Chapter 1: Why is Disney investing $1 billion in OpenAI?
What Disney gets out of letting open AI users drop Mickey Mouse and Buzz Lightyear into AI videos.
This gives Disney a financial stake in the hottest AI company in the world.
Plus, after two Senate votes fail, hope is fading for a deal to extend health care subsidies for millions of Americans before the end of the year. and how Silicon Valley is giving a boost to a U.S. push into critical minerals against China. It's Thursday, December 11th. I'm Alex Osola for The Wall Street Journal.
This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Disney has licensed its characters to OpenAI for three years as part of a deal the two companies announced today. Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI, with the possibility of buying more stock.
On OpenAI's Sora video platform, users will be able to generate videos of more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar characters, including Darth Vader, Homer Simpson, and Spider-Man. And some of those videos can be streamed on Disney+. A person with knowledge of the matter says OpenAI will pay Disney to use its characters in Sora.
The companies didn't disclose financial terms of that arrangement. Here's Disney CEO Bob Iger in an interview on CNBC this morning.
OpenAI is both respecting and valuing our creativity, both our characters, but also those that have created those characters. So it gives us an opportunity really to play a part in what is really a breathtaking growth in essentially AI and new forms of media and entertainment.
The companies announced the deal a day after Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google saying the tech giant's AI systems violated Disney's copyrights. A Google spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment. But by partnering with OpenAI, WSJ Entertainment reporter Ben Fritz said, Disney isn't letting the AI wave pass it by.
Disney has concluded that they need to partner with AI companies, that they can't just fight them in court. The legal situation has been mixed for entertainment companies so far in terms of what they can prevent AI companies from doing with their copyrighted material. We've seen this in the past, that when entertainment tries to fight tech, it's a very hard battle.
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Chapter 2: What characters can users create with OpenAI's Sora platform?
although its market cap has since dropped back below that level. And in Washington, a Democratic effort to extend federal health insurance subsidies that expire at the end of the year failed in the Senate today. An alternative health care bill from Republicans that would offer federal funds for out-of-pocket health care costs instead of subsidies also failed.
If no bill passes, the millions of Americans covered under the Affordable Care Act face soaring costs. There's now little prospect for a deal to extend the subsidies this year. Shares of Oracle fell almost 11 percent today, its worst day since January, after the company's latest earnings report. Investors are concerned that the company's overspending on AI infrastructure that might not pay off.
Oracle shares weighed on the Nasdaq, which dropped a quarter percent, while the Dow and the S&P rose to close at new records. Coming up, what it takes to create a U.S. critical minerals industry and how Bulgaria's government became the latest brought down by young people. That's after the break. Thank you. The U.S.
push to develop its own sources of raw materials critical to the modern economy, aluminum, magnesium, rare earths, is getting a boost from Silicon Valley. Venture capitalists have invested a record $600 million in U.S. critical mineral startups this year, according to PitchBook, as part of the effort to counter China's dominance, especially as China has cracked down on exports.
Heather Somerville, who covers technology and national security for the journal, joins us now. Heather, what are some of these companies and what are they doing?
We have companies in Silicon Valley that are using AI and machine learning to try to improve outcomes from mining. There's one company in particular that I profiled, Brimstone, out here in Oakland, focusing on producing critical minerals out of rocks that are abundant and cheap. So the idea is if you can get...
a whole bunch of cheap rocks easily and produce these critical minerals that we need and China dominates, the U.S. might have a shot at producing economically some of these pretty precious materials that we are lacking. And it's focused on aluminum, magnesium, titanium to start. Other companies that we've looked at are focused on
Antimony, which is a rare earth that is essential to a lot of critical industries. And there's other companies that are focused on rare earth magnets. Who is funding these startups? It's private and public money. On the private capital side, there's venture capital interest for the first time that I've ever seen in this space. We have a huge initiative from J.P.
Morgan investing in all sorts of national security projects. essential industries and critical minerals is a focus. And then there's the government money. The Trump administration has invested in, among others, Vulcan Elements, a rare earth magnet startup out in North Carolina. ReElement Technologies, which works on recycling of those rare earth magnets.
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