Welcome to the AI Insider’s The Week Ahead in AI. See the key developments and events we’re watching June 22–28, 2025.
Weekend AI News Briefs
Tesla’s Robotaxi Service Begins in Texas
Tesla has launched a limited version of its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, offering driverless rides to select users with a safety monitor present, as part of a cautious rollout. The move marks a key step in Tesla’s shift toward autonomous vehicles amid slowing EV sales and public scrutiny of Elon Musk’s leadership. (Axios)
Thinking Machines Closes $2 Billion Seed Round
Thinking Machines Lab, the six-month-old AI company founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, today closed a $2 billion seed round that places the stealth startup’s valuation at $10 billion. Murati, who oversaw ChatGPT, DALL-E and voice mode at OpenAI and briefly served as its interim chief executive, has recruited co-founder John Schulman and several ex-OpenAI researchers to build new frontier models. (AI Insider)
At 16, Pranjali Awasthi built a $12 Million AI firm, now she’s making ‘ChatGPT with hands’
Indian-born coder Pranjali Awasthi, 16, launched her AI research startup Delv.AI at age 16, quickly reaching a Rs 100 crore (about $12 million) valuation by helping researchers streamline information extraction from academic documents. Now 18, she is building Dash—a new AI assistant she calls “ChatGPT with hands”—to move beyond conversation into real-world task automation. (India Today)
Character.ai Appoints Former Meta Executive Karandeep Anand as Chief Executive Officer
Character.AI has named Karandeep Anand as CEO, replacing co-founder Noam Shazeer, who joined Google under a tech-sharing agreement now under antitrust scrutiny. Anand aims to strengthen safety filters, improve memory, and raise model quality as the platform navigates rapid growth, youth-skewing demographics, and child-protection concerns. (AI Insider)
BBC Threatens Legal Action Against Perplexity
The BBC has threatened legal action against AI firm Perplexity, accusing it of reproducing BBC content verbatim without permission and demanding compensation, content deletion, and immediate compliance. This marks the BBC’s first such move against an AI company and highlights broader concerns over AI web scraping and copyright violations in the publishing industry. (BBC)
Softbank Explores ‘Project Crystal Land’ — $1 Trillion Arizona AI-Robotics Hub with TMSC
SoftBank is reportedly planning Project Crystal Land, a $1 trillion industrial hub in Arizona focused on AI and robotics manufacturing. The company is in early talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. about co-developing the site, though financing and key details remain under review. (AI Insider)
AI Conferences & Events
June 25 – 26, Washington D.C., CDAO Government 2025 returns for its thirteenth year as the leading gathering for senior data and analytics leaders in U.S. government agencies. The event will spotlight public sector strategies for AI, data governance, and ethical data use to improve transparency, citizen services, and security. (CDAO Government)
June 22 – 26, Zakopane, Poland, the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing (ICAISC) is an annual event held in Poland and online that brings together researchers and practitioners to present and discuss innovations in AI, machine learning, neural networks, and soft computing. The 2025 edition will feature peer-reviewed papers, keynote speeches, and tutorials, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration in cutting-edge computational intelligence fields. (ICAISC)
June 23–27, Munich, Germany, a major conference for machine learning professionals and researchers, offering talks, workshops, and networking opportunities focused on practical ML and AI applications. The conference is both in-person and online. (ML Con Munich 2025)
June 25, San Francisco, Calif., a specialized event focused on AI observability, monitoring, and production best practices, attracting practitioners and industry leaders in the AI/ML space.(Arize Observe)
AI Policy & Government Events
LG AI Strategist Tapped as South Korea’s Science Minister
Bae Kyung-hoon, a leading AI strategist for LG Group, has reportedly been nominated as South Korea’s new science minister under President Lee Jae Myung. Bae previously led LG AI Research and played a key role in shaping the conglomerate’s AI strategies, while also advising national science and technology policy bodies. (Yonhap News Agency)
AI Research
KAIST Researchers Unveil an AI that Generates “Unexpectedly Original” Designs
Researchers at The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), in collaboration with NAVER AI Lab, have developed a method to enhance the creative output of text-based image generation models like Stable Diffusion without requiring additional training or fine-tuning. (AI Insider)
Stay tuned for next week’s edition of AI Insider’s The Week Ahead in AI for more updates on the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence.
