Hi Everyone. This is Take Off. We're like a hidden Easter egg in your favorite video game - surprising, delightful, and adding an extra layer of fun to your tech news consumption.

Here's what we're serving up today:

• Another Day, Another Company by Musk 🤖

• Rivian Revving Up 🏎️📈

• Asteroids ☄️

• ToolBox Thursdays ⚒️

Another Day, Another Company by Musk 🤖

We woke up yesterday to the news of another AI startup. No biggie. That’s just a regular Wednesday in 2023. Except it wasn’t.

This AI company is our boy Elon’s newest brainchild named xAI. Because really, what’s one more venture when you’re already juggling SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter.

Elon hasn’t spilled much beans on the company apart from this cryptic company mission.

The revelation of xAI came complete with a website launch and a hyper-intelligent team of 11 AI maestros plucked from Google, OpenAI, and the University of Toronto.

We aren’t really surprised by this though. Elon creating his own AI company was a matter of “when” and not “if” as he had been dropping not-so-subtle hints in the past.

1/ Elon was a part of OpenAI’s founding team before parting from the company in 2018 and has been criticizing them ever since.

2/ Business Insider had recently reported that Musk had purchased 1000’s of GPUs. We initially thought Elon bought them for mining Dogecoin but using them for xAI seems more practical.

3/ Musk shared details of his plans for a new AI tool called “TruthGPT”, adding that he feared existing AI companies are prioritizing systems that are “politically correct.”

Elon has definitely disrupted many industries with his ventures. What do you think about xAI? Will this be another home run for our Billionaire Boy?

Rivian Revving Up 🏎️📈

Rivian, the EV upstart, has finally kicked its "terrible twos" stage (read: supply-chain issues and missed targets) to the curb.

Post-IPO, they did resemble a newborn giraffe trying to find its legs, but now it seems they've got their Nikes laced tight and are sprinting up that Wall Street hill like there's a plate of freshly-baked cookies at the top.

Seriously, Rivian's stock (NASDAQ:RIVN) leaped a whopping 48% last week.

• Rivian churned out 12,640 EVs in Q2 2023.

• That’s 59% more than the last quarter and beat the pants off Wall Street's guess of 11,000.

The news got the market buzzing like a caffeine-addicted bee.

So much so that it triggered a digital stampede, as the company saw a record daily trading volume last Friday with more than 180 million shares changing hands.

Overall, things are looking peachy for Rivian. They've buckled up, hit the gas, and they're speeding towards that bright, shiny EV future.

☄️ Asteroids ☄️

Apple's public beta for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma introduces new perks like bilingual Siri and full-page screenshots. Get ready for some cool updates, just remember, these betas might have some bugs 📱🗣️

Google Play is opening the door to NFTs in apps, setting guidelines to keep it fair and transparent. But, Apple's policy on NFTs remains cautious and more restricted for now. 🍏🔒

Google’s Bard AI chatbot can talk and respond to visual prompts. It can speak answers in 40+ languages and respond to image prompts 📸🗣️

⚒️ ToolBox Thursdays ⚒️

Biscuits - Generated cookies for your website using AI

Evaiuate - AI-powered pitch deck evaluation tool.

Splash Pro - AI Powered music generator

Momento - Create short videos quickly with AI video editing

Coframe - A/B test your website using AI

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