Saudi Arabia invests $100 billion in race to build AI infrastructure

Welcome to this edition of Loop!

To kick off your week, I’ve rounded-up the most important technology and AI updates that you should know about.

‏‏‎ ‎ HIGHLIGHTS ‏‏‎ ‎

• Helsing’s impressive underwater drone for surveillance

• How AI could be impacting entry-level jobs

• A startup that’s using AI models to generate 3D worlds

• … and much more

Let's jump in!

1. Saudi Arabia plans to invest $10 billion in startups

The state-owned AI company, known as Humain, is preparing to launch a massive $10 billion venture fund that'll target startups across three continents - North America, Europe, and Asia.

Humain was only launched earlier this month, when President Trump visited the region and agreed to new deals around technology and weapon sales.

The Saudis have also been busy making friends in Silicon Valley, holding talks with heavyweight players including Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI, and Elon Musk's xAI about its ambitious plans.

They're also considering whether they can sell an equity stake in their data centre business to US companies. That could become incredibly valuable, if the Saudis can meet their hugely ambitious goal - being able to process 7% of global AI training and inferencing by 2030.

To do this, Humain will build 1.9 gigawatts of data centre capacity and it’s believed this will cost a whopping $77 billion.

For over a year now, it has been rumoured that Saudi Arabia wanted to invest heavily in the technology - which I’ve covered before.

With this huge investment program, Saudi Arabia will become a serious contender in the global race to build new AI infrastructure.

2. AI could be having an impact on entry-level jobs

According to new data from SignalFire, the tech industry is hiring significantly fewer graduates and this could be the first concrete sign that AI is impacting the job market.

To inform their decision, the venture capital firm captures data about millions of LinkedIn profiles and companies.

Using their data, they saw that Big Tech companies were hiring 25% fewer graduates in 2024 compared to the previous year.

Startups weren't far behind either, they slashed graduate hiring by around 11%.

However, there could be other factors at play here. In 2024, the market was in a tough spot and all the top companies were announcing redundancies - regardless of the impact of Generative AI.

In the US and UK, central banks decided that they needed to increase interest rates and combat inflation - leading to job losses as companies scaled back their spending.

It seems that the combination of AI advances and higher interest rates have led to these figures, rather than just one or the other. It’s not as clear cut as SignalFire are suggesting, but the future does look quite difficult for fresh graduates, unfortunately.

3. Silicon Valley startup raises $100 million to automate cybersecurity testing

Horizon3 is a cybersecurity startup that’s based in San Francisco and specialises in autonomous penetration testing.

It already generates over $30 million in annual recurring revenue and has seen rapid growth in the last year.

The company is being led by Splunk’s former CTO and cyber operators that worked in US Special Operations.

While their tool seems to be more methodical and structured in how it approaches pen testing, I can see a world where AI agents are used to both exploit and test for cybersecurity attacks.

We’re now building advanced agents that can both plan and execute tasks. There’s no reason why they can’t try to exploit security vulnerabilities, especially considering that open source models are becoming even more powerful.

As that risk continues to grow, VCs will continue to invest heavily in cybersecurity startups that are trying to disrupt the industry.

4. Elon Musk's Neuralink raises $600 million, valued at $9 billion

Continuing with the theme of huge startup investments, Neuralink has seen its valuation jump from $5 billion in 2023 to $9 billion with the latest round.

Neuralink is developing computer chips that work with the human brain and was started by Elon Musk in 2016.

While Musk can easily attract huge sums from investors, this one really stands out. Back in late 2023, Neuralink raised a pretty modest $43 million to improve its technology.

By raising over $600 million just 18 months later, it’s a clear vote of confidence in the company’s direction.

This comes as Neuralink was granted "breakthrough device" designation by the FDA last year, paving the way for human trials.

Three patients have now received Neuralink implants and, just last month, they showed that a nonverbal patient could narrate YouTube videos - using only their brainwaves.

For a company that's long promised to merge human abilities with AI, this funding round suggests investors are betting that future might arrive sooner than expected.

5. Google Lens allow you to search what you’re seeing on YouTube

In a move to attract users away from TikTok and Instagram, YouTube is integrating their short-form videos with Google Lens.

This will allow you to search for anything you see, while watching the video. All you have to do is pause the video, tap on the object, and Lens will try to identify it.

The feature will gradually roll-out later this week, but it will still be in the beta phase.

It's a clever move from YouTube, given that neither TikTok and Instagram Reels aren’t able to offer something similar.

Merging these Google services makes perfect sense and it might just give YouTube the edge it needs in a very crowded market.

Odyssey’s AI model is being used to generate 3D worlds

While we’ve seen a lot of advances with AI video and image generators, there has also been some gradual progress with AI gameplay.

Essentially, this is when we use an AI model to create a 3D environment and allow the user to walk around - similar to how you would in a video game.

Google DeepMind is one of the leaders in this space and they revealed Genie 2 back in December. You can read my thoughts on it here.

Odyssey is another company that’s building this technology. Earlier in the week, they showcased how users can navigate the 3D world and move forward, backwards, or to the left and right.

To do all this, the AI model tries to predict what the next state of the world will be - based on the current conditions, incoming actions, and some historical data.

While the Odyssey’s tech is still at a very early stage, they’ve clearly demonstrated that the 3D world will remain consistent and that it can last for over 5 minutes.

To set themselves apart from their competitors, Odyssey has developed a custom 360-degree camera system.

The team are now using this to capture landscapes in the real-world, with the hope being that this will produce superior models.

With $27 million in funding and one of Pixar’s founders on the board, they’re now working to integrate their generated scenes with tools that are used by the gaming industry - including the Unreal Engine and Adobe After Effects.

Helsing develops an underwater drone for NATO

The German defence startup has unveiled an underwater surveillance drone that could transform how nations monitor their seas.

The system pairs their AI-controlled software with swarms of SG-1 Fathom drones, which are able to patrol underwater for three months.

Interestingly, their software uses an acoustic model to process underwater sounds - allowing it to differentiate between submarines and ships.

It can even distinguish between individual vessels within the same class of ship. When you compare this with what a human analyst can do, Helsing’s drone is able to process data 40 times faster than before.

Not only that, these drones can operate in “swarms” - with the option to deploy hundreds of them at the same time. This could be invaluable for NATO countries, as they aim to boost their underwater surveillance networks and protect their internet cables.

The new NATO mission is called “Baltic Sentry” and was launched back in January of this year. In recent years, Europe has seen several acts of sabotage in the Baltic Sea - alongside more military patrols from Russia.

Helsing is a startup that I’ve often flagged as one-to-watch. The company has signed several deals to create autonomous fighter jets, created autonomous drones that are being used in Ukraine, and is now expanding into underwater surveillance.

With the rise in military spending across Europe, it’s a very good time for defence-tech startups to pitch their technologies.

⚖️ Four VW execs found guilty of fraud in “dieselgate”

💰 Samsung considers investing in Exo, a medical imaging startup

🇨🇳 Self-driving company sent sensitive data to China, despite agreement with US

🎙️ Anthropic launches a voice mode for Claude

📈 Meta AI now has 1 billion monthly active users

🚀 SpaceX launches a ninth test flight of Starship, but spins out of control

🎮 Microsoft starts testing a "Copilot for Gaming" in the Xbox app

🔬 AMD buys the silicon photonics startup Enosemi

🎬 Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings joins Anthropic's board

₿ Trump's media company buys $2.5 billion of Bitcoin, GameStop buys $500 million worth

🥽 Meta and Anduril will develop mixed reality headsets for the US military

🤖 Hugging Face makes a surprise unveiling of two new humanoid robots

Context

Context is a startup that’s based in Palo Alto and hopes to re-imagine office software for the AI era.

They’ve just secured $11 million in funding, which values it at around $70 million and joins the $5 million they raised previously.

Most of the top tech companies have simply bolted chatbots onto their existing products, which is a pretty poor experience for the end user.

Instead, Context has tried to approach it from a different angle. They started with today’s AI capabilities and then tried to design the software around that.

You can use their tool to access data from documents, other platforms, or even the web - and then convert that data into something else.

For example, you could upload a text document and convert it into a presentation. Or you could quickly analyse a spreadsheet file using natural language, rather than detailed formulas.

This taps into something called Generative UI, which is when we use AI to generate user interfaces.

Today, we can already ask LLMs to analyse a spreadsheet file, identify the important highlights, and generate an interactive dashboard that displays the information.

This is a fundamental shift, as it allows anyone to flexibly analyse their data in seconds - rather than relying on pre-built and expensive software to do that.

If you want to learn more about Context, I’ve included a link below.

This Week’s Art

We’ve covered quite a bit this week, including:

• Saudi Arabia’s plan to invest $10 billion in startups

• The debate on whether AI is impacting on entry-level jobs

• Why Horizon3 is raising $100 million to automate cybersecurity testing

• Neuralink’s trial success and new $600 million in funding

• Why Google is bringing their Lens search tool to YouTube

• How Odyssey's AI model is able to create interactive worlds

• Helsing’s recent work on an underwater drone for NATO

• And how Context is re-imagining productivity tools

If you found something interesting in this week’s edition, please feel free to share this newsletter with your colleagues.

Have a good week!

Liam

Share with Others

If you found something interesting in this week’s edition, feel free to share this newsletter with your colleagues.

About the Author

Liam McCormick is a Senior AI Engineer and works within Kainos' Innovation team. He identifies business value in emerging technologies, implements them, and then shares these insights with others.