Good morning. It's Monday, May 25, and we're covering Cerebras’ challenge to NVIDIA’s AI chip dominance, how AI-designed materials could reshape medical implants, and Figure AI’s massive robotics valuation surge.
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YOUR DAILY ROLLUP
Top Stories of the Day
Figure AI reaches a reported $39 billion valuation less than three years after being valued near $500 million, despite generating little revenue. The surge follows growing investor interest in humanoid robotics and recent progress on Figure’s F.03 system and Helix AI models. Founder Brett Adcock said an internal engineering test designed for eight hours instead ran for 200 consecutive hours without failure.
Even as Korea's tech-driven stock rally rolls on, South Korea's Deputy PM Bae Kyung-hoon told CNBC AI-driven wealth must flow to the broader public, citing the just-averted Samsung Electronics strike (which the PM warned could cost $668M/day) as a preview of AI-era labor friction. The concentration is eye-popping: Samsung's Q1 operating profit jumped 8x YoY, Samsung shares are up ~144% YTD, SK Hynix ~200%, the Kospi ~86%, and the Lee family's wealth doubled to $45.5B in twelve months. Bae also flagged concerns about Hyundai integrating Boston Dynamics' Atlas robots, days after a separate Blue House official's Facebook post proposing AI/semi tax-revenue redistribution briefly rattled markets before being walked back.
Musk has flipped his own clean-energy script: xAI is running on 46 unregulated natural gas turbines with $2.8B more lined up, while the SpaceX IPO filing pitches solar exclusively as a space play (orbital arrays generating 5x the energy of terrestrial ones), a full inversion of Tesla's founding mission to "expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy." The filing pegs future demand at terawatt-scale annual AI compute growth, a leap against the ~40 GW of total data center capacity today, justifying Musk's bet that AI must be lifted off the planet. Notably, xAI has bought $697M of Tesla Megapacks and SpaceX has bought $131M of Cybertrucks, but xAI hasn't installed a meaningful number of Tesla solar panels.
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VIDEO
Anthropic Beats OpenAI in Business Adoption
Today's update of Ramp AI Index shows 34.4% of businesses using Anthropic versus 32.3% using OpenAI.
IPOs
Cerebras Challenges NVIDIA With Giant AI Chips and Fast IPO Rise
AI chip startup Cerebras Systems surged into the spotlight after its May 14, 2026 IPO, with shares jumping 68% on debut as investors bet on its unconventional “wafer-scale” AI chips. The company claims its processors can run some AI workloads up to 15 times faster than competing NVIDIA models by using dinner-plate-sized chips packed with four trillion transistors and 900,000 AI cores.
Cerebras reported 2025 revenue of $510 million, up 76% year over year, and says it holds a $24.6 billion backlog that includes a reported OpenAI compute deal. Still, analysts note NVIDIA retains key advantages in manufacturing efficiency, flexibility, and ecosystem scale as Cerebras spends heavily to expand its infrastructure and compete in the fast-growing AI hardware market. → Read the full article here.
BIOTECH
AI-Designed Bone Materials Could Extend Implant Lifespans
Researchers are using artificial intelligence to design “metamaterials” that mimic the strength, flexibility, and porous structure of human bone, potentially improving hip replacements and fracture healing. Teams at institutions including Leiden University Medical Center, TU Delft, and ETH Zurich have developed AI-generated materials that can absorb stress more effectively and integrate better with surrounding bone tissue than conventional titanium or steel implants.
One project created unusually stiff “auxetic” materials that become thicker when stretched, while another produced soft, porous structures designed to support early-stage bone healing. Scientists say the approach could eventually lead to personalized implants tailored to individual patients and minimally invasive implants that expand inside the body after insertion. → Read the full article here.
WEARABLES
Apple’s Rumored AI Pin Could Extend the iPhone Ecosystem
Apple is reportedly developing a wearable “AI Pin” designed to work alongside the iPhone, offering screen-free, AI-powered interactions through voice commands, sensors, and contextual awareness. The device, rumored for release as early as 2027, could feature a lightweight aluminum-and-glass design inspired by the AirTag and rely on iPhone processing power for most computing tasks.
Reports suggest the AI Pin may include cameras for object recognition, navigation, and environmental awareness rather than traditional photography. The project appears to be part of Apple’s broader push into AI-driven wearables, alongside rumored smart glasses and camera-equipped AirPods, as competition in AI hardware accelerates. → Read the full article here.
NEWS
What Else is Happening
Berkeley Law Restricts Student AI Use: UC Berkeley Law banned most AI use in assignments after students submitted flawed fake case citations.
Woz Praises “Actual Intelligence”: Steve Wozniak drew cheers at graduation after telling students they have “actual intelligence” over artificial intelligence.
Google Expands Gemini Coding Limits: Google twice raised Gemini usage caps for Antigravity after developers quickly hit new AI coding limits.
Tech Layoffs Top 100,000: More than 100,000 tech workers have lost jobs in 2026 as Meta, Cisco, Intuit, and others cut staff while ramping up AI spending.
Google AI Search Breaks “Disregard”: Google’s AI-first Search showed blank space for “disregard,” burying dictionary links and frustrating users.
PROMPT OF THE WEEK
High-Stakes Decision Making Prompt
Use this when: you're facing a major decision and need to separate what's reversible from what isn't.
You are a strategic advisor. I'm facing a decision and need help separating reversible moves from irreversible ones — so I focus my attention where it actually matters.
Decision: [Describe it in 2–4 sentences]
Stakes: [Who is affected, and on what timeline]
Do three things:
1. List every sub-decision embedded in this choice. Classify each as reversible (easy to undo) or one-way door (hard/costly to reverse). One sentence of reasoning per item.
2. Flag the highest-stakes one-way door and explain what makes it hard to walk back.
3. For that item only: name the earliest signal that would tell me I've chosen wrong — and when I'd realistically see it.
Under 250 words. No general advice; stay grounded in what I described.That's All for Today
Before you go, what did you think of today's issue?
Thanks for reading. See you next time!
— Matthew Berman, Nick Wentz & the Forward Future Team