🌟 AI Stars of the Week: Newsletter (September 30, 2025)
Germany Gets Sovereign ChatGPT, Black Forest Labs Hits $4B Valuation, “Workslop” Costs Companies Millions, Nvidia Commits $100B to OpenAI
“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” - William Gibson
Germany Secures World’s First Sovereign ChatGPT Deployment
September 29, 2025 - OpenAI announced its first-ever national partnership, giving Germany a fully sovereign AI infrastructure through collaboration with SAP and Microsoft Azure.
The “OpenAI for Germany” initiative will serve public institutions and regulated industries while keeping all data within German borders to meet strict EU compliance standards. SAP’s Delos Cloud subsidiary will manage the infrastructure on Microsoft Azure, ensuring digital sovereignty.
Sources: OpenAI (September 25, 2025)
German AI Startup Black Forest Labs Eyes $4 Billion Valuation
September 28, 2025 - Black Forest Labs, founded just 13 months ago in August 2024, is negotiating a funding round that could value the Freiburg-based AI company at up to four billion dollars.
The company became a unicorn by the end of 2024 and is now seeking between 200 and 300 million dollars in new investment. This represents one of the fastest valuations increases in European AI startup history.
Sources: Bloomberg.com (September 28, 2025)
Nvidia Commits $100 Billion for OpenAI Computing Infrastructure
September 23, 2025 - Nvidia and OpenAI signed a letter of intent for at least 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity, representing one of the largest technology infrastructure commitments in history.
The partnership secures Nvidia’s position as OpenAI’s primary hardware provider while guaranteeing GPU purchases. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated the company aims to build one gigawatt of AI infrastructure weekly, claiming this scale could enable breakthroughs like curing cancer.
Sources: Nvidia Newsroom (September 23-24, 2025)
Additional Developments (the ones that did not make it into our 🌟 AI Stars of the Week Selection; but you might be interested to read about)
ChatGPT Pulse Launches Proactive AI Assistant - OpenAI tests feature that researches autonomously and delivers personalized daily briefings without prompts.
Microsoft Integrates Anthropic’s Claude Models - Copilot now offers Claude Sonnet 4 and Opus 4.1 alongside existing options.
xAI Secures US Government Contract - Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot wins federal deployment after months of Trump-Musk tensions.
Deutsche Bank Warns of AI Bubble - Analysis suggests insufficient revenue generation to sustain massive computing infrastructure investments.
Oracle Implements Job Cuts - Negative cashflow from hundred-billion-dollar datacenter deals with OpenAI and Meta forces restructuring (happened already 2 weeks ago but was not covered)
Spotify Removes 75 Million Spam Tracks - New transparency rules target AI-generated music flooding the platform.
🛠️ Tools & Resources
New Product Launches:
Google Mixboard (Free, US Only - Beta) AI-powered mood board creator using Gemini 2.5 Flash and Nano Banana models. Generate visual concepts from text prompts, edit with natural language, and collaborate in real-time. For designers, marketers, and creative brainstorming. Competes directly with Pinterest and Canva but emphasizes AI co-creation from the start. → labs.google/mixboard
Perplexity Email Assistant ($200/month - Max Plan Only) AI agent for Gmail and Outlook that drafts replies matching your tone, auto-schedules meetings, and prioritizes inbox tasks. SOC 2 and GDPR compliant. Premium pricing targets enterprise users. → perplexity.ai/assistant
GitHub Copilot App Modernization (Generally Available) AI-powered code modernization for Java and .NET projects. Automates legacy code upgrades, containerization, dependency updates, and CVE scanning. Microsoft reports 88% reduction in manual migration effort for .NET upgrades. Compresses months of work into days. → docs.github.com
GitHub Copilot CLI (Public Preview) Terminal-native AI coding agent with MCP extensibility. Access repos, issues, and PRs using natural language. Authenticated with GitHub account, full preview control before execution. Available for Pro, Pro+, Business, and Enterprise plans. → github.blog/changelog
Be ready for next weeks Royal Expeditions Volume 2. A series in which we present handy automations you can easily run on n8n.
If you missed the first one I´ll drop it here for you:
👑 Royal Expeditions: Top 3 Automations of August 2025 (Hiring, Research and Sales Follow-up)
This month I was focusing on solving three core business pain points: hiring, research and sales follow-up automations.
Cheers all; have a great week!
Max