🧰 Build With MiniMax & Win $150K
Week of August 18th, 2025
It’s Monday, August 18th: Perplexity’s $34.5B Chrome bid lands amid antitrust remedies, a $1.5B AI hedge fund reports 47% H1 returns, and builders race in MiniMax’s $150K Agent Challenge, plus a Tokyo kickoff spotlight.
Discover what’s happening at AI Collective chapters worldwide with our new Events Portal. Search by city, date, or format, and join thousands of builders at events across 25+ chapters and on every continent.
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AI News Roundup
What you need to know: weekly by AJ Green 🤝
Perplexity’s $34B bid for Chrome
News: Perplexity reportedly made an unsolicited $34.5B offer to buy Google’s Chrome browser, amid antitrust pressure that could force a divestiture.
Details:
Pitch made directly to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
Bid nearly doubles Perplexity’s $18B valuation
Chrome has 3.5B users and 60% global market share
Judge Amit Mehta to decide on forced sale this month
Why it matters: The $34.5B offer is a bold strategic move—unsolicited and non-binding—meant as much to elevate Perplexity’s profile as to position it for a potential antitrust-driven Chrome divestiture. With its AI-first browser Comet gaining traction, Perplexity is signaling readiness to invest heavily in Chrome’s future while betting on the strategic importance of browser distribution in AI-powered search competition.
Ex-OpenAI researcher raises $1.5B for AI hedge fund
The News: Former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner has reportedly secured over $1.5B in funding for his ‘Situational Awareness’ AI-focused hedge fund — despite having no formal background in professional investing.
Details:
Aschenbrenner was part of OpenAI’s Superalignment team and was one of two employees dismissed in April 2024 after being accused of leaking sensitive information, a claim he has publicly addressed.
He later authored a viral essay titled ‘Situational Awareness’ (the fund’s namesake) outlining his predictions for AGI and the trajectory of AI development.
In the first half of 2025, Aschenbrenner’s fund delivered a 47% return, outperforming the S&P 500’s 6% gain, despite his lack of prior investing experience.
The fund concentrates on AI-adjacent sectors, such as semiconductors, infrastructure, and power companies poised to benefit from the AI boom, along with selective short positions in industries likely to be disrupted.
Why it matters: The AI surge is transforming the hedge fund space, giving those closest to the technology a competitive edge over traditional finance veterans. Many want exposure to the AI gold rush, but few possess the insight to anticipate where the industry is truly headed.
🔥 Compete for $150,000: MiniMax Agent Challenge
MiniMax launched their global AI Agent Challenge, a worldwide call to action for builders, thinkers, and dreamers ready to test the limits of AI innovation. Offering a prize pool exceeding $150,000 and an intuitive no-code environment, the challenge is open to all – from seasoned developers to first-time creators with a groundbreaking idea.
What is MiniMax Agent?
Imagine a super-assistant that can plan, design, build, and deploy a full-stack application, all from a simple prompt. That’s MiniMax Agent: an autonomous AI capable of handling complex, long-horizon tasks from start to finish.
Challenge Overview
The MiniMax $150,000 AI Agent Challenge runs worldwide from August 11 to August 25, 2025, with winners announced on September 1. No coding is required.
Choose the Original track to build anything with MiniMax Agent, publish to the Gallery, and share on social to inspire remixes.
Or pick the Remix track, select a Gallery project, click Remix, instruct your changes, then publish and promote your version.
Submissions must include a public demo video of at least 30 seconds on YouTube or X, a public project URL, and your MiniMax Agent account email and UID. All materials must be in English, translations are allowed, and entries may not include malicious, explicit, politically sensitive, extremist, or copyrighted content without permission. See the site for the full prize breakdown and rules.
👉 Build with MiniMax and compete for the $150K grand prize!
Global Spotlight: 🇯🇵 Tokyo Kickoff
A sold-out crowd packed btrax’s Tokyo office for the AI Collective’s first Japan chapter event, a focused kickoff on where global AI is headed and what it means locally. Hosts outlined the chapter’s mission, then a candid talk session explored San Francisco’s latest AI trends, standout startups to watch, the future of AI × design, and the practical hurdles Japan must tackle to accelerate adoption.
The conversation moved smoothly into networking, where founders, creatives, and operators compared playbooks and sketched ideas for ongoing meetups. With strong demand, clear curiosity, and a room that reached capacity fast, Tokyo’s chapter launched with momentum and a plan to convene regularly so the community can learn, build, and shape Japan’s role in AI together.
Each week we feature a standout AI Collective event from around the world. Have one to share? Submit it here.
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About Noah Frank
Noah is a founder, innovation strategist, policy researcher, and community builder at the edge of AI. His work blends governance, product strategy, and revenue design to keep transformative tech aligned with human progress.
About AJ Green
AJ Green is a founder, writer, VC scout, chairman, and respected community leader in the AI and startup space. A former athlete turned tech entrepreneur, AJ is on a mission to make AI the great equalizer scaling startups, connecting ecosystems, and turning disruption into opportunity.
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