OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is looking to raise USD 5-7 tn for a new AI chip project, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the plans. (For context, the priciest project ever funded — Saudi Arabia’s Neom — stands at USD 500 bn.) Altman’s plan to build his own semiconductor factories — which would cost more than Apple and Microsoft’s combined market caps — would look to boost the world’s chip-building capacity, particularly the chips required for AI models.

AI chips are in high demand, but demand — and supply — are concentrated among a few companies:There is a current shortage of the chips needed to power generative AI, as Silicon Valley piles into the technology. Nvidia, which produces the most powerful AI chips on the market, is struggling to keep up with demand, and is providing Big Tech the hardware for USD 40k per chip. OpenAI needs the hardware to power ChatGPT and to aid the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI), AI systems that will be able to reason as well as human beings, and will eventually become smarter than us.

Potential investors: Altman has met with officials and businesspeople in the UAE — including Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — and in the US to discuss funding, the Financial Times had reported last month. WSJ reports that the CEO is open to letting existing chipmakers run the foundries, agreeing to be a significant customer in that event, while Nvidia may already have agreed to work on custom chips with OpenAI, according to Reuters.

The X chromosome might be tied to the prevalence of autoimmune disease among women: Women could be more prone to developing autoimmune diseases because of molecules carried in the X chromosome that can throw off the immune system, according to a study by researchers at Stanford University School of medicine.

Refresher from high school biology: Women have two X chromosomes, one of which is suppressed by an RNA molecule called Xist — X-inactive specific transcript. This molecule is important because if the second X chromosome produces proteins freely, it could have other harmful effects. Xist works with proteins to bind to the “silenced” X chromosome, and many of these proteins are also those “that can be targeted by a misdirected immune system,” the New York Times explains.

How they tested it: The researchers used a strain of mice whose females are prone to lupus in females and injected Xist into the males. The male mice — which naturally “never develop severe cases” of lupus — began developing “much worse levels of immune disease,” lead researcher Howard Chang told the New York Times. The study also found that, in humans, when the immune system encounters proteins associated with Xist, it can treat these proteins as enemies and produce more auto-antibodies.

Why does this matter? Autoimmune treatments typically “blunt the entire immune system,” but the new research could be the starting point to develop new medications and treatments that target specific molecules instead.

Tags: