OpenAI is reportedly in talks to buy Windsurf for $3B, with news expected later this week

Key Takeaway: OpenAI is reportedly close to acquiring AI coding assistant Windsurf for $3B, signaling a major power move in the competitive code-gen market.

More Insights:

• OpenAI previously pursued Cursor (by Anysphere), but talks stalled—Cursor is now raising funds at a ~$10B valuation.

• Windsurf (formerly Codeium) has ~$40M ARR, significantly less than Cursor’s reported $200M ARR.

• The acquisition could raise ethical questions, as OpenAI’s Startup Fund has heavily backed Cursor.

• Windsurf users were recently offered a $10/month lock-in deal ahead of an expected announcement this week.

Why it matters:
This move reveals OpenAI’s aggressive push into developer tools—and possibly a pivot from ecosystem builder to competitor. As it snaps up rivals, it risks eroding trust among startups in its orbit, especially those it previously funded.

More from OpenAI:
- OpenAI is building a social network
- OpenAI launches a pair of AI reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini
- OpenAI debuts Codex CLI, an open-source coding tool for terminals

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ChatGPT's New Trick? Pinpointing Locations from Your Photos Like a Digital Detective

Key Takeaway: ChatGPT’s latest AI models can now accurately guess locations from photos — raising serious privacy concerns.

More Insights:

• OpenAI’s new models, o3 and o4-mini, can analyze and manipulate images (e.g., zoom, crop, rotate) to extract location clues.

• Users on X are using the models to play "GeoGuessr"-style games, testing their ability to identify landmarks, cities, and venues.

• These AI capabilities don’t rely on metadata or past memory — they interpret visual clues alone.

• Although powerful, o3 occasionally fails or makes wrong guesses, highlighting both its potential and its limits.

Why it matters:
This trend blurs the line between fun and surveillance — showcasing AI’s growing power to infer private information from public visuals, even without context. It’s a glimpse into a future where privacy isn’t just about what you share, but what can be inferred from what you didn’t mean to.

ChatGPT Has Receipts, Will Now Remember Everything You've Ever Told It

Key Takeaway: ChatGPT now uses both saved memories and chat history to deliver more personalized and helpful responses across all your interactions.

More Insights:

• You can control what ChatGPT remembers—edit, delete, or turn memory off entirely in Settings.

• Temporary Chat lets you talk without memory or history logging—ideal for private or one-off chats.

• Custom Instructions and memory work together for deeper personalization, improving over time.

• GPTs have separate memory systems—each GPT remembers its own context, not ChatGPT’s.

Why it matters:
This shift turns ChatGPT from a smart tool into a truly adaptive assistant—one that grows with you, tailors to your workflow, and reduces friction in repeat interactions. But it also raises key questions around privacy, transparency, and user agency—because with great memory comes great responsibility.

Other stuff

• Microsoft researchers say they’ve developed a hyper-efficient AI model that can run on CPUs

• Figma tells AI startup to stop using the term ‘Dev Mode’

• Fintech founder charged with fraud after ‘AI’ shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines

• OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s new venture SSI valued at $32bn

• Google’s newest AI model is designed to help study dolphin ‘speech’

• Apple wants to train AI on your emails in a way that protects your privacy

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