Treasury Scrutinizes Benchmark's Manus AI Investment; OpenAI to Acquire Windsurf for $3 Billion
Key Takeaways
- U.S. Treasury reviews Benchmark's $75M investment in Manus AI for compliance.
- OpenAI is reportedly acquiring Windsurf, an AI-native IDE, for $3 billion.
- Brian Armstrong raised $130M to develop age-reversing treatments using AI.
- DeepSeek's AI chatbot app topped Apple App Store and Google Play charts.
- Zencoder launched Zen Agents, a platform for creating and sharing specialized AI tools.
Top Stories
U.S. Treasury reviews Benchmark's investment in Manus AI.
On May 9, 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department is reviewing Benchmark’s $75 million investment into Chinese AI startup Manus AI, which has a half-billion-dollar valuation, for compliance with 2023 restrictions on investing in Chinese companies.
OpenAI to acquire Windsurf for $3 billion.
On May 9, 2025, OpenAI is reportedly acquiring Windsurf, an AI-native integrated development environment (IDE), for $3 billion. This acquisition aims to help OpenAI compete with Google and Anthropic in the agentic AI space.
AI-driven age-reversing treatments & Hugging Face's tool.
On May 9, 2025, Brian Armstrong raised $130 million to develop age-reversing treatments using AI, as discussed on the Equity podcast. Also, Hugging Face released a free Operator-like agentic AI tool.
DeepSeek's AI chatbot tops app charts.
On May 9, 2025, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek gained recognition as its chatbot app topped the Apple App Store and Google Play charts. DeepSeek, founded in 2023 by High-Flyer Capital Management, uses compute-efficient techniques, sparking discussions about U.S. AI leadership.
Zencoder launches Zen Agents for AI tool creation.
On May 9, 2025, Zencoder launched Zen Agents, a platform for creating and sharing specialized AI tools for software development, including an open-source marketplace. The platform, which has a free tier and $20/$40 monthly options, implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and boasts ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 42001 certifications.
Funding Flash
CoreWeave seeks $1.5 billion debt deal.
On May 9, 2025, CoreWeave, a New Jersey-based data center operator, is reportedly seeking a $1.5 billion debt deal after a disappointing IPO. They are holding a roadshow with JPMorgan to gauge investor interest.
Tech Breakthroughs
Google to discuss Astra and Project Mariner.
On May 9, 2025, it was reported that Google will likely discuss Astra, its AI app and agent initiative, and Project Mariner, its AI agents for web navigation, at the upcoming I/O conference.
ICL shows greater generalization for LLM customization.
On May 9, 2025, Google DeepMind and Stanford University researchers found that in-context learning (ICL) has greater generalization ability but higher computation cost when customizing large language models (LLMs). They proposed a novel approach to combine the best of both fine-tuning and ICL, which has implications for adapting a model to company-specific information.