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  • Pruna AI Open-Sources Unified Toolkit for Model Compression

Pruna AI Open-Sources Unified Toolkit for Model Compression

AND: AI to the Rescue: New Effort Targets Energy Crisis Sparked by AI Boom

TodayOnAI’s Daily Drop

  • Pruna AI Open-Sources Unified Toolkit for Model Compression

  • AI to the Rescue: New Effort Targets Energy Crisis Sparked by AI Boom

  • Voice AI Gets an Upgrade: OpenAI Rolls Out New TTS and STT Models

  • Perplexity’s Value Doubles as AI Search Arms Race Accelerates

  • 💬 Let’s Fix This Prompt

  • 🧰 Today’s AI Toolbox Pick

📌 The TodayOnAI Brief

PRUNAAI

The Handcrafted Toolbox of AI Efficiency

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: Pruna AI is open-sourcing its AI model compression framework, offering a unified toolkit for applying and evaluating multiple efficiency techniques like pruning, quantization, and distillation. The move could make sophisticated optimization methods accessible to a much wider range of developers and teams.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

  • All-in-one compression suite: Pruna’s open-source framework supports caching, pruning, quantization, and distillation, with standardized save/load and evaluation processes.

  • Evaluation built-in: Developers can assess trade-offs between performance gains and quality loss after compression.

  • Supports multiple model types: Compatible with LLMs, diffusion models, vision, and speech models; initial focus is on image and video generation.

  • Automation via optimization agent: An enterprise-only tool lets users define accuracy/performance trade-offs, then automatically compresses models accordingly.

  • Business model + traction: Pruna AI charges per usage hour and counts Scenario and PhotoRoom among early users. It recently raised $6.5M in seed funding.

💡 Why This Stands Out: Model compression is foundational for bringing large AI models into real-time, cost-sensitive applications, yet tooling remains fragmented. Pruna AI’s unified framework democratizes access to high-efficiency optimization workflows once reserved for elite AI labs. As inference costs become a growing concern, is model compression the next frontier in AI scalability?

AI

AI Sparks for a Smarter Grid

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: Nvidia is teaming up with EPRI and major U.S. utilities to launch the Open Power AI Consortium—an open-source initiative using domain-specific AI models to tackle growing grid stress, much of it fueled by AI’s own surging energy demands.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

  • Open Power AI Consortium formed: Includes Nvidia, EPRI, Microsoft, Oracle, and major utilities like PG&E and Duke Energy.

  • Focus on domain-specific AI: Custom AI models will help address grid reliability, demand management, and system optimization.

  • Models will be open source: Designed for academic and industry researchers to collaborate and innovate.

  • Electricity demand is spiking: Driven by AI workloads and data center expansion, U.S. demand is forecast to rise 4% annually.

  • Beyond generation: The consortium will also explore demand flexibility solutions, such as shifting non-urgent workloads to off-peak hours.

💡 Why This Stands Out: AI is both accelerating energy demand and offering the tools to mitigate its own impact—a rare feedback loop in infrastructure. By making these models open source, the consortium not only seeks technical breakthroughs but sets a precedent for cross-industry collaboration. Can AI help solve the power problems it’s rapidly creating?

OPENAI

The Language of Listening and Voice

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: OpenAI has launched new speech-to-text and text-to-speech models via API—gpt-4o-transcribe and gpt-4o-mini-tts—that aim to deliver more accurate transcriptions and emotionally expressive synthetic speech. These tools mark another step toward OpenAI’s broader push to power autonomous “agentic” systems.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

  • New TTS model: gpt-4o-mini-tts produces more realistic, expressive speech and allows developers to control tone through natural language prompts (e.g., “speak like a mad scientist”).

  • Upgraded STT models: gpt-4o-transcribe and gpt-4o-mini-transcribe replace Whisper with improved accuracy, especially in noisy or accented speech environments.

  • Fewer hallucinations: OpenAI claims the new models reduce transcription errors and fabricated content, a frequent issue with Whisper.

  • Not open source: Unlike Whisper, the new models won’t be released under open licenses due to size and deployment constraints.

  • Performance caveats: Accuracy still lags for certain language groups; e.g., Indic and Dravidian languages have ~30% word error rates.

💡 Why This Stands Out: As AI agents evolve beyond text and vision, voice becomes a vital interface. OpenAI’s steerable TTS and stronger STT models could redefine customer interactions, accessibility tools, and real-time assistants. But the shift away from open-source raises questions about access, innovation, and who shapes voice AI’s future.

PERPLEXITY

Charting the Rise of AI Search

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: AI search startup Perplexity is reportedly in talks to raise up to $1 billion at an $18 billion valuation—just months after being valued at $9 billion. The rumored round follows rapid growth, with the company now hitting $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

  • Valuation doubles in months: From $9B in December 2024 to a rumored $18B now—18× its $1B valuation in April 2024.

  • Revenue milestone hit: Perplexity has reportedly reached $100M in ARR, signaling strong user and enterprise adoption.

  • Funding amid search wars: Comes as Google and Anthropic push further into AI-powered search, intensifying competition.

  • Expanding product scope: Perplexity is testing an agentic browser, Comet, and launched enterprise tools for internal document search.

  • Still unconfirmed: Perplexity has not publicly commented on the fundraising reports.

💡 Why This Stands Out: Perplexity’s meteoric rise reflects investor appetite for alternatives to Google in the AI-native search era. But with tech giants fast-tracking their own offerings, the startup’s expansion into browsers and enterprise AI may be less about growth—and more about survival. Can Perplexity maintain its lead as the field floods with well-funded rivals?

💬 Let’s Fix This Prompt

 See how a simple prompt upgrade can unlock better AI output.

🔹 The Original Prompt

"Generate blog ideas for a tech company."

At first glance, this prompt might seem okay. But it's too broad — and that limits the quality of AI-generated results. Let’s improve it using prompt engineering best practices.

The Improved Prompt

Generate a list of unique, engaging blog post ideas for a B2B tech company that wants to attract decision-makers in mid-sized companies. Focus on topics related to emerging technology trends, industry insights, and practical solutions their software offers. Include suggested titles and a 1–2 sentence summary for each idea.

💡 Why It's Better

  • Specific audience: Targets decision-makers in mid-sized companies.

  • Contextual focus: Emphasizes emerging tech and practical solutions.

  • Actionable output: Requests summaries and titles to spark execution.

  • Tone and style: Guides the type of content (insightful, engaging, relevant).

🛠️ Learn how to adapt this prompt for SaaS, AI tools, dev teams & more →
Read the full PromptPilot breakdown

💡 Bonus Tool: Want to generate and master prompts instantly?
👉 Try PromptPilot by TodayOnAI (Free to use)

🧠 Smart Picks

📰 More from the AI World

  • Copilot Makes Discovering Ideas Feel Like a Conversation

  • Vevo & Arc Institute Release 300M-Cell Atlas to Advance Drug Discovery with AI

  • Meta Launches Aria Gen 2 to Power the Future of Perception & Contextual AI.

  • Talk to Perplexity: Real-Time Voice Answers Now on iOS

🧰 Today’s AI Toolbox Pick

  • 🍋LemonSqueezy (Finance Tool): Handles the tax compliance burden so you can focus on more revenue with less headache.

  • 💻ZipWP (Web Design Tool): Creates stunning websites in seconds.

  • ⚙️DupDub (Content Tool): An all-in-one content creation platform that allows you to craft your content effortlessly and streamline your workflow.