OpenAI’s ‘low-cost’ latest frontier model

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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI just dropped o3-pro, the corporate’s latest top reasoning model — coming alongside an enormous price cut that shows intelligence is becoming cheaper than ever, whilst capabilities soar.

With early testers calling the discharge “much smarter” and CEO Sam Altman writing that humanity has “passed the AI event horizon,” the optimism coming out of the AI leader feels higher than ever.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • OpenAI’s o3-pro with massive price cuts

  • Meta’s ‘superintelligence’ lab with Scale AI founder

  • Find out how to create AI videos without cost using OpenAI’s Sora

  • OpenAI CEO says AI takeoff has began

  • 4 latest AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🚀 OpenAI drops o3-pro with massive price cuts

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI released o3-pro, an upgraded version of its reasoning model that outperforms competitors on key benchmarks — while concurrently reducing its o3 prices by 80% in a direct challenge to Google and Anthropic’s top models.

The small print:

  • o3-Pro is designed to “think longer,” boosting reliability and performance in technical fields like math, science, and programming.

  • The model outperforms top rivals on PhD-level math and science tasks, with evaluators preferring o3-pro across all tested categories.

  • It could possibly also use tools like web search and data evaluation, but is slower and lacks support for features like image generation and Canvas.

  • ChatGPT Pro and Team users gain immediate access, with Enterprise and Edu customers receiving the model next week.

Why it matters: According to tester Ben Hylak, o3-pro feels “much smarter” than its predecessor and “very different” from other frontier models. But essentially the most mind-blowing a part of this release could be the pricing — coming in at a fraction of older models despite a huge leap in intelligence and capability.

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META

🧠 Meta’s ‘superintelligence’ lab with Scale AI founder

Image source: Getty Images / Reuters

The Rundown: Meta is reportedly shaking up its AI division with a brand new “superintelligence lab” hand picked by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with a multi-billion dollar deal to bring Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and other top talent onboard.

The small print:

  • Wang will lead Meta’s latest group alongside other Scale AI technical talent, with the 28-year-old founder taking a top position in Zuckerberg’s AI hierarchy.

  • The $15B deal sends money to Scale’s existing shareholders while allowing Meta to sidestep regulatory acquisition concerns with a 49% stake in the corporate.

  • Zuckerberg has personally recruited nearly 50 researchers for the lab, offering as high as nine-figure packages to poach talent from OpenAI and Google.

  • The move follows Zuckerberg’s reported frustration with the performance of Meta’s Llama 4 model and a desire to speed up past competitors.

Why it matters: After drama and disappointment surrounding the recent Llama 4 release, Zuck is taking matters into his own hands — and isn’t afraid of shaking up his existing staff and breaking the bank to do it. Meta has the resources, but a dramatic pivot could be what’s truly mandatory to catch as much as its powerhouse AI rivals.

AI TRAINING

🎬 Find out how to create AI videos without cost using OpenAI’s Sora

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn how you can use OpenAI’s powerful Sora video generator through Microsoft’s Bing mobile app to create professional-quality videos — immediately and with none cost.

Step-by-step:

  1. Download the Microsoft Bing app and choose the mini-apps icon in the underside right corner.

  2. Access the “Video Creator” feature from the available mini-apps

  3. Write an in depth prompt describing your required video scene

  4. Generate your 5-second, 9:16 format video and download via the three dots menu

Pro tip: Create multiple variations of the identical concept by barely adjusting your prompts.

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  • Teaches kids how you can use AI the appropriate way — responsibly and confidently

  • Acts as a protected space for exploring, searching, and discovering

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  • Is designed to grow with kids as they progress

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SAM ALTMAN

💫 OpenAI CEO says AI takeoff has began

Image source: o3 / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a brand new blog post titled “The Gentle Singularity,” claiming humanity has passed the AI event horizon — predicting superintelligence will reshape society, but its changes will remain manageable.

The small print:

  • Altman frames the takeoff as a “gentle singularity,” where society adapts to exponential progress as once-amazing capabilities quickly develop into routine.

  • His timeline includes the AI creating latest ideas in 2026, robots functioning in the true world in 2027, and an explosion of creation across industries.

  • Within the 2030s, he projects that each intelligence and energy will develop into abundant, with the associated fee of AI eventually approaching the associated fee of electricity.

  • Altman’s path forward involves first solving AI alignment, then ensuring superintelligence is reasonable, distributed, and never controlled by a single entity.

Why it matters: Despite AI steadily being painted in doomsday scenarios, the person at the middle of all of it envisions a quite different outlook. Users already quickly adapt to every latest wave of intelligence, moving on from one release to shouting for the following — and Altman sees that continuing whilst we cross a brand new threshold of tech advances.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

  • 📚 Exa Research Pro – Recent SOTA agentic tool for web research

  • 🍎 Foundation Models – Construct on Apple’s on-device Apple Intelligence model

  • ⚙️ Xcode 26 – Apple’s coding tool, with latest access to AI models

  • 🗂️ Common Pile v0.1 – 8TB dataset of public and licensed text for AI training

💼 AI Job Opportunities

  • 🔁 The Rundown – Strategic Partnerships (AI University)

  • 🧑‍🏫 Parloa – Senior Product Trainer

  • 🌟 Synthesia – Director, Customer Success

  • 🌍 Palantir Technologies – Global Mobility Specialist

📰 All the pieces else in AI today

Mistral released Magistral, its open-source reasoning family with quick responses and multi-language support, though STEM and coding benchmarks lag behind top rivals.

OpenAI finalized a take care of Google Cloud for added compute, diversifying beyond Microsoft as Google expands its cloud business to incorporate its biggest AI competitor.

Google added a brand new Veo 3 Fast version of its viral video generation model in Gemini and Flow, allowing for expanded access with 2x the speed.

KREA AI unveiled Krea 1, the corporate’s first in-house image model — launching in free beta with enhanced aesthetic control, artistic knowledge, and image quality.

Enterprise AI startup Glean raised $150M in latest funding at a $7.2B valuation, driven by adoption from Fortune 500 corporations and its Glean Agents platform.

SAG-AFTRA and major video game corporations reportedly reached a tentative deal to finish an almost year-long strike by actors over AI and compensation protections.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Watch our last live workshop

Take a look at our last workshop with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the tip of the workshop, you’ll confidently have the option to include Flux Kontext into your creative workflows for consistent, high-quality results.

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That is it for today!

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See you soon,

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

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