Alibaba's AI video powerhouse

PLUS: Claude 3.7 Sonnet plays Pokemon live

Author

Rowan Cheung
February 26, 2025

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. China's Alibaba just released a powerful AI video generation suite that ANYONE can download, run, and modify — and early tests suggest it outperforms even OpenAI's Sora.

While most AI labs keep its best AI locked behind waitlists and paywalls, Chinese labs are starting to push ahead with open-source alternatives that anyone can use today.

Speaking of AI video, our next workshop is today at 3 PM EST — where you’ll learn how to create personalized AI video messages at scale with Synthesia's Kevin Alster. RSVP.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Alibaba’s advanced AI video suite

  • Google’s free AI coding assistant

  • Find your next SaaS idea using AI research

  • Claude plays Pokemon Red live on Twitch

  • 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ALIBABA

Image source: Alibaba

The Rundown: Alibaba's Tongyi Lab just released Wan2.1, an open-source suite of powerful video generation models that outperform SOTA open-source and closed models such as Sora on key benchmarks — while generating videos at 2.5x the speed.

The details:

  • Wan2.1-T2V-14B tops the VBench leaderboard, excelling in areas like complex motion dynamics, real-world physics simulation, and text generation.

  • All models support text-to-video, image-to-video, and video-to-audio, and are the first with the ability to render text in both English and Chinese.

  • Wan’s editing tools include video inpainting and outpainting, multi-image referencing, and the ability to maintain existing structures and characters.

  • The release also includes a light 1.3B version capable of running on consumer hardware—it can generate a 5-sec 480P clip on RTX 4090 in 4 minutes.

Why it matters: Another day, another wild open-source release out of China. Wan is a continuation of the accelerating quality we’ve seen from recent launches like Google’s Veo 2 — with telltale AI signs (choppy motion, artifacts, etc.) all but completely eliminated. Between Qwen and Wan, Alibaba is bringing the open-source heat in 2025.

TOGETHER WITH GOOGLE CLOUD

The Rundown: Google Cloud’s Future of AI: ‘Perspectives for Startups’ report gathers predictions, real-world applications, and expert strategies from 23 AI leaders like Amin Vahdat (Google Cloud) and Chamath Palihapitiya (Social Capital) to help you position your business for success in 2025 and beyond.

What’s inside:

  • Expert-backed predictions on AI’s role in business and tech

  • Lessons from real-world AI adoption at startups

  • Practical strategies to leverage AI for a competitive advantage

  • Areas investors prioritize for AI startups

GOOGLE

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just launched a free version of Gemini Code Assist for individual developers, offering access to advanced AI-powered coding help with usage limits that dwarf competitors like GitHub Copilot.

The details:

  • Gemini Code Assist is powered by a fine-tuned version of Google's Gemini 2.0 model optimized specifically for programming tasks.

  • The new tool provides up to 180,000 monthly code completions — 90 times more than GitHub Copilot's free tier limit of 2,000.

  • The assistant features a 128,000 token context window, allowing it to process and understand much larger codebases than competitors.

  • The free version also integrates with dev environments like Visual Studio Code, GitHub, and JetBrains, with just a personal Google account needed.

Why it matters: AI has changed programming forever, with powerful free tools driving the biggest shift. Google's latest push with Gemini Code Assist could further disrupt this market dominated by GitHub Copilot—unlocking new possibilities for developers worldwide.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Perplexity’s Deep Research to build a validated software product, complete with development specifications and launch strategy.

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit Perplexity and select "Deep Research".

  2. Use the prompt: "You are a Market Research Specialist. Analyze [INDUSTRY] by identifying top 10 problems, severity levels, current solutions, and market size."

  3. Transform your chosen problem into a product by prompting: "Design a SaaS solution for [problem], including essential features, tech stack, timeline, and revenue streams."

  4. Get implementation details with: "Provide step-by-step coding instructions, including API specifications and deployment configurations."

Pro tip: If you don’t know how to code, AI coding assistants like Cursor, Windsurf, or Replit Agent can massively help you build your new idea.

PRESENTED BY UNSTRUCTURED

The Rundown: Join Unstructured for a deep dive into best practices for data connectors for generative AI applications, and see where solutions like Fivetran, Boomi, and AirByte fall short with maintaining rich context or keeping your team out of the weeds updating them.

In this live session, you’ll discover:

  • Frameworks for evaluating ETL tools across critical features

  • Why traditional solutions struggle with messy data sources

  • Best practices to keep engineers focused on innovation — not maintenance

AI RESEARCH

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: Anthropic just debuted "Claude Plays Pokémon" on Twitch, a continuation of the company’s research showcasing their new AI model Claude 3.7 Sonnet attempting to navigate the classic Game Boy game Pokémon Red in real-time.

The details:

  • 3.7 Sonnet made major progress compared to its predecessors, defeating three gym leaders — with the original Sonnet struggling to leave the starting location.

  • The livestream shows Claude's "thought process" on the left while real-time gameplay appears on the right, giving viewers insight into the AI's reasoning.

  • Claude has access to a knowledge base to store info, function calling to take actions, and vision capabilities to observe the game.

  • Unlike previous versions, 3.7 Sonnet’s reasoning capabilities help navigate the game more effectively — planning, adapting, and remembering objectives.

Why it matters: Watching Claude tackle Pokemon is both fascinating and endearing — especially when seeing the thought process behind every move. While we’ll be playing games alongside AI agents in the future, Claude’s experiment is also an interesting window into a future where AIs are observed passively as popular gaming streamers.

QUICK HITS

  • 🤖 Figure AI - FPGA Design Intern

  • 🖥️ Anyscale - Software Engineer, ML Developer Platform

  • 💰 Coreweave - Credit and Collections Manager

  • 📊 UiPath - GTM Operations Planning Program Manager

OpenAI rolled out its Deep Research feature to ChatGPT Plus, Team, Edu, and Enterprise tiers, offering 10 queries per month compared to the $200 Pro tier’s 120.

Anthropic is reportedly set to raise a larger-than-planned $3.5B funding round at a $61.5B valuation, with the news coming just days after the release of Sonnet 3.7.

DeepSeek is reportedly aiming to push the release of its next AI model up from its initial May timeline, seeking to capitalize on its success in the wake of R1.

OpenAI also launched a GPT-4o mini-powered Advanced Voice to free ChatGPT users—promising the same conversation style as the GPT-4o version for Plus and Pro users.

Microsoft removed usage limits on Copilot's Voice and Think Deeper features, giving all free users unlimited access. Pro users will retain priority access during peak hours.

Over 1,000 musicians released a silent album to protest the UK’s proposed copyright changes that would allow AI companies to train on works without explicit permission.

IBM announced plans to acquire DataStax, aiming to help unlock enterprise data for AI applications while expanding its NoSQL database offerings.

COMMUNITY

Join our next workshop today, Wednesday, February 26th at 3 PM EST and learn how to create personalized AI video messages at scale with Synthesia's Kevin Alster, Strategic Advisor and former Head of Synthesia Academy.

RSVP here. Not a member yet? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

That's it for today!

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

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