xAI’s massive recent $20B raise

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI and Anthropic could also be racing towards IPOs, but xAI is quickly climbing the ranks while staying private.

With a brand new $20B raise valuing Elon Musk’s AI startup at $230B and deeper integrations with X, Tesla, and Optimus on tap, Grok is positioned for a significant 2026 leap — if it could actually stop undressing people.

In today’s AI rundown:

• xAI hits $230B valuation with Nvidia backing

• Razer’s holographic AI gaming companion

• Turn any UI right into a landing page with Gemini 3 Pro

• Stanford AI predicts 130 diseases from an evening’s sleep

• 4 recent AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

XAI

💰 xAI hits $230B valuation with Nvidia backing

The Rundown: xAI just announced the completion of a brand new $20B Series E funding round, valuing the corporate at over $200B, with Elon Musk’s AI startup receiving backing from Nvidia, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, and others.

The small print:

• The reported $230B valuation puts xAI third amongst frontier AI labs, trailing Anthropic ($350B) and OpenAI ($500B) but far ahead of most competitors.

• The corporate is quickly scaling compute infrastructure in Memphis, with a 3rd data center planned that will push total power capability near 2 gigawatts.

• xAI also revealed that Grok 5 is currently in training, with plans to ship recent products tying together the chatbot, X, and its Colossus supercomputer.

Why it matters: The AI funding wars show no signs of cooling, with xAI now joining OAI and Anthropic within the rarefied $200B+ valuation club. Musk’s unique advantage of owning each the AI and the distribution platform (X), alongside expanded Tesla and Optimus integrations, positions Grok for a possible major leap up the AI ladder.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

🛡️ Turn compliance right into a deal accelerator

The Rundown: Vanta’s Agentic Trust Platform helps fast-moving startups and security teams get audit-ready fast and stay constantly compliant, turning compliance right into a deal accelerator, not a blocker.

Join the live demo to learn find out how to:

• Speed up compliance with agentic workflows across SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more

• Construct real security foundations, not check-the-box fixes

• Show credibility faster with a public Trust Center and AI-powered questionnaires

• Keep engineers focused with guided workflows and dev-native automation

Register here for the live demo and ask your questions in real time.

RAZER

🎮 Razer unveils holographic AI gaming companion

The Rundown: Gaming tech company Razer debuted Project AVA at CES 2026, a Grok-driven hologram device that puts an animated AI assistant inside a glowing physical cylinder, teasing use cases like game coaching, brainstorming, and more.

The small print:

• AVA displays a 5.5-inch animated avatar inside a transparent capsule, with options starting from Grok personalities and anime characters to esports likenesses.

• A built-in camera and dual microphones let the AI watch users’ screens and listen for voice commands, offering real-time gameplay suggestions or work assistance.

• Razer is using xAI’s Grok because the default brain for AVA, though the corporate says it’s constructing for compatibility with other AI providers down the road.

• Reservations are open now for $20 for U.S. customers, with shipments expected in late 2026 and final pricing still unannounced.

Why it matters: Move over OpenAI, there’s a brand new AI desk device rolling into town. AVA is a reasonably cool tackle bringing AI companions right into a ‘physical’ form, though there may be some irony in positioning it for gamers first when that user segment has been notoriously against nearly every thing AI.

AI TRAINING

🚀 Turn any UI right into a landing page with Gemini 3 Pro

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn find out how to use Gemini 3 Pro to review any UI design from video and switch it into a totally working landing page, complete with animations, interactions, and polished layouts that do not look AI-generated.

Step-by-step:

1. Find UI inspiration on Dribbble, Behance, or any live SaaS site, then download a screen recording of the scrolling page (not only a static screenshot)

2. Upload it to Gemini 3 Pro and prompt: “Study this video and write a prompt describing the UI—layout, colours, etc, then turn it into instructions for a dev”

3. Ask Gemini to convert the evaluation into markdown format for a clean handover document, then copy the total prompt right into a recent Gemini chat

4. Adapt the prompt to your product and add: “Create a high-fidelity interactive landing page based on this design spec and show me a live preview”

Pro tip: Iterate on colours, sections, or animations before exporting to Cursor, Bolt, or Replit for deployment

PRESENTED BY UNFRAME

💸 Construct or buy enterprise AI?

The Rundown: AI is essential for enterprises – but deciding when to purchase versus when to construct in-house might be tough. Unframe’s guide shares strategic insights for leaders to balance innovation, control, and speed.

On this guide, you’ll learn:

• A practical framework for when to construct vs. buy

• Lessons from enterprise AI failures, and what to do in another way

• Find out how to mix the speed of shopping for with the precision of constructing

Download the guide to make smarter AI investment decisions.

AI RESEARCH

😴 Stanford AI predicts 130 diseases from an evening’s sleep

The Rundown: Stanford researchers just published SleepFM, a brand new AI foundation model that may predict over 130 health conditions like dementia, heart attacks, and Parkinson’s from a single overnight sleep recording.

The small print:

• The model was trained on 600K hours of sleep data from 65K participants, analyzing brain waves, heart activity, respiration, and muscle signals.

• When body signals fell out of sync, like a brain in deep sleep with a racing heart, the model flagged it as a warning sign for future disease.

• The team linked 25 years of Stanford Sleep Clinic health records to sleep data, testing predictions across 1,000+ disease categories.

• SleepFM predicted Parkinson’s with 89% accuracy, dementia at 85%, heart attacks at 81%, and general overall risk of death at 84%.

Why it matters: We spend a lot of our lives asleep, but there remains to be a lot to study what data from that point might reveal. SleepFM shows overnight recordings might be an early warning system — and as wearables get more advanced, predictive health monitoring could move from sleep labs right onto your wrist.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🔒 Incogni – Remove your personal data from the online so scammers and identity thieves can’t access it. Use code RUNDOWN to get 55% off*

• 📱 LFM 2.5 – Liquid AI’s recent AI models for on-device speed and efficiency

• 🎥 LTX-2 – Lightricks’ recent open-source foundation video model

• 📦 Alexa.com – Amazon’s AI assistant experience now on the internet

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Every thing else in AI today

Nvidia unveiled the Rubin platform at CES 2026, combining six recent chips right into a unified AI supercomputer that delivers 5x the training compute of its Blackwell line.

Liquid AI released LFM 2.5, a brand new SOTA open-weight model family for on-device AI across text, vision, and audio that tops benchmarks in comparison with similar-sized rivals.

Lightricks open-sourced LTX-2, an AI video model able to generating native 4K footage and synced audio with granular camera and motion control.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said during a presentation at CES 2026 that global AI users will surpass 5B in the following five years, requiring compute to extend 100x to satisfy demand.

AI benchmarking platform LM Arena raised $150M in Series A funding at a $1.7B valuation, tripling its seed round value.

Anthropic’s Daniela Amodei appeared on an interview with CNBC, saying “the exponential continues until it doesn’t… and each 12 months it has” with reference to AI scaling.

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 Tom G. in Nashville, TN:

“While running errands with my wife, our 2014 Honda Odyssey’s ‘Check Engine’ light got here on. I asked ChatGPT for help, providing my automobile’s make, model, and engine size. ChatGPT told me to go to AutoZone and ask for a free code-cypher and to inform her what code(s) the automobile was sending out.

I provided the codes I got from AutoZone to ChatGPT, who proceeded to diagnose the issue, told me find out how to fix it, and helped me order the alternative items needed.”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Alexa comes for ChatGPT’s web turf

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Lego’s iconic brick just got a brain

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Agibot’s tiny, portable humanoid

• Today’s AI tool guide: Turn any UI right into a landing page with Gemini 3 Pro

• RSVP to next workshop @ 4 PM EST Friday: AI Foundations Bootcamp Pt. 1

See you soon,

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