What's up: Three Questions for a 'Godfather of AI'; CoreWeave inks another big AI contract; Spotify founder Daniel Ek is leaving his CEO job.

Good morning. Now we know what the world is going to do with all of that data center capacity sprouting up from the plains of the U.S. to Abu Dhabi. It will run the viral gen AI video we’re about to create.

Combined with OpenAI’s new move into AI-driven commerce, in which it will take a small fee on transactions, it is easier to understand how it plans to scale up and quickly as a consumer company. We haven’t even seen the hardware it is developing with former Apple designer Jony Ive.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. As the WSJ reported yesterday, “OpenAI is squaring up to TikTok, Google’s YouTube and Meta Platforms with a new social-media app for its AI video generator that allows users to create high-definition video clips with audio from text prompts …

“Users can upload short clips of themselves and insert them into Sora-generated worlds, describing the idea, style and scene they want to see. They can also connect with other users, watching and commenting on their content ….Sora 2, will feature a swipe-and-scroll navigation similar to that of platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, setting out OpenAI’s stall as Silicon Valley steps up its focus on AI video generation.”

OpenAI isn’t alone in viral AI video. Google recently connected its Veo 3 AI video generator to YouTube. TikTok offers AI Alive and Meta offers a feed of short-form AI-created videos, the WSJ said.

OpenAI is preparing for mass usage, with some built-in brakes for users under the age of 18, and reminders for adults to stop passively watching content that others create and generate some of their own.

OpenAI released Sora in December, allowing users to create video clips from text prompts. Sora 2 takes this to a new level and powers a new app, available at first on an invite-only basis. One can see how that might serve as a virtual velvet rope that stirs a desire to get inside the club.

Is AI headed in the right direction? One 'godfather' says "no." Doomscroll until you find the WSJ Leadership Institute's conversation with Yoshua Bengio. 

As the federal shutdown halts government functions across agencies, their respective IT departments won’t be immune. Contingency plans from a host of agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Labor, point to potential work stoppages in certain areas. 

Experts tell Nextgov/FCW that no matter the length of the shutdown, tech modernization efforts will suffer.

“Such delays ripple across planned cyber and IT efforts. Important cybersecurity projects are pushed aside, and, when money finally becomes available, agencies often face pressure to catch up fast,” Gary Barlet, public sector CTO at Illumio and former CIO at the U.S. Postal Service Office of the Inspector General, tells Nextgov/FCW.

A little over two years ago, AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio was among the loudest voices calling for a moratorium on AI model development to focus on safety standards.

No one paused. In fact, things only accelerated and Bengio, considered one of the “godfathers of AI,” is as concerned as ever.

The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute's Isabelle Bousquette recently caught up with Bengio in Montreal, where both were participants at All In 2025. Highlights of the conversation are below. Read the full interview here. 

WSJLI: You’ve talked about AI lying to people and deceiving its users. Why does it do that?

Bengio: I don’t think we have all the scientific answers to that, but I can give you a few directions. One is the way that these systems have been trained is mostly to imitate people. And people will lie and deceive and will try to protect themselves in spite of the instructions you give them, because they have some other goals. And the other reason is there’s been a lot of advances in these reasoning models. They are getting good at strategizing.

WSJLI: All the big AI labs have been pretty outspoken about the safety and guardrails they’re putting into these models. Do you have conversations with them?

Bengio: I read their reports. And I have some conversations, but actually the conversations that I have tell me that a lot of people inside those companies are worried. I also have the impression that being inside a company that is trying to push the frontier maybe gives rise to an optimistic bias. And that is why we need independent third parties to validate that whatever safety methodologies they are developing is really fine.

WSJLI: We are hearing about how more and more companies, inside and outside the tech industry, are working to integrate AI into their workflows. What advice do you have for them?

Bengio: Companies that are using AI should demand evidence that the AI systems they’re deploying or using are trustworthy. The same thing that governments should be demanding. But markets can drive companies to do the right thing if companies understand that there’s a lot of unknown unknowns and potentially catastrophic risks. I think the citizens should also wake up and better understand what are the issues, what are the pros, what are the cons, and how do we navigate in between the potentially bad things so that we can benefit from AI.

One new AI startup says it's all about the science. San Francisco-based Periodic Labs is drawing some of the best minds in AI to its mission of accelerating science. “Silicon Valley is intellectually lazy,” Liam Fedus, one of the startup’s founders – and a co-creator of ChatGPT–tells the New York Times. With over $300 million in seed funding, the startup is building an AI-powered, robot-staffed lab designed to automate experiments.

CoreWeave inks another big AI deal. CoreWeave has signed a $14.2 billion contract with Meta Platforms to provide it with AI data center capacity through 2031. The deal comes after CoreWeave last week expanded a previous agreement with OpenAI, bringing the total value of that contract to $22.4 billion. And that deal came on the heels of CoreWeave securing a new order for cloud-computing capacity under a previously undisclosed contract with Nvidia worth up to $6.3 billion.

AI infrastructure company Cerebras said it raised $1.1 billion at an $8.1 billion valuation. The round was co-led by Fidelity and Atreides Management, TechCrunch reports. The company, whose products include an AI chip the size of a dinner plate, filed to go public last year.

Spotify founder draws up a new career playlist. Nearly two decades after he founded Spotify, Daniel Ek plans to step away from the top job, becoming executive chairman. The WSJ reports that Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström, Spotify’s co-presidents, will become co-CEOs on Jan. 1.

Co-CEOs … somewhat unusual, somewhat on-trend. Oracle earlier recently appointed a pair of chief executives as longtime chief Safra Catz transitions to an executive vice chair role.

Government funding lapsed early Wednesday morning after the White House and lawmakers failed to reach a spending deal, triggering a shutdown that is expected to halt some federal services and put hundreds of thousands of federal workers on furlough. (WSJ)

The federal government shutdown has markets on edge. Stock futures dropped and the dollar weakened early Wednesday, while gold futures hit another record high. (WSJ)

President Trump hailed the use of military force to police American cities, telling generals and admirals during a Tuesday address that it was important to quell “the enemy within.” (WSJ)

A powerful earthquake collapsed buildings and set off several landslides in the central Philippines, killing at least 69 people and injuring hundreds more, officials said Wednesday. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.