In the latest news in AI, SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son said that he has agreed with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to set up a joint venture in Japan. The venture will be offering artificial intelligence services to corporate customers. Known as SB OpenAI Japan, the joint venture will be owned by OpenAI together with a company established by SoftBank and its domestic telecoms arm. This move by Son’s company aims to deepen relations with OpenAI, which has been looking at investing around $15 billion to $25 billion in the company. The company has also committed $15 billion to Stargate, a joint venture with OpenAI and Oracle.
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With AI efforts such as the Stargate initiative and advancements coming from companies such as DeepSeek and Alibaba, the world of AI is shaking up and moving pretty fast. In response, OpenAI is considering a shift to its closed-source development approach. DeepSeek’s release of a lower-cost open-source AI model has led OpenAI to rethink how to move forward, as reported by Seeking Alpha on February 1st citing OpenAI executives’ comments during a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event. CEO Sam Altman said during the event that OpenAI needs to “figure out a different open-source strategy”.
Altman further added that not everyone shares the same view and that figuring out the strategy is “not our current highest priority”. OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil even said during the same event that the company was considering open-sourcing older AI models. Here is what Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun on OpenAI models:
“DeepSeek has profited from open research and open source. … They came up with new ideas and built them on top of other people’s work,” LeCun wrote. “Because their work is published and open source, everyone can profit from it. That is the power of open research and open source.”
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10. Knightscope, Inc. (NASDAQ:KSCP)
Knightscope, Inc. (NASDAQ:KSCP) is an innovator in robotics and artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies in public safety. On January 31, the company announced that H.C. Wainwright & Co. has initiated coverage on it with a “Buy” rating and a 12-month price target of $16 per share. The report highlights several factors that have led to the buy rating, such as Knightscope’s repositioning for accelerating revenue growth into 2026 leveraging the company’s Machine-as-a-Service (MaaS) business model, strong industry tailwinds, and expanding market opportunities in the private and public sectors. The report also talks about new client acquisition and a steady flow of customer renewals, which the company reports almost monthly. The company recently deployed its first AI-powered K5 GOV robot, an autonomous security robot, for a U.S. government customer.
“Following strategic corporate and technology enhancements in 2024, Knightscope is now well-positioned for long-term revenue growth and margin expansion. As investors recognize the company’s path toward profitability and increasing free cash flow, demand for KSCP shares is expected to rise.”
-HC Wainwright report
9. MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 25
MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) offers AI-powered enterprise analytics software and services. On January 30, the company announced the latest release of MicroStrategy ONE®, a business intelligence platform that allows enterprises to gain rapid value from generative AI (GenAI) by personalizing the AI experience for each user. The company’s Auto AI bot enables a human-like conversational experience for users interacting with data. With the latest release, Auto will better understand ambiguous questions using context and past user interactions, as well as provide direct feedback which will allow Auto to tailor future responses. Moreover, there are more granular controls for developers and partners who wish to deploy AI bots within their applications.
“Last year we achieved a major milestone in natural language BI with our Auto AI bot – the ability for users to ask freeform questions and receive trusted answers from governed data. Each release of MicroStrategy ONE delivers increasingly powerful AI models, expanding the breadth and depth of questions Auto can reliably answer, along with greater transparency in how it generates the answer. Working with the top companies in the world drives us to push the boundaries of BI towards self-driving analytics that can transform a business.”
-Saurabh Abhyankar, Chief Product Officer at MicroStrategy.