Project Stargate: $500b datacenter (1.7% of US GDP) and Gemini 2 Flash Thinking 2
Project Stargate, a US "AI Manhattan project" led by OpenAI and Softbank, supported by Oracle, Arm, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, was announced with a scale comparable to the original Manhattan project costing $35B inflation adjusted. Despite Microsoft's reduced role as exclusive compute partner, the project is serious but not immediately practical. Meanwhile, Noam Shazeer revealed a second major update to Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, enabling 1M token long context usable immediately. Additionally, AI Studio introduced a new code interpreter feature. On Reddit, DeepSeek R1, a distillation of Qwen 32B, was released for free on HuggingChat, sparking discussions on self-hosting, performance issues, and quantization techniques. DeepSeek's CEO Liang Wenfeng highlighted their focus on fundamental AGI research, efficient MLA architecture, and commitment to open-source development despite export restrictions, positioning DeepSeek as a potential alternative to closed-source AI trends.