Gemini 3’s Success Means Google Is Back, Baby

Welcome back to The Prompt,

When ChatGPT first amazed the world three years ago, Google was caught off guard, struggling to ship AI products that competed with OpenAI and Anthropic. But with the launch of Gemini 3, things have changed. It’s no longer an AI laggard.

The search giant’s latest model beat OpenAI and Anthropic’s best AI in more than a dozen categories like complex reasoning, problem solving and understanding different types of data. It also outperforms GPT-5.1 in scientific knowledge in fields like chemistry, biology, physics and mathematics. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an internal memo that Google’s recent success could create “temporary economic headwinds” for the company. “I expect the vibes out there to be rough for a bit,” he wrote.

Google is also reportedly in talks to sell its own AI chips (called tensor processing units) to Meta, going head-to-head against chip giant Nvidia, The Information reported, cratering Nvidia stock by as much as 6%. Nvidia posted on X: “We’re delighted by Google’s success — they’ve made great advances in AI and we continue to supply to Google. Nvidia is a generation ahead of the industry.”

As Alphabet’s shares rose this week, both Google cofounders moved up the Forbes billionaires ranking. Larry Page (net worth: $264.4 billion) passed Oracle’s Larry Ellison to become the second richest on Monday and Sergey Brin (net worth: $245.3 billion) briefly became the third richest on Tuesday, Forbes reported.

Now let’s get into the headlines.

BIG PLAYS

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI is on track to become profitable by 2028 and has $10 billion in cash in the bank, according to a recording of an investor pitch call reviewed by Forbes. That’s a lot earlier than AI juggernaut OpenAI, which expects to become cash positive by 2030, after committing to spend more than a trillion dollars on data centers. xAI is in the midst of raising a $15 billion funding round, Valor Equity Partners co-president and Partner and former xAI CFO Jonathan Shulkin said during the call.

ROBOTICS

Can factories transform into living organisms staffed by futuristic robots and AI? China thinks so. The country is going all-in on robotics to create what are called “dark factories,” where work happens 24/7— even at night, the Wall Street Journal reported. Amid the rampant AI race and tariff pressure from the U.S., China risks losing its status as the world’s manufacturing hub. The country rolled out 295,000 industrial robots last year, nine times as many as the U.S. and the world combined.

POLITICS

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to use AI for scientific discovery and research. The Genesis Mission plans to use federal scientific datasets to train foundation models that can test new hypotheses, design experiments and speed up research.

AI DEAL OF THE WEEK

AGI, Inc, which is developing AI agents that can use devices on behalf of humans, is in talks to raise $50 million at a $500 million valuation, people familiar with the matter told Forbes. Founder Div Garg, who’s on leave from a Stanford PhD, previously worked on the AI agents that became the first to buy a plane ticket and pass a California DMV exam at his first startup MultiOn.

DEEP DIVE

On November 20 Napster held an online meeting for its shareholders; an estimated 700 of roughly 1,500 including employees, former employees and individual investors tuned in. That’s when its CEO John Acunto told everyone he believed that the never-identified big investor—who the company had insisted put in $3.36 billion at a $12 billion valuation in January, which would have made it one of the year’s biggest fundraises—was not going to come through. In an email sent out shortly after, it told existing investors that some would get a bigger percentage of the company, due to the canceled shares, and went on to describe itself as a “victim of misconduct,” adding that it was “assisting law enforcement with their ongoing investigations.”

The company has been stringing its employees and investors along for nearly a year with ever-changing promises of an impending cash infusion and chances to sell their shares in a tender offer that would change everything. In fact, it was the fourth time since 2022 they’ve been told they could soon cash out via a tender offer, and the fourth time the potential deal fell through. Napster spokesperson Gillian Sheldon said certain statements about the fundraise “were made in good faith based on what we understood at the time. We have since uncovered indications of misconduct that suggest the information provided to us then was not accurate.” The company declined to comment further for this story.

The convoluted history of Napster dates back to 2019 when Acunto bought a bankrupt social media company Tsu. That entity, in turn, merged with, or acquired, at least a dozen (some tiny, some struggling) metaverse, virtual reality, drone and AI companies largely paid for in all-stock mergers at higher and higher valuations. By then known as Infinite Reality, it acquired Napster in March for $207 million and rebranded itself, using the much higher-profile name, in May.

Read the full story on Forbes.

MODEL BEHAVIOR

AI-generated slop recipes are making it harder for aspiring cooks to find real, human recipes online, Bloomberg reported. Food bloggers say the prevalence of fake images and recipes is also hurting their livelihood and ruining holiday dinners as people try recipes that defy the laws of chemistry, or just taste bad. An AI-generated version of a Christmas cake, for instance, would have people cooking a 6-inch cake for three to four hours at 320°F (160°C).“You’d end up with charcoal!,” said one blogger.