AI in a Nutshell - Week 47 - Gemini 3 Arrives, NVIDIA Crushes Earnings, and Yann LeCun Says Goodbye
Google releases Gemini 3 with record benchmarks, NVIDIA reports $57B in revenue to silence bubble fears, Yann LeCun leaves Meta calling LLMs a "dead end," and Stack Overflow becomes an AI data provide
Fellow human, it’s week 47. AI hasn’t taken over the world yet. And here’s your lazy-man version of what went down in the AI world in the past week.
Summary for extra lazy people: Google launches Gemini 3, NVIDIA beats earnings by a landslide, Yann LeCun leaves Meta after 12 years to start his own AI company, and Stack Overflow becomes an AI data provider.
What You Must Know
Google Launches Gemini 3 → Google dropped Gemini 3, which comes with better reasoning, multimodal understanding, and a new coding platform called Antigravity. I’ve seen a lot of hype around it online, and I can see that it’s been topping the LMArena leaderboard. Sadly, I’ve not had enough time to breathe, so I haven’t played with it yet. I’ve always expected Google to take the lead in this AI race, and I'm glad to see them living up to that expectation.
NVIDIA Beats Earnings, AI Fears Ease → NVIDIA reported $57B in revenue (up 62%) and forecast $65B for next quarter. About two newsletters ago, I mentioned that if the earnings don’t go as expected, it might hurt the stock market. Thank goodness it did go well. This has kind of relaxed market fears about the AI bubble.
Yann LeCun Leaves Meta, Challenges LLMs → One of AI's pioneers, Yann LeCun, announced his departure from Meta after 12 years to launch his own startup focused on “Advanced Machine Intelligence.” His big argument is that LLMs are a “dead end” for true intelligence, and the field should move beyond them. This comes after Meta sidelined him by bringing in younger “GEN Z sort of” executives and shows how even the most prominent AI companies are struggling with direction.
xAI Announces Grok 4.1 Update → xAI updated Grok to version 4.1, which they claimed has faster processing, fewer hallucinations, and better agent capabilities. It ranks close to Gemini 3.0 on LMArena. I gave it a quick spin with a coding task, the result was decent, not decent enough to make me switch from claude sonnet 4.5 though 😉
What’s Good to Know
Stack Overflow Pivots to AI Products → Stack Overflow announced new products to turn its Q&A web forum into structured AI data for enterprise use. In simpler words, they are now selling access to their knowledge base to help companies train AI with real human expertise. Smart move, considering their traffic has been declining in the AI era. As the elders say, “If you can’t beat them, you join them”.
Google Announces Nano Banana Pro → Google launched Nano Banana Pro, built on Gemini 3. It can generate images up to 4K resolution and includes text rendering in multiple languages, among other things. I even saw some funny, almost-realistic images someone generated with it of big tech CEOs chilling together in a room 🤣. If not for the absurdity of the idea, you couldn’t possibly tell the picture is AI-generated.
Generated with Nano Banana Pro Jeff Bezos Creates A.I. Start-Up → Called Project Prometheus, the company is focusing on artificial intelligence for the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles, and spacecraft. Bezos is returning as co-CEO, just like Elon; Bezos is steadily grinding.
EU Proposes Loosening GDPR and AI Act → On November 19, the EU moved to relax GDPR and AI Act rules. The changes aim to boost innovation while maintaining safeguards. In all fairness, I believe it’s pretty difficult for tech companies to compete when privacy rules are too strict, but privacy rules also need to be strict. Blue pill, red pill.
Money Moves This Week
Stratis raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding to advance its AI data analysis platform.
Genspark raised $275 million in Series C funding at a $1.25 billion valuation to scale its AI workspace platform.
Cavela raised $6.6 million in seed funding to develop AI for global product sourcing.
Flexion raised $50 million in Series A funding to expand its robotics and automation technology.
Redrob raised $10 million in Series A funding to intensify development of its AI platform.
AlphaXiv raised $7M to bridge the AI research-to-practice divide.
Kaizen Corner - What is AGI?
If you’ve spent some time online, you’ve probably heard of “AGI” by now. So what does it actually mean?
AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence.
That’s a fancy phrase, but here’s the normal-person version: AGI means a computer brain that can learn and think about anything the way a human can.
AI today is really talented specialists (like ChatGPT writing or Midjourney making images). It’s like hiring someone who’s incredible at chess but can’t cook an egg. AGI would be the person who can play chess, cook, fix your car, write poetry, and learn brain surgery over the weekend.
And why is everyone obsessed?
Because AGI is the holy grail, it’s the point where AI stops being a tool and becomes... well, something that thinks like us.
Some people believe we’re 2-5 years away. Others think we are decades away. A few believe we’ll never get there with current approaches.
But who knows? We never know.
Meme of the Week
That’s your week in AI.
If you learned something, tell a friend. And if you didn’t, blame yourself :)
Until next Sunday,
Kay - your fellow human.
P.S. If this email lands in spam, that’s your inbox trying to stop you from staying plugged in. Fix it.