Welcome back to Daily Zaps, your regularly-scheduled dose of AI news ⚡️ 

Here’s what we got for ya today:

• Humanoid household robot ready for preorders

• Nvidia’s $5 trillion valuation, fueled by AI

• Fed Chair: AI causing job growth to be near zero

• Sora #1 photo and video on app on app store

Let’s get right into it!

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STARTUPS

Humanoid household robot ready for preorders

Robotics startup 1X opened preorders for NEO, a 5'6", 66-lb consumer humanoid robot aimed at household chores, potentially beating Tesla’s Optimus to market. NEO features Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/5G, speakers, app and voice control, and can lift 150 lb and carry 55 lb, but it isn’t waterproof, has about four hours of battery life, and currently performs tasks slowly (e.g., ~2 minutes to fold a shirt) with limited autonomy.

For unfamiliar jobs, owners can schedule remote teleoperation by a 1X employee in a VR headset signaled by ear-ring lights when active. Pricing is steep: $20,000 to buy (with a $200 preorder deposit) or $499/month for a six-month minimum lease, with U.S. deliveries expected next year and other markets in 2027. NEO follows 1X’s earlier warehouse-oriented EVE and arrives as rivals like Tesla and XPENG target production in the next 1–2 years without firm consumer availability dates.

BIG TECH

Nvidia’s $5 trillion valuation, fueled by AI

Nvidia became the world’s first company to surpass a $5 trillion market value after its shares rose more than 3% Wednesday, capping a meteoric rise fueled by the AI boom. Once a niche gaming chipmaker, Nvidia now dominates AI infrastructure, with CEO Jensen Huang projecting $500 billion in AI chip orders and announcing seven new U.S. government supercomputers.

The company also revealed a $1 billion investment in Nokia to jointly develop 6G technology. The surge helped push U.S. stock markets to record highs, with Apple and Microsoft both topping $4 trillion valuations. While institutions like the IMF and Bank of England warn of potential AI-driven market risks, Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood argues the rally marks the early stages of a long-term technological revolution, not a bubble.

CAREERS

Fed Chair: AI causing job growth to be near zero

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the current AI investment boom is not a dotcom-style bubble, emphasizing that it’s driven by profitable firms with real business models and tangible economic impact.

He explained that AI spending is rooted in long-term productivity gains rather than low interest rates or speculative debt, calling it a structural transformation of the economy. Companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Alphabet are fueling unprecedented data center and semiconductor investments, which Powell said are already visible in real-world growth through equipment spending and infrastructure expansion.

Echoing Goldman Sachs’ view that AI investment remains modest relative to GDP and sustainable, Powell called AI a major source of U.S. growth but cautioned that it’s too early to declare a lasting productivity revolution. He noted that the benefits are unevenly distributed and may coincide with job losses from automation, with U.S. job growth now “pretty close to zero.”

BIG TECH

Sora #1 video on app on app store

The Sora 2 app—a TikTok-style video generator—is now the No. 1 free app on Apple’s App Store, just behind ChatGPT. Recently, OpenAI also launched “character cameos” that let users add pets or objects to videos.

OpenAI announced that users can now buy additional Sora video generations beyond the current 30 free videos per day. Ten extra videos cost $4, and Pro users can create up to 100 videos daily, though that cap varies with higher-cost configurations.

Bill Peebles, OpenAI’s head of Sora, explained that heavy demand from power users has made the free limits financially unsustainable, noting that free limits may eventually decrease due to GPU shortages. Still, for now, free use remains unchanged.