04 Sep 2025

AI News Digest

🤖 AI-curated 6 stories

Today's Summary

China’s DeepSeek is gearing up to launch an AI agent capable of multi-step tasks, potentially heating up competition with the likes of OpenAI by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, Samsung is bringing AI to your living room with its new Vision AI Companion, adding generative features to TVs and displays. On the business side, xAI and C3.ai are seeing some executive shake-ups amid financial pressures, while WordPress is experimenting with Telex, an AI tool that could make website creation more accessible. Lastly, PayPal and Venmo users are getting a sneak peek at Perplexity’s AI-powered browser, Comet, hinting at a new wave of browsing experiences that blend productivity and AI.

Stories

China’s DeepSeek readies an agentic AI to rival OpenAI, targets release by end of 2025

DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based AI startup, is building an agentic model designed to carry out multi-step tasks on users’ behalf and learn from prior actions. Bloomberg reports the company is racing to ship an AI agent by the end of 2025 to compete with US players such as OpenAI. If delivered at scale, DeepSeek’s agent push could intensify global competition in autonomous AI assistants, accelerate China’s push to produce more capable multimodal/agent systems, and put pressure on incumbents to prioritize agent safety, integrations and cost-efficient inference.

Samsung unveils Vision AI Companion at IFA 2025, bringing generative AI and agent features to TVs and displays

At IFA 2025 Samsung introduced Vision AI Companion, a generative-AI powered experience that merges visual intelligence, conversational Bixby improvements and multiple AI agent features into TVs and monitors. The company says the feature will roll out as a software update starting late September (Korea, North America, select European markets) and will integrate capabilities like live translation, generative wallpaper, AI picture/sound optimization and partner agents (Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity). The launch underscores how major consumer hardware vendors are embedding agentic and generative AI into everyday devices — expanding where AI-driven assistants live and how consumers interact with them.

xAI finance chief exits after only months on the job, WSJ reports

Mike Liberatore, xAI’s chief financial officer, has stepped down after a short tenure, the Wall Street Journal reported and Reuters summarized on Sept. 3, 2025. Liberatore joined Elon Musk’s AI startup in April and reportedly left around late July. The departure comes as xAI pursues large capital raises and scales its Grok platform and data‑center plans — moves that make stable finance leadership critical. For the AI industry, the exit underscores ongoing executive churn at fast-growing AI firms and raises questions about execution risk and financial oversight as startups absorb massive capital and compete with entrenched players.

C3.ai names Stephen Ehikian CEO as revenue falls; stock reacts

C3.ai reported weaker-than-expected fiscal Q1 results and on Sept. 3, 2025 appointed Stephen Ehikian as CEO effective Sept. 1, replacing founder Thomas Siebel (who will remain executive chairman). The company reported revenue of about $70.3M for the quarter and withdrew prior full‑year guidance amid a sales reorganization. The leadership change — covered by CNBC and the company’s press release — is a major governance and strategy signal for an enterprise AI vendor facing slowing revenue and investor pressure. It highlights how public AI software firms are shifting leadership and strategy quickly in response to market expectations and the broader consolidation and reorientation across the AI industry.

WordPress unveils Telex — an experimental AI tool that generates Gutenberg blocks and plugins

Automattic demonstrated Telex at WordCamp US: an experimental, prompt-driven AI developer tool that can generate Gutenberg content blocks (and return them as installable .zip plugins) to speed up site-building without hand-coding. Telex is positioned as a WordPress-native ‘vibe coding’ experiment aimed at making web publishing more accessible, though early testers found it flaky and it remains labeled ‘experimental.’ This matters because WordPress powers a huge share of the web — a reliable AI tool for block/plugin generation could dramatically lower the barrier for creating custom sites and accelerate no-code/low-code workflows for creators and small teams. ([techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/02/wordpress-shows-off-telex-its-experimental-ai-development-tool/))

PayPal/Venmo users get early access to Perplexity’s Comet — an AI-powered browser that integrates summaries and agentic tasks

Perplexity struck a deal to give PayPal and Venmo customers a 12-month trial of Perplexity Pro, including access to Comet — the startup’s AI-first browser that embeds Perplexity’s AI search and agent features into browsing (summarizing pages, querying personal data like emails/calendars, scheduling, and more). The tie-up gives Perplexity easier onboarding via PayPal’s 430M+ user base and signals broader distribution of AI-native browsing tools; Perplexity is also working on a mobile Comet and continued feature rollouts. For developers and power users this highlights a new class of productivity/browser apps that blend browsing, agentic tasks, and paid subscriptions, and it could shift how people interact with the web. ([reuters.com](https://www.reuters.com/business/paypal-venmo-users-gain-early-access-perplexitys-comet-ai-browser-2025-09-03/))