xAI sues ex-engineer for trade secret theft

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Elon Musk’s xAI has made headlines suing OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, and half of Silicon Valley… But its latest lawsuit hits closer to home.

The corporate is now suing a former engineer who allegedly downloaded Grok’s secrets, sold his equity, and was set to walk straight into OpenAI’s arms — making for a dark turn within the increasingly cutthroat AI talent wars.

In today’s AI rundown:

• xAI sues ex-engineer over trade secret theft

• Meta’s superintelligence team faces departures

• Create designs with Genspark AI Designer

• AI stethoscope spots hidden heart problems

• 4 recent AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

XAI

👨🏻‍⚖️ xAI sues ex-engineer over trade secret theft

The Rundown: Elon Musk’s xAI just filed a lawsuit against former engineer Xuechen Li, accusing him of allegedly stealing Grok trade secrets days before selling thousands and thousands of dollars in equity and resigning to affix OpenAI.

The small print:

• Li accepted an OAI position in July that was set to begin in mid-August, selling $7M in xAI stock and resigning from the corporate shortly after.

• xAI said Li stole “cutting-edge AI tech with features superior to those offered by ChatGPT,” downloading confidential trade secrets to his personal devices.

• xAI claims Li admitted to stealing the information during a gathering with the corporate on Aug. 14, while also attempting to cover tracks by deleting logs and renaming files.

• Li joined xAI in 2024 as one among the primary 20 engineers at the corporate, working on developing and training its Grok language model.

• xAI is in search of an injunction to dam Li from working at OpenAI and some other competitor while the case is outstanding, alongside monetary damages.

Why it matters: The AI talent wars are uncontrolled, and so is the temptation to monetize insider knowledge, with engineers carrying billions in IP each of their heads and on their laptops. The incontrovertible fact that this also involves an xAI to OpenAI move will likely only deepen tensions between Elon Musk and his former company.

TOGETHER WITH CISCO

🔌 Powering the workforce for agentic AI

The Rundown: Cisco’s AI-native network architecture is purpose-built to power the explosive growth of agentic AI, providing a secure, scalable foundation on your digital workforce.

With Cisco, you get:

• Fused security that protects every AI agent and data flow directly on the network level

• Autonomous AI agents that collaborate seamlessly with humans for streamlined operations

• Network infrastructure that handles the large traffic demands of AI-augmented workforces

Construct your AI-ready enterprise.

META

🚪 Meta’s superintelligence team faces departures

The Rundown: Meta’s high-profile Superintelligence Labs team is facing a series of early departures and reported turmoil in its relationship with data provider Scale AI, hinting at a chaotic start for the brand new division after a summer of major overhauls.

The small print:

• Shengjia Zhao reportedly threatened to quit days after joining MSL, set on returning to OpenAI before eventually being given the chief scientist title.

• Meta researchers view Scale AI’s data as inferior, according to TechCrunch, choosing competitors despite the $14.3B investment in Wang’s company.

• Several of Meta’s recent hires have already departed or never actually began, with not less than two returning to OpenAI.

Why it matters: The story of the summer has been Meta’s poaching and the seemingly infinite amount of cash being thrown towards reinventing its AI efforts — and while the vibes were strong externally surrounding the brand new talent infusion, it’s becoming clear that constructing a team and executing on Zuck’s vision will take greater than just money.

AI TRAINING

🍥 Create designs with Genspark AI Designer

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn find out how to use Genspark AI Designer to create posters, t-shirts, web sites, and more from single prompts — it’s like having design agents that seek for inspiration before generating your custom layouts.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Genspark AI Designer and click on into the prompt box

2. Describe your design: “Create a t-shirt for an organization boss that claims ‘The buck stops here'” or “Design an internet site for my tennis coaching business”

3. Watch as Genspark’s agents search the online for inspiration, analyze layouts, after which present 4 design options (from minimalist to daring vintage styles)

4. Refine with follow-ups like “make it viral” or “make it modern minimalist” to enhance results

5. Download the mockup or take it to the GenSpark Developer Agent to convert designs into actual code

Pro tip: The free plan gives 200 credits every day that burn fast — use one-shot prompts properly, then iterate with specific refinements like “highlight testimonials” or “add booking feature” for production-ready designs.

PRESENTED BY H COMPANY

🚀 Browser automation, unlocked

The Rundown: Backed by a historic $220M seed round, H Company just open-sourced Holo1 — the open-source motion model behind Surfer H that’s now the top-ranked web-browsing agent on WebVoyager.

With Holo1, you possibly can:

• Automate multi-step browser workflows to reclaim hours of repetitive work

• Experience SOTA accuracy that outperforms OpenAI’s Operator, Gemini Flash, & more

• Integrate immediately with RAG workflows, RPA suites, and multi-agent hubs

• Trim costs with full browsing flows at just $0.11 – $0.13 per run

Holo 1 is now freely available for deployment, fine-tuning, and scaling — learn more here.

AI RESEARCH

🩺 AI stethoscope spots hidden heart problems

The Rundown: Researchers from Imperial College London published a study on using an AI-powered stethoscope that may detect major heart issues in only seconds, finding significant increases in potential life-saving early diagnoses over traditional tools.

The small print:

• The study tested the card-sized device across 200 doctors’ offices with over 12,000 patients, finding 2x rates of heart failure detection.

• The AI analyzes heartbeat patterns and blood flow variations undetectable to human ears while concurrently capturing ECG readings.

• The cloud-based AI algorithms process waveform data from over 12,000 patient recordings to flag at-risk individuals inside seconds.

• Patients examined with the device also showed 3.5x higher detection of atrial fibrillation and nearly double the diagnosis rate for valve disease.

Why it matters: Like other AI medical tools, the important thing upgrade with the AI stethoscope, which is ready to be rolled out across the UK, is proactive prevention. This implementation can also be an awesome example of how a tool invented (and barely modified) because the 1800s can gain incredible powers with a little bit of AI integrated into the design.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• ⚙️ Grok Code Fast – xAI’s recent speedy, SOTA coding model

• 🗣️ Command A Translate – Cohere’s frontier enterprise translation model

• 📞 gpt-realtime – OpenAI’s model for creating production-ready voice agents

• 🎨 USO – ByteDance’s open-source image style editing model

📰 All the pieces else in AI today

Meta has reportedly discussed partnerships with Google and OpenAI to have third-party models power its Meta AI chatbot while the corporate trains its next-gen system.

ByteDance released USO, an open ‘style-subject optimized customization model’ that may preserve subjects and apply recent artistic styles to create customized images.

UCLA researchers developed optical generative AI models, which create images using light beams as a substitute of processors, able to faster, energy-efficient outputs.

Higgsfield AI launched Higgsfield Speak 2.0, a brand new upgrade to its custom avatar tool with more realistic motion, advanced lip-sync, and enhanced video control.

A study found that exposing readers to AI-detection quizzes led to a rise in visits to trusted news sites, suggesting quality journalism may profit from AI content.

Meta is facing backlash after the photographs and likenesses of celebrities like Taylor Swift and Scarlett Johansson were used for AI chatbots on its platform without permission.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Jody W. in Nova Scotia, Canada:

“As an adult with ADHD, I take advantage of AI to maintain things moving. It helps me get through the tasks that typically slow me down or stop me altogether, like organizing hours, writing up quotes, or keeping projects heading in the right direction. As a substitute of getting stuck, I can keep my momentum and stay productive. I’ve all the time had one million great ideas and have never really been in a position to take motion on them due to my scattered mind. Now with my AI assistance, I tackle complex problems with ease and have truthfully never been more productive.”

How do you employ AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Microsoft’s homegrown AI debut

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Netflix goes full-on theme park

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Nvidia’s palm-sized ‘robot brain’

• Today’s AI tool guide: Create inspiring designs with Genspark AI Designer

• Watch our last live workshop: Essential ChatGPT suggestions

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown