But who made $50,000 in six months — without a full-time job or a startup?

Clue 1: Not a FAANG engineer.
Clue 2: A college senior juggling classes and graduation prep.
Clue 3: His side hustle wasn’t selling products… it was training AI on Outlier (Scale AI): writing prompts, reviewing chatbot answers, and red-teaming at ~$50/hour.

NVIDIA × OpenAI: 10GW + up to $100B — NVIDIA and OpenAI announced a strategic build-out of 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems, with NVIDIA planning up to $100B in investment to support the effort. A seismic move in AI compute—and geopolitics.

NVIDIA takes a stake in Intel — NVIDIA disclosed a multi-billion-dollar stake in Intel, signaling tighter ties across U.S. chip supply—and a fresh front in the AI hardware race.

CoreWeave’s $6.5B deal with OpenAI (now $22.5B total) — OpenAI inked another $6.5B with CoreWeave for training/inference capacity, lifting total agreements to about $22.5B. The AI cloud land-grab continues.

Databricks bets $100M on OpenAI — Databricks will bake OpenAI models directly into its platform in a $100M enterprise push—turning frontier models into default knobs for 20k+ customers.

AI Reality Check — A McKinsey-backed report shows Europe is falling behind the U.S. and China in AI adoption. Without rapid reskilling and stronger startup scaling, the continent risks losing ground in innovation and global competitiveness.

Helsing’s ‘Europa’ Combat Drone — German defense AI startup Helsing unveiled “Europa,” an autonomous drone system capable of swarming tactics and cooperating with manned aircraft — a signal that Europe is doubling down on AI-powered defense and aerospace sovereignty.

AI Act Under Pressure — One year after its adoption, EU governments are considering delaying parts of the AI Act amid industry lobbying and lack of technical standards. Member states push for postponements, while civil groups warn this could undermine Europe’s regulatory credibility.

Meta Talent Coup — Meta hired Yang Song, a top AI researcher formerly at OpenAI, to lead its European superintelligence lab. The move strengthens Meta’s presence in Europe and fuels the escalating global race for AI talent and research leadership.

TSMC Turns to AI for Greener Chips — Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) and chip design partners unveiled AI-powered tools that cut chip energy use, lowering both costs and environmental impact. A sustainability push for APAC’s semiconductor core.

CFOs See AI Driving Growth — A regional survey shows 3 in 4 APAC CFOs report AI agents directly boosting revenues. Adoption is spreading fastest in finance, manufacturing, and retail — shifting AI from hype to bottom-line driver.

Lenovo Bets on Hybrid Cloud AI — Lenovo posted a 36% YoY jump in its infrastructure division, hitting $4.3B revenue. The company is doubling down on AI + hybrid cloud to help enterprises move from pilot projects to ROI-driven outcomes.

Tokio Marine x OpenAI — Japan’s Tokio Marine is deploying OpenAI-powered AI agents across customer service, product planning, and operations. The aim: higher efficiency and customer satisfaction in a highly competitive insurance market

Pain: A college senior needed serious cash before starting a full-time job — but school meant he needed flexible hours.

Solution: He joined Outlier (owned by Scale AI) and treated AI-training like a job — writing college-level prompts, reviewing chatbot answers, and “red-teaming” to catch unsafe outputs, logging up to ~50 hours/week when projects flowed.

Payoff: $50k+ in six months at about $50/hour — enough to fund his move to New York after graduation. Work came in waves and audits were strict, but the money was real.

Encel Comment: This isn’t “easy money.” The AI-training market rewards speed + subject expertise — and it’s volatile. Treat it like freelance contracting (diversify platforms, bank cash during hot streaks, expect dry spells).

🗄️ Supabase — open-source Firebase with SQL superpowers
Who/Why: Builders who want a real Postgres backbone (auth, storage, realtime, RLS) without babysitting servers. Perfect for weekend MVPs that can grow into serious products.
What you get: Instant REST/GraphQL, row-level security, triggers/functions, and a slick dashboard—spin up fast, scale like an adult.

💬 Slack — where work stops hiding in inboxes
Who/Why: Teams that live in channels, not chaos. Keep decisions, files, and context in one searchable place—async when you can, live when you must.
What you get: Channels for every project, huddles & clips for quick syncs, and deep app integrations (alerts, bots, approvals) so updates come to you.

LinkedIn “flan recipe” hack exposes AI recruiters
Cameron Mattis slipped a line in his bio telling AI sourcers to include a flan recipe in outreach. It worked—he got real offers with dessert instructions attached—spotlighting how much recruiting is now on autopilot.

Gemini blasts past 5B images generated
Google says creators have churned out 5 billion+ Gemini images in under a month. Feeds are awash with Gemini art, new meme formats, and fast-forming creator micro-communities.

Reddit rolls out AI ad tools that read the room
New “Reddit Insights” and “Conversation Summary” promise smarter targeting by analyzing billions of posts and comments—fueling brand excitement and fresh privacy debates.

Fake CN Tower fire video goes viral
A hyper-realistic deepfake of Toronto’s CN Tower ablaze surged on Facebook, prompting renewed calls for mandatory AI-content labels and provenance signals.

🌟 Absolutely loved it — bring on more AI magic!

👍 It was good, keep it coming.

🤔 Meh, needs improvement.

👎 Didn’t quite hit the mark.