Key Takeaways OpenAI's new Operator AI agent could have huge implications for Google Search, gig economy companies like Uber, and digital advertisers, according to analysts.Operator, released Thursday to users of OpenAI's $200 monthly Pro plan,

The AI contender to the apparent market leader finished a $2 million funding round and now has a $60 billion valuation.

The AI assistant will first be made available to subscribers of ChatGPT Pro, a $200 a month subscription, and eventually roll out into the free version of ChatGPT.

OpenAI is putting its focus on AI infrastructure with Stargate at a time when rivals like China's DeepSeek are closing the gap on its AI models.

On Thursday, OpenAI released a research preview of " Operator ," a web automation tool that uses a new AI model called Computer-Using Agent (CUA) to control computers through a visual interface. The system performs tasks by viewing and interacting with on-screen elements like buttons and text fields similar to how a human would.

The cash infusion comes on top of the $2 billion that Google has already provided to the artificial intelligence developer. Separately, Anthropic is said to be raising $2 billion from a group of institutional investors led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The latter deal is expected to value the company at $60 billion.

To accompany the improvements of the recently announced o3 model, the o3-mini will be made available to free users with a range of useful improvements.

Stargate, the project to build AI-focused data centers in the US, will reportedly get $19 billion from OpenAI and SoftBank.

As part of the investment, Meta will ramp up hiring for artificial intelligence roles and build a more than 2-gigawatt data centre that would be large enough to cover a significant part of Manhattan.

Samsung not only debuted its new Galaxy S25 series smartphones (including a surprise Galaxy S25 Edge reveal), but we saw a slew of major tech news stories that you might have missed. OpenAI teased its Operator agent,

WIth one foot out the White House door, the Biden administration issued 2 documents Musk is now using in his battle to break up OpenAI and Microsoft.