xAI’s Grok 4 arrives

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. xAI’s highly anticipated Grok 4 has arrived — and it’s crushing benchmarks across the board.

The latest “truth-seeking” AI takes us a step closer to AGI, with Musk suggesting it might start discovering latest physics “as soon as this 12 months.” But given the backlash over Grok 3’s recent racist and antisemitic comments, the discharge can also be prone to face more scrutiny than ever before.

In today’s AI rundown:

• xAI releases Grok 4 following 3’s crashout

• Perplexity’s Comet browser for AI-first web

• Turn messy image filenames into descriptive ones

• OpenAI snags top engineers from rivals for scaling team

• 4 latest AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

XAI

🚀 xAI releases SOTA Grok 4 following 3’s crashout

The Rundown: xAI just announced Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy, its next-gen reasoning-only models which can be “higher than PHD levels in every subject” and deliver SOTA capabilities across benchmarks, including Arc-AGI and Humanity’s Last Exam.

The main points:

• Grok 4 is a single-agent AI with voice, vision, and a 128K context window, while 4 Heavy is its advanced sibling, with multiple agents to tackle complex tasks.

• Each mark a serious jump in benchmarks, achieving SOTA on Humanity’s Last Exam, Arc-AGI-2, and AIME, and surpassing Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI’s o3.

• Grok 4 is obtainable with the SuperGrok subscription at $30/month, while Grok 4 Heavy is a component of the brand new SuperGrok Heavy plan priced at $300/month.

• The brand new model can also be available via API with a 256K-token context window and built-in search, priced at $3/million input tokens and $15/million output tokens.

• The facility-packed release comes after a serious backlash against Grok 3, which was caught making racist and antisemitic comments after an update.

Why it matters: Despite being a comparatively latest player, Musk’s xAI is already difficult the AI heavyweights. The most recent release showcases the facility of its Colossus supercomputer and pushes the scaling frontier further, though within the wake of the Grok 3 controversy, it’s prone to face heightened scrutiny from experts all over the world.

TOGETHER WITH ASAPP

♻️ Automate complex customer interactions with AI agents

The Rundown: ASAPP’s GenerativeAgent is an enterprise-grade AI agent that resolves real customer issues by itself across voice and chat. Built for high-stakes environments, it goes beyond conversation to deliver real outcomes backed by security, collaboration, and continuous learning.

With GenerativeAgent, you’ll experience:

• Fewer transfers, faster resolutions with human-AI collaboration workflow

• Built-in guardrails and enterprise-grade data protection

• Real-time quality monitoring and self-improving

Take a self-guided tour of GenerativeAgent today.

PERPLEXITY

🖥️ Perplexity’s Comet browser for AI-first web

The Rundown: Perplexity launched Comet, a brand new AI browser that embeds the corporate’s search engine alongside an assistant able to performing agentic tasks—like booking meetings and navigating web sites—while integrating with user workflows.

The main points:

• The Comet Assistant lives in a sidebar that watches users browse, answering questions while automating tasks like email and calendar management.

• Users can utilize the agentic assistant to “vibe browse” without interacting directly with sites, using natural language or via voice commands.

• The browser guarantees seamless integration with existing extensions and bookmarks, supporting each Mac and Windows at launch.

• Perplexity Max users ($200/mo subscription) get first access together with a rolling waitlist, with Pro, free, and Enterprise users coming at a later date.

Why it matters: Chrome has had a chokehold on the browser for years — but appears to be a step behind on the agentic, AI-driven transition. While there can be hiccups as agents proceed to evolve, Dia, Comet, and shortly OpenAI (more below) are taking the primary steps right into a latest, inevitable shift in how we navigate and take actions on the net.

AI TRAINING

📸 Turn messy image filenames into descriptive ones

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn the right way to use Google’s Gemini CLI to investigate your images and generate Web optimization-friendly filenames robotically, improving your content organization and search engine visibility.

Step-by-step:

1. Install Gemini CLI: npm install -g @google/gemini-cli and authenticate together with your Google account

2. Test a single image evaluation typing: gemini “Describe what’s in [image1.png]”

3. Batch process: gemini “Process all images on this folder. For every image, analyze the content and rename it with a descriptive filename with relevant keywords for Web optimization purposes.”

Pro tip: Start with a small batch to grasp how Gemini interprets your content, then scale as much as your entire image library.

PRESENTED BY INVISIBLE

📊 AI training trends from those behind the scenes

The Rundown: Because the partner for a lot of enterprises and leading foundation models including AWS, Microsoft, and Cohere, Invisible has a front row seat into how the AI training landscape is evolving in real-time.

On this free guide, Invisible reveals:

• An important shifts happening in model development, optimization, and deployment

• The rising bar for quality data

• A deal with specialized training sets

• The emergence of agentic products for real-world outcomes

Download the free guide.

OPENAI

🥊 OpenAI snags top engineers from rivals for scaling team

The Rundown: OpenAI recruited 4 latest senior engineers from Tesla, xAI, and Meta for its scaling team, based on WIRED — joining to work on the Stargate data center and infrastructure initiatives, and coming during a tense AI talent war with tech giants.

The main points:

• Former Tesla VP of software engineering David Lau will oversee OAI’s backend systems, revealed in an internal message from co-founder Greg Brockman.

• Engineers Uday Ruddarraju and Mike Dalton join OAI’s scaling team to work on Stargate after helping construct the 200,000-GPU Colossus supercomputer at xAI.

• Former Meta AI researcher Angela Fan also joins the scaling team, coming amid Meta’s aggressive recruitment of OAI staff that has poached seven staffers.

Why it matters: These hires mark the primary public moves for OpenAI since Meta’s hiring spree that has poached talent from across the AI leaders. It’s also a direct strike at Elon Musk’s engineering crew from xAI and Tesla — and given the past relationship between the 2, it might stir the pot even further of their ongoing feud.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🎬 Marey – Filmmaker-focused AI video model trained on licensed content

• 📽️ Veo 3 – Google’s video AI, now with first-frame image + audio output

• 🪪 Higgsfield Soul ID – Personalized, consistent character image generation

• 🤝 Coachvox – Clone an AI version of yourself to teach clients in your style

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🧠 Databricks – Director, Emerging Enterprise

• 📈 Harvey – Senior Analytics Engineer

• 🗂️ Notable – Technical Program Manager

• 🔬 Deepmind – Data Scientist, GeminiApp, Verticals

📰 Every thing else in AI today

Get in control on Agentic AI – learn the right way to construct, test, and deploy AI Agents with Postman’s Rodric Rabbah on this free, on-demand webinar.*

OpenAI is set to launch its own web browser within the “coming weeks” that may challenge Google Chrome, featuring a ChatGPT-like chat interface and agentic integrations.

OpenAI will even reportedly release its highly anticipated open-source model next week, rumored to be “just like o3 mini” with reasoning capabilities.

Microsoft CCO Judson Althoff said the corporate has saved over $500M previously 12 months from AI’s infusion in call centers, following last week’s cut of 9,000 jobs.

AI2 introduced FlexOlmo, a brand new language model training paradigm that allows data owners to contribute to AI development without sharing their raw data.

Google integrated Gemini into WearOS smartwatches from Pixel, Samsung, Xiaomi and more, enabling natural voice interactions and task management on the devices.

OpenAI announced that its acquisition of Jony Ive’s firm, io, has closed, with Ive and his LoveFrom team staying independent but embedded in OpenAI’s design direction.

*Sponsored Listing

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, July eleventh, at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the top of the workshop, you’ll confidently have the opportunity to put in and use Gemini CLI to spice up your productivity right from the command line.

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