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OpenAI Acquires NextSlide; AMD Unveils Model-Specific AI Chips

8/9/2026

38 7 Full Breakdown

Summary

OpenAI Acquires NextSlide

OpenAI announced on August 8, 2026 that it had acquired presentation startup NextSlide in an acqui-hire.
The acquisition, completed earlier in 2026, absorbed NextSlide’s entire team into OpenAI’s ChatGPT division, though financial terms were not disclosed.
OpenAI plans to integrate NextSlide’s prompt-to-presentation technology into ChatGPT to compete with Microsoft PowerPoint’s AI features.

Summary

AMD Embeds Silicon

AMD will embed Taalas’s model-specific silicon into Helios racks for Meta and Microsoft.
The HC1 chip, on TSMC’s 6 nm node, runs about 16,960 tokens per second on Llama 3.1 8B and stores weights in mask-ROM with SRAM cache, eliminating HBM.
Bajic says a new model can be siliconized in two months by altering two mask layers.
The chips promise ten-fold speed gains but lock racks to a single model, raising upgrade costs.

History

Historical Context

Google’s 2014 purchase of DeepMind for $400 million marked the start of large-scale AI talent absorption, later reinforced by hardware moves such as its TPU cloud and the 2016 AlphaGo win over Lee Sedol. Building on that model, OpenAI’s 2026 acqui-hire of NextSlide and AMD’s custom silicon for Microsoft and Meta extend the same vertically integrated strategy.

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OpenAI Acquires NextSlide

OpenAI announced on August 8, 2026 that it had acquired presentation startup NextSlide in an acqui-hire.
The acquisition, completed earlier in 2026, absorbed NextSlide’s entire team into OpenAI’s ChatGPT division, though financial terms were not disclosed.
OpenAI plans to integrate NextSlide’s prompt-to-presentation technology into ChatGPT to compete with Microsoft PowerPoint’s AI features.

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