Industry_Adoption - AI news 2025-08-07

High costs and thin margins threatening AI coding startups

techcrunch.com • 7h ago

Coding assistant startups are highly unprofitable, says a source familiar with Windsurf financials....

TL;DR

AI coding startups are struggling with massive losses due to high costs of using large language models, making it challenging to generate sustainable margins.

Key Takeaways:

The high costs of using LLMs, particularly for AI coding assistants, can lead to 'very negative' gross margins, making the business unsustainable.
Building in-house models to eliminate supplier costs is a crucial path to improving margins, but it comes with significant risks and investments.
The LLM market is becoming increasingly competitive, with model makers like Anthropic and OpenAI directly competing, making it difficult for startups to retain market share and profitability.

How AI is helping advance the science of bioacoustics to save endangered species

deepmind.google • 13h ago

Our new Perch model helps conservationists analyze audio faster to protect endangered species, from Hawaiian honeycreepers to coral reefs....

TL;DR

An updated AI model called Perch is being released to help conservationists analyze bioacoustic data and protect endangered species more efficiently.

Key Takeaways:

The new model can better adapt to new environments, particularly underwater ones like coral reefs, and is trained on a wider range of animals.
It can disentangle complex acoustic scenes over thousands or even millions of hours of audio data, and is versatile enough to answer multiple types of questions.
The Perch model has already shown success in the field, including helping BirdLife Australia and the Australian Acoustic Observatory build classifiers for unique Australian species.