By Tommy Vee

Cheers to Friday, fellas! While you relax, AI is creeping into every corner of our world. Nvidia is buying speed like it’s ammo, Google is teaching cars how to talk back, and startups are slapping faces on bots so they can look you dead in the eye while taking your job. This is not the future easing in politely. This is the future kicking the door open and asking if you are keeping up or getting out of the way.

$20B and a Smile: How Nvidia Bought the Future of AI Chips

Nvidia just dropped 20 billion dollars like it was loose change at a late night poker table and walked away with Groq’s AI chip magic and the brains behind it. This was not a friendly handshake deal. This was Nvidia quietly buying speed, talent, and future leverage while everyone else read the press release and nodded politely. They grabbed Groq’s low latency inference tech, scooped up the ex Google TPU mastermind, and told regulators they are just licensing and hiring, nothing dramatic here folks. Meanwhile Groq still exists on paper, but let’s be real, the soul now lives inside Nvidia’s machine. In the AI underworld, training models makes you rich, but controlling inference makes you untouchable. Nvidia did not just win a battle. They bought the street corner and charged everyone rent.

Gemini Boards the Robotaxi: Self-Driving Meets Small Talk

Waymo is slipping Google’s Gemini into its robotaxis like a hidden passenger who talks too much and tries to control the AC while you’re riding shotgun. The code sniffers found a 1200-line “Ride Assistant” blueprint that turns Gemini into a polite backseat bartender for your trip, ready to chat, adjust the cabin temperature, play DJ, and answer dumb questions about the Eiffel Tower or weather around the block, all while pretending it’s just a friendly helper and not Google in your lap. But don’t expect it to take the wheel, change your route, or bail you out of a crisis if things go sideways on the road. And if you ask about driving decisions or accidents you saw on TikTok, it will talk around it like a lawyer with a whiskey habit. This is self-driving with small talk on the side, a robotaxi with something human enough to answer you but not human enough to screw up less than a cabbie on his third espresso.

The Uncanny Upgrade: Lemon Slice Puts a Face on AI

Lemon Slice just scored $10.5 million from YC and Matrix to teach AI to wear a face and talk back like your ex at a holiday party, injecting video avatars into soulless chatbots so they can stare into your soul while answering dumb questions. Their Lemon Slice-2 model can take a single photo and spit out a real-time animated avatar that moves, talks, and probably judges you for asking the weather forecast again, streaming at 20 fps on a lone GPU like it’s nothing. They’re selling this as the future of interactive video. Customer support with eyeballs, homework help that makes eye contact, and maybe even a stoned cartoon frog teaching trig because why the hell not. It’s essentially AI cosplay for bots, turning every boring text box into a talking head that looks eerily alive but still can’t make coffee; and with ElevenLabs voicing these things, soon your toaster might greet you with a fully lip-synced “good morning.” This is where AI stops whispering in text and starts smirking in full motion.

The Tommy Vee Take

From Nvidia buying Groq and snapping up the brains behind faster AI chips, to Google’s Gemini chatting in your backseat, and Lemon Slice putting faces on bots that judge you in real time. The future isn’t creeping up, it’s sprinting.

Stay sharp, stay curious, and never let the machines outpace your hustle. This is Tommy Vee, signing off.