The market appears to be looking past the facts about how quickly AI is advancing, evidenced by NVDA shares being down 3% following better than expected earnings and guidance and the Nasdaq falling 2% over the past five trading days.
That said, the news flow around AI remains upbeat. Every week brings another reminder that the AI buildout is still in its early stages. Here are five developments from this week that make it clear we’re still very early:
1) FSD 14.1.7 – Last weekend I test drove a Model Y HW4 with the latest FSD software (v14.1.7). “Test Drive” is the wrong word, I never drove the car, it’s much more of an FSD demo. I had four flawless rides around suburban Minneapolis. It’s increasingly clear to me that Full Self Driving Tesla’s are coming and the implications to safety, mobility, ride hailing, trucking, delivery services, and more will be significant. Related, Tesla also released new data suggesting that driving with FSD (Supervised) is 7x safer than the average US driver. Theoretically, that could reduce annual auto-related deaths in the US from 43k to 6k. More here.
2) Gemini 3 – Google announced Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro, their art image generation and editing model. Gemini 3 better understands intent, and acts more completely on that intent; e.g., an image of a chess board becomes a working chess game, or a sketch becomes a functional website. Gemini 3 also proves that scaling laws are in tact. Gemeni 3 leveraged more compute power and performs better than Gemini 2.
3) Qatar Airways ad made completely with generative AI in 14 hours during in-flight from Doha to Atlanta using Starlink internet for collaboration with people on the ground. First, watch the ad. This is an example of AI pushing the boundaries of creativity and productivity with AI-native tools. Watch the ad here:
And behind the scenes here:
4) Nvidia reported. Despite shares being down 5% in the two days after reporting earnings, the results and guide suggest we remain early in the AI buildout. Specifically, October revenue was up 62% to $57B and the company guided January revenue to 65% growth, which marks an acceleration despite the law of large numbers.
5) Elon is reportedly raising $15B for xAI to continue building out data centers, including a newly announced 500MW data center in Saudi Arabia powered by Nvidia chips. More infrastructure for better, more capable AI applications. Jeff Bezos also raised $6.2B for his new company, Project Prometheus that is building “AI for the physical economy,” including aerospace, computers and autonomous cars. This will be Bezos’ first operational role since leaving Amazon. My take: The world’s best entrepreneurs, these generational founders, are just getting started on new AI projects that could be transformative.