Howdy, it’s Barsee.

Happy Tuesday, AI family, and welcome to another AI Valley edition.

Today’s climb through the Valley reveals:

• Nvidia becomes a major model maker with Nemotron 3

• The US government wants 1,000 tech workers (but the pay is low)

• Chatterbox is the open-source answer to ElevenLabs

• Plus trending AI tools, posts, and resources

Let’s dive into the Valley of AI…

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THROUGH THE VALLEY

1/ Nvidia becomes a major model maker with Nemotron 3

Nvidia is moving beyond selling AI chips and stepping deeper into building AI models. The company released Nemotron 3, a new set of open models along with training data and tools that let developers customize and run them on their own hardware. Nvidia says the models are strong enough to compete with top open systems and more transparent than many US rivals. The Nemotron 3 lineup starts with the efficient "Nano" version (for fast, targeted tasks) available now, with "Super" version (for multi-agent reasoning) and "Ultra" version (for complex workloads) arriving in 2026. They use a smart design that activates only parts of the model at a time, keeping costs down while maintaining high accuracy. The move helps Nvidia stay relevant as big AI labs build their own chips and as open models from Chinese firms gain popularity.

2/ The US government wants 1,000 tech workers (but the pay is low)

The Trump administration is launching the "US Tech Force" to recruit 1,000 tech professionals for two-year government stints. The salary is capped between $150,000 and $200,000, far below what top AI engineers make in the private sector. To make the offer more attractive, the program is partnering with companies like Meta and xAI to allow senior staff to take a leave of absence without losing their stock options. It’s an ambitious attempt to bring Silicon Valley talent into federal agencies.

3/ Chatterbox is the open-source answer to ElevenLabs

For the last year, if you wanted top-tier AI voice, you had to rent it from ElevenLabs. Chatterbox, a new model from Resemble AI, flips that script. It offers similar high-quality voice cloning and real-time speech, but it’s fully open source. This means you can run it on your own servers, avoid usage caps, and drastically cut costs. It’s faster, supports "zero-shot" cloning, and importantly, lets companies own their infrastructure rather than relying on a third-party API.

TRENDING TOOLS

• Edit with Photoshop in ChatGPT > Adobe brought three of its industry-leading apps (Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Express, and Adobe Acrobat) directly into ChatGPT *

• Android Use > An open-source library that gives AI agents hands to control native Android apps

• Mocha > The first app builder designed for non-technical creators. No code, no complexity

• Varchive > A curated showcase of AI-assisted builds, inspiration, and step-by-step how-tos

• Resemble AI > Clone virtually any voice with just 5 to 10 seconds of audio, no verification required, with industry-leading control over human-like expression and tone

• Mino > Automate websites without APIs

• ChatGPT Branched Chats > Explore multiple conversation paths at once by branching chats without losing the original thread

• Zoom AI Companion 3.0 > A new web interface with personal workflows that automatically run follow-ups like reflection reports and agent-powered retrieval across meetings and connected apps

• Manus 1.6 > Build mobile apps from plain descriptions and edit images with precise point-and-click controls, including color changes, text edits, and image combinations

• EgoX > Turn a single third-person video into a convincing first-person POV

• NotebookLM > Convert any document into an interactive AI podcast you can talk to

• Google Real-Time Translation > Live speech translation through any headphones in over 70 languages

_{(*) signifies sponsored tool}

THINK PIECES / BRAIN BOOST

• An AI robot that initially refused to shoot its owner changed its mind as soon as it was asked to play a character

• PayPal has applied to become a bank

• Yes, AGI can happen – A computational perspective

• Columbia University launches a public tracker to monitor AI deals and copyright disputes in media

• OpenAI to license Disney characters in all-stock deal

• I reverse-engineered Claude's memory system, and here's what I found

• 2025 year review in AI and Tech (by Cloudflare)

THE VALLEY GEMS

What’s trending on social today:

THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY

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