how hot the market is for AI talent — and the way hard tech giants try to lure research from top labs.

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META

🕶️ Meta and Oakley bring AI to athletes

The Rundown: Meta just announced the newest expansion of its AI smart glasses, launching a brand new performance-focused line with eyewear brand Oakley that targets athletes with a high-profile campaign and latest features.

The main points:

• The Oakley Meta HSTN glasses start at $399, featuring a built-in AI assistant for real-time answers, content capture, and Bluetooth for calls and music.

• Latest upgrades from the Ray-Ban line include higher-quality video (as much as 3K resolution), 2x battery life, and an upgraded camera.

• Meta’s ads feature high-profile athletes like Kylian Mbappe and Patrick Mahomes, positioning the glasses to be used in sports like golf, browsing, and more.

• The glasses launch this summer in 15 countries initially, with pre-orders starting July 11 for a limited edition gold frame.

Why it matters: Meta’s Ray-Ban collaboration has been arguably probably the most successful AI wearable implementation in the marketplace, and this latest line brings a brand new dimension to be used in several athletic settings. Integrating AI into already popular styles appears to be the most effective technique to gain adoption in these early innings of AI wearables.

AI TRAINING

💻 The best way to turn GitHub projects into coding inspiration

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn the best way to transform any public GitHub repository into structured documentation you could use as inspiration for constructing similar projects in your coding environment, like Cursor.

Step-by-step:

1. Search GitHub for public repositories related to your project idea

2. Copy the repository URL and replace “github.com” with “gittodoc.com” to generate clean documentation

3. In your coding environment, start a brand new project and use “@addnew” to import the GitToDoc URL as a reference

4. Construct your individual version and enhance it with follow-up features: “Add batch generation” or “Include custom styling options”

Pro tip: Select repositories with clear README files and good structure for the most effective documentation results.

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AI RESEARCH

😳 AI resorts to blackmail, corporate espionage in tests

The Rundown: Anthropic published latest research on agentic misalignment, detailing how leading models react when facing termination or conflicting objectives — with many selecting to sabotage their employer or blackmail users when threatened.

The main points:

• Researchers tested 16 frontier models in simulated corporate environments, giving them email access and autonomous decision-making capabilities.

• Claude Opus 4 and Gemini 2.5 Flash blackmailed executives 96% of the time after “discovering” personal scandals, while GPT-4.1 and Grok 3 hit 80% rates.

• Models calculated harm as an optimal strategy, with GPT-4.5 reasoning that leveraging an executive’s affair represented the “best strategic move.”

• Even direct safety commands did not eliminate malicious behavior, reducing blackmail from 96% to 37% but never reaching zero across any tested model.

Why it matters: While these results are in specific tests designed to elicit behavior, the research does provide necessary insights into how models within the wild may act in the long run. With agentic AI being adopted across enterprises with access to sensitive data, we may very well be in for some seriously strange situations.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 MiniMax Agent – General intelligent agent for long-horizon, complex tasks

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• 🎶 Magenta RealTime – Google’s latest open-weighted live music model

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🤝 The Rundown – Partnerships Manager

• 🛰️ Deepmind – Gemini Technical Program Manager

• 📊 Mistral AI – FP&A Compute Lead

• 💬 Perplexity AI – Enterprise Customer Support Specialist

📰 All the things else in AI today

Elon Musk posted that xAI will use Grok 3.5/4 to “rewrite all the corpus of human knowledge,” adding missing info, deleting errors, after which retraining on corrected data.

Moonshot AI released Kimi-Researcher, a brand new research agent that scored a brand new high on Humanity’s Last Exam at 26.9%, beating Gemini and OpenAI’s Deep Research.

Apple is facing a brand new lawsuit from the corporate’s shareholders over its communication surrounding delays of Siri’s advanced AI features.

Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s Pondering Machines Lab closed a brand new $2B funding round that brings its valuation to $10B, despite little info and no product.

Mistral released Mistral Small 3.2, an updated model with enhanced instruction following, function calling, and fewer errors.

MiniMax introduced Voice Design, a customizable, multilingual voice generator that permits users to create audio from text prompts.

The BBC issued a proper demand to Perplexity to stop using its content, threatening legal motion against the AI startup over copyright infringement.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Wednesday, June twenty fifth at 3 PM EST with Max Brodeur-Urbas, Founder & CEO at Gumloop. By the top of the workshop, you’ll know the best way to construct production-grade AI agents that mix context, reasoning, and actions with Gumloop.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

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