Databricks Raises $5B at $190B Valuation as Apple Partners with Alibaba for China AI Model
Databricks has closed a $5 billion funding round at a $190 billion valuation after investors pushed to put in far more than the $1 billion originally targeted, CEO Ali Ghodsi told TechCrunch. The round swelled because multiple investors clamored for entry, reflecting the massive capital demands of building AI infrastructure, and Ghodsi noted that AI development remains extraordinarily expensive at scale.
Apple reportedly trained a custom AI model for the China market in partnership with Alibaba, a rare cross-border collaboration that cuts across escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington, according to Reuters. The China-focused large language model was developed with Alibaba's support and marks Apple's most significant AI localization effort for its Chinese user base, which represents roughly 20% of global iPhone sales.
DeepSeek released DeepSeek Harness under the MIT license in developer preview, touting a modular design where every capability is a plugin that can be swapped out, reports VentureBeat. The release expands DeepSeek beyond the model layer and deeper into the software developers use to deploy AI agents, positioning the company as an open-source alternative to proprietary agent frameworks.
Writer introduced a new AI model built as a post-training variation on Z.ai's open source GLM-5.2, claiming the system delivers deployment-ready capabilities at a much lower price by containing token costs. The upgraded harness is designed to make enterprise AI more affordable as companies scrutinize per-token spending on large language models.
Google announced Gemini 3.7 Flash just three weeks after the previous 3.6 Flash release, with the company claiming substantial improvements in the new version. The rapid iteration cycle underscores Google's aggressive push to keep pace with competitors in the small-model flash category.
Instagram's new logo has drawn sharp criticism as the perfect embodiment of AI slop, with observers noting the wordmark's design choices feel unintentionally awful in an era when generative AI has flooded the internet with low-effort visual content. The rebrand arrives as Meta continues to integrate AI-generated features across its family of apps used by over 3 billion people.
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