Google doubles down on AI

PLUS: Amazon unveils an AI that understands how you speak

Author

Barsee
10 Apr

In partnership with

Howdy again. It’s Barsee, and welcome back to AI Valley.

Another day, another AI adventure.

Today’s climb through the Valley reveals:

  • Google doubles down on AI at Cloud Next 2025

  • Shopify CEO mandates company-wide AI adoption

  • Amazon unveils an AI that understands how you speak

  • Plus trending AI tools, posts, and resources

Let’s dive into the Valley of AI…

PEAK OF THE DAY

🤖 Google doubles down on AI at Cloud Next 2025

At Wednesday's Cloud Next 2025 conference, Google unveiled a wave of AI innovations, from upgraded infrastructure and tools to new agent protocols. The company also advanced generative media, adding powerful new capabilities for creating video, images, music, and audio.

What's powering the next AI leap? 

Google unveiled Ironwood, its seventh-gen TPU, boasting 10x the performance of its predecessor and 3,600x more than the original. With 9,000+ chips per pod delivering 42.5 exaflops, it offers a massive boost for training and serving next-gen models faster and more affordably.

What's new in the AI model? 

Google introduced Gemini 2.5 Flash, a lighter, faster sibling of Gemini 2.5 Pro. The model is optimized for low latency and cost efficiency, with the added flexibility to adjust how much reasoning it does. It'll soon be available on Vertex AI.

How is Google enabling multi-agent AI systems? 

Google pushed forward its multi-agent vision with two key launches:

  • AI Agent Development Kit (ADK): An open-source framework to build AI agents in under 100 lines of code. It includes Agent Garden, a library of 100+ connectors to tools, APIs, and cloud services.

  • Agent2Agent (A2A): An open communication standard designed to let agents from different systems seamlessly communicate and collaborate—with over 50 partners already on board.

What about the Workspace tools? 

Workspace apps are also getting a boost with AI through Workspace Flows, a new automation platform for Docs, Sheets, Meet, and Chat. Using custom Gemini chatbots called "Gems," users can automate workflows like customer support and policy reviews.

What's happening in creative AI? 

Google unveiled updates to its media generation stack:

  • Imagen 3: Now produces sharper, more realistic images and can repair damaged or missing areas of photos.

  • Chirp 3: Generates lifelike voice samples from just 10 seconds of audio and improves transcription accuracy.

  • Lyria: A text-to-music model that transforms prompts into 30-second musical compositions.

  • Veo 2: Adds support for cinematic effects, advanced video editing, and frame-level inpainting for high-quality video generation.

Why does it matter? 

Cloud Next 2025 made it clear: Google is building not just tools, but ecosystems. From cutting-edge Ironwood chips to protocols like A2A and creative models like Imagen and Lyria, Google is offering a full stack of solutions designed to make AI real, useful, and scalable.

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VALLEY VIEW

⚙️ Shopify CEO mandates company-wide AI adoption: Tobi Lütke has issued a memo requiring teams to prove that AI can't handle a task before requesting new resources. He called AI a "baseline expectation" and urged employees to adopt tools like Shopify Magic and Sidekick fully. Going forward, AI integration will factor into both performance reviews and hiring decisions, signaling a deep cultural shift across the company.

🗣️ Amazon unveils an AI that understands how you speak: Amazon has launched Nova Sonic, an AI voice model that recognizes tone, inflection, and pacing to quickly generate natural, human-like responses—without turning speech to text. It rivals top models from OpenAI and Google in speed, recognition, and call quality and is now available on Amazon Bedrock at 80% less cost than GPT-4o.

🎬 AI generates 1-minute cartoons from text prompts: NVIDIA, Stanford, and others have developed an AI technique called Test-Time Training (TTT) that turns detailed prompts into minute-long animated clips. It produces dynamic, multi-scene stories with consistent characters—no post-editing needed. The team demoed the tech with Tom and Jerry clips, surpassing the 8–20 second generation limits of earlier methods.

💬 Anthropic introduces a $200-per-month Claude subscription: Anthropic's new "Max Plan" targets heavy users managing long chats, large documents, and complex tasks. The $100 and $200 tiers offer 5x and 20x more usage than the Pro plan, plus priority access to new features like upcoming voice support. It positions Claude in direct competition with ChatGPT’s $200 Pro plan, which offers unlimited usage.

⚖️ OpenAI countersues Musk as Altman feud escalates: OpenAI has filed a countersuit against Elon Musk, alleging a campaign of harassment and sabotage to derail its for-profit shift. The suit claims Musk used public attacks, a failed $97.4B takeover bid, and social media pressure to destabilize the company and benefit his rival startup xAI. OpenAI now seeks a court order to block further interference.

TRENDING TOOLS

  • Lambda > Llama 4 Maverick and Scout 17B are now available via the Lambda Inference API with no rate limits at the lowest price in the market. *

  • Grimo (:b)eta > Cursor for writing.

  • The Swarm > Relationships. Are. Back.

  • Clarisign > World's first Al lawyer to sign contracts.

  • Claude for Education > Makes learning smarter with AI tools for personalized teaching and studying.

  • Amazon’s Nova Reel 1.1 > Turns text prompts into 2-minute videos with a consistent style across shots.

  • Google Firebase Studio > Build, modify, and deploy full-stack apps from scratch using natural language directly from a browser.

THINK PIECES / BRAIN BOOST

VALLEY GEMS

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SUNSET IN THE VALLEY

Thank you for reading today’s edition. That’s all for today’s issue.

💡 Help me get better and suggest new ideas at [email protected] or @heyBarsee

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