Need to Know News - August 8th, 2025
In this week's Need to Know News edition:
🤖 OpenAI just dropped GPT-5 — a “PhD in your pocket” AI that’s 45% more accurate than GPT-4o…
🤖 An AI sales startup doubled its valuation to $3.1B in 90 days...with a crazy feature that tells reps exactly when to strike for the close.
🤖 Elon's turning Grok’s new image-to-video upgrade into a viral goldmine… reposting the best creations to his 223 million followers for maximum exposure.
And a whole lot more!
OpenAI Releases GPT-5 and Claims It boosts ChatGPT to 'PhD level'
OpenAI's new GPT-5 is here and it's a massive step up for business. This AI is designed to be a trusted PhD-level expert in every employee's pocket. It's 45% less likely to make a factual mistake than GPT-4o. And it's much faster. OpenAI says the new model feels less like an AI and more like a thoughtful colleague.
Key Upgrades:
It Smashes Old Performance Records : GPT-5 is now state-of-the-art in key areas. It aces a tough math test with a near-perfect 99.6% score. It handles a real-world coding test with 74.9% accuracy. And it's a leader in understanding text and images together with an 84.2% score on the MMMU benchmark.
It's Far More Accurate and Trustworthy :You can trust GPT-5's answers. The model has far fewer hallucinations and is 45% less likely to have a factual error than GPT-4o. This means your teams can confidently hand off more work to ChatGPT.
It Works Across Your Whole Company: GPT-5 is ready to help every single department. It can analyze market data for your CMO or build a live app for your engineers. The AI securely connects to your company's knowledge in Google Drive SharePoint and more.
OpenAI Hosts Hour Long GPT-5 Round Table
During the GPT-5 roundtable, OpenAI shared the secret behind its new model's power. Sam Altman and Co. revealed that older AI models were used to create a "synthetic curriculum" to teach GPT-5.
They showcased GPT-5 as a huge a huge upgrade for anyone who writes. In a side-by-side demo, its writing was praised for having more "rhythm and beat" and getting the "nuance of the situation right."
You can now give ChatGPT a specific personality. The team announced you can make it supportive, professional, or even sarcastic to fit your company's communication style.
Major companies are already seeing huge results with the new frontier model. Oliver Godement, who leads the platform at OpenAI, shared that the bank BBVA is using GPT-5 for financial analysis. He said it cuts tasks that took weeks down to just a couple of hours.
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Google's AI Search Is About to Get a Lot More Ads
Google is pushing hard to bring more ads to its AI search results. According to a report, Google is pitching advertisers to buy ads that appear directly within AI Mode chats. These ads will look like banners with a "Sponsored" label and can include text or shopping information.
Google says early tests have shown "incredible results." The company plans to roll out more ads before the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, experts predict the AI search ad market will hit nearly $29 billion by 2029
Grok Now Does Image to Video - Elon Launches Massive Exposure Campaign by Reposting Best Creations to His 223 Million Followers
AI Sales Startup Clay Doubles Value to $3.1B in Just 3 Months
Clay, a startup that uses AI to automate sales and marketing for companies like Google and Reddit. They just raised $100 million in a funding round led by Google's parent company, Alphabet. This deal more than doubled its valuation to a whopping $3.1 billion in just three months.
Co-founder Kareem Amin says they'll use the cash to develop new tools. One new feature will even give sales reps insights on the perfect time to message potential customers.
Yum Brands Leaning Into AI Harder than Ever
The company behind KFC and Taco Bell is betting big on AI. Yum Brands rolled out a new system called Byte. It does two key things. First, it scans social media and review sites to see what customers are saying. Second, it's taking over the drive-thru.
Voice AI is already taking orders at 600 Taco Bell locations. And it's working. The company says it reduces employee turnover. Digital sales have boomed to $9 billion, now making up 57% of all sales for the fast-food giant.
Yelp’s AI Chatbot is on Fire, Driving Record Revenue
Yelp's AI is quietly becoming a huge success. Project requests through its AI-powered Yelp Assistant shot up by over 400% year-over-year. This AI momentum helped Yelp reach a record $370 million in quarterly revenue. The growth comes from a boom in ads for home and auto services.
But the company faces challenges as ad revenue from restaurants and retail dropped 5%. Yelp also found a new way to make money from AI, earning $10 million a year by licensing its data to other AI search companies.
Wells Fargo's Big Bet: An AI Assistant for Every Employee
The titan bank is giving AI agents to its entire workforce, from customer service reps to corporate bankers. Through a partnership with Google Cloud, these AI assistants will change how employees work. They will automate tasks, provide real-time market insights, and even answer complex questions about company policies.
For instance, an AI can sift through 250,000 contracts in seconds. This move makes Wells Fargo one of the first major banks to adopt AI so broadly, calling it foundational to their future.
Anthropic Releases Claude Opus 4.1, Boosts Coding Skills
Anthropic just released Claude Opus 4.1, an upgrade that's especially good at coding and reasoning. It scored an impressive 74.5% on the SWE-bench coding test. Big companies are already impressed. GitHub says it's great for complex code changes, and Rakuten loves how it finds bugs without creating new ones.
Opus 4.1 is available now for the same price as the previous version. And get ready, because Anthropic says even bigger improvements are just a few weeks away.
Duolingo's Bet on AI Pays Off Despite User Backlash
After going "AI-first" and cutting human contractors, the language app faced a storm of criticism. But the backlash didn't matter to its bottom line. Duolingo's stock shot up nearly 30%, and daily users grew by 40%.
CEO Luis von Ahn admitted the negative comments slowed growth a bit, so they stopped posting "edgy" content. Even with angry users, the company now expects to hit over $1 billion in revenue this year, proving the controversy had little financial impact.
Thanks for reading.
Until next time!
The AI Marketers
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