2025 AI Round Up

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Welcome Back, AI Geeks!

It’s time to stay updated with What’s Up in AI.

2025 was totally crazy. We had working robots, our new bestfriend Chatgpt, vibe coding, OpenAI coming on news every single day and lots of help from different tools in our everyday activities (ai hasn’t replaced us, yet).

We hope we do justice to AI advancements of 2025 in this wrap because honestly, there were too many, too great. Let's break down everything that mattered.

In today’s issue:

🤯 10 top news of 2026
🛠️ 5 tools that actually changed how we work
📱 5 social trends that broke the internet
🤖 3 robots that proved the future is now
🤑 5 investments that reshaped the AI landscape

Read time: 6 mins

The 10 Biggest Moments That Defined AI in 2025 🔥 

1. OpenAI Restructured Into a Public Benefit Corporation
The move enabled a massive $40B fundraise and positioned OpenAI to balance profit with mission. It sparked debates about commercialization versus public good, but it also proved the AI race requires serious capital.

2. Sora 2 Brought Hollywood-Quality Video Generation

OpenAI's upgraded video generator now creates 60-second clips in 1080p with impressive coherence. While Hollywood unions negotiated terms to avoid strikes, the technology's arrival marked a clear shift in content creation capabilities.

3. NVIDIA Hit Historic Financial Milestones
Their Blackwell B200 GPUs shipped in Q1, pushing market cap to $500B and AI revenue to $100B. Despite export restrictions to China impacting 20% of growth, NVIDIA remains the backbone of AI infrastructure.

4. Google Launched Gemini 3 With Strong Benchmarks
Released in November with a 23% lead in math performance and integrated into 3 billion Android devices, Google demonstrated they're serious about staying competitive in the AI space.

5. ChatGPT Reached 2 Billion Users
The platform replaced 30% of homework assistance tools and helped enterprises save $500B in labor costs globally. If you're not using it yet, you're probably making life harder than it needs to be.

6. AlphaFold Celebrated 5 Years of Protein Prediction

This breakthrough AI enabled 200+ drugs to enter clinical pipelines and attracted $50B in biotech investments. It's quietly advancing medicine while other AI applications grab headlines.

7. Micro AI Agents Automated the Office
Lightweight agents like GenSpark and Manus proliferated as modular, task-specific bots that automated 40% of routine office tasks—email triage, data scraping, and simple coding. These "agent swarms" saved enterprises $200B in labor, though fragmentation led to 20% failure rates without proper orchestration tools.

8. Trump's AI Controversies Became Must-Watch Drama
President Trump posted an AI-generated "Trump Gaza" resort video that got 500M views and universal backlash. Then the Elon saga: Trump threatened Musk's government contracts, Musk fired back with "Without me, Trump would have lost," Tesla dropped 18%, and by June Trump joked about deporting him.

9. AI-Designed Molecule Targets Cancer Resistance
Researchers used AI to create a molecule that enhances pancreatic cancer chemotherapy by targeting tumor resistance, significantly boosting treatment efficacy. This is the kind of AI breakthrough that actually saves lives—quiet, impactful, and deeply meaningful.

10. NotebookLM 2.0 Transformed Research Workflows
Google's AI research tool with audio overviews and document chaining attracted 100M+ users and cut research time by 60%. It became essential for students and professionals alike.

5 AI TOOLS THAT DELIVERED REAL VALUE 🛠️

1. Perplexity AI
The AI search engine hit a $9B valuation after securing $500M in funding and attracting over 15M active users. With features like one-click shopping and financial analysis, Perplexity proved AI search could challenge traditional search engines while offering a faster, more conversational way to find information.

2. Claude Code
Anthropic's agentic coding tool reached GA in May with repo-wide context (200k tokens), multi-file refactors, and 92% HumanEval accuracy. It transformed dev workflows, boosting velocity 3-5x for 5M+ users and capturing 25% of coding AI spend. Solo developers now ship production apps 2x faster with debugging time cut by 60%.

3. Midjourney V7
Consistent characters, 4K video generation from images, and refined style transfer drove $1B+ in creator economy revenue. The tool spawned 100k+ "prompt engineering" job listings and proved AI art has serious staying power.

4. Google NotebookLM 2.0
Audio overviews, query chaining across documents, and Gemini 3 integration made this the go-to research tool. With 100M+ users cutting research time by 60%, it became essential for knowledge work.

5. ChatGPT o1/o3 Reasoning Models
These advanced models excel at complex reasoning and math, transforming education and enterprise applications. The agents helped save $500B in labor costs globally while improving decision-making quality.

 5 SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS THAT BLEW THE INTERNET AWAY 📈 

1. Robots Playing Sports
Optimus and Unitree videos of robots playing football, boxing, and dancing hit 1B+ views, boosting robotics stocks 25%.

2. Nano Banana Tips
These “nano banana tips” flooded TikTok, X, Reddit and Reels, turning tiny everyday advice into binge-worthy content with over 500M views.

3. AI-Generated Short-Form Content
80% of TikTok/Reels became AI-made, increasing creator output 5x but sparking "slop fatigue" and platform algorithm adjustments.

4. Virtual Influencers Went Mainstream
Personalities like Mia Zelu and Lil Miquela gained 10M followers and secured $100M in brand deals, blurring digital-real boundaries.

5. Deepfake Detection Became Mandatory (for some)
Political and celebrity deepfakes caused enough disruption that platforms implemented detection tools, reducing virality by 40%.

3 ROBOTS MAKING REAL-WORLD IMPACT 🤖 

1. Tesla Optimus Gen 2
Standing 173 cm and weighing 57 kg, this humanoid robot performs dexterous tasks like folding shirts and factory work using vision-based AI from Tesla's FSD technology. Limited production of 5k-10k units began, with potential to reduce manufacturing costs 30-50% compared to human labor.

2. Unitree G1
Priced under $16k, this compact 1.3m humanoid with gymnastics capabilities sold 10k+ units to researchers and educators. It democratized robotics access and contributed to 2025's $2B consumer robotics market growth.

3. Figure AI Helix
BMW deployed 100+ units of this commercial humanoid in factories, achieving 20% productivity gains. With OpenAI-powered vision and natural language processing, it validated humanoids for the $100B labor market.

BIGGEST INVESTMENTS IN AI 📰

1. Microsoft - $80B in AI data centers
This massive bet powered Azure's dominance and helped Microsoft capture 45% of the cloud AI market share.

2. Amazon - $75B+ in infrastructure
AWS scaled AI capabilities with custom Trainium chips while e-commerce bots saved the company $10B in labor costs.

3. Meta - 72B in AI capex
Zuckerberg went all-in funding Llama 4 training and powering metaverse AI avatars that somehow reached 1 billion users.

4.SoftBank - $40B AI/robotics fund
The largest dedicated AI investment fund ever fueled the humanoid robot boom and backed 50+ startups betting on physical AI.

5. xAI - $10B at $200B valuation
Elon's AI company built the massive Colossus computing cluster and launched Grok 3 to compete with industry giants.

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And that’s a wrap!

That's 2025, AI Geeks.

What stood out most to you this year? Reply and let us know (we read every response). Here's to an even more groundbreaking 2026.

Do drop a comment to tell us👇️ 

We’ll be back soon with more spicy takes of 2026 on What’s Happening in AI, so stay tuned & share our newsletter with a friend using this link!

Stay Tuned! 🤖 
Team What’s Up in AI