AI Furnace Newsroom: Google Takes the AI World by Storm, OpenAI Signs Deals with Target and Intuit, Bezos Launches AI Lab

Welcome to this week’s AI Furnace Newsroom

In today’s insights we cover:

1. Target Introduces AI Shopping

2. Google’s Gemini 3 Pro and Nano Banana Pro Launch

3. Jeff Bezos Back in the Operating Seat with $6.2B AI Raise

4. TurboTax owner Intuit and OpenAI strike deal

5. Nvidia, Microsoft Commit $15B to Anthropic

Read time: 4 mins

💡 Furnace Insights

Target

Target Introduces AI Shopping Across Retail

Target deepens its partnership with OpenAI via launching a new Target app directly in ChatGPT for customers. This signals two major shifts. Firstly, the rise of modern and “agentic commerce” where assistants can suggest items, build baskets, browse fresh items and check out in one flow without customers having to open multiple tabs. Secondly, this highlights OpenAI’s bold moves towards becoming an app store for AI builders in its own right and signing partnerships with big companies.

This builds on top of Target’s partnerships with OpenAI for internal tooling across store operations, support tools, supply chain forecasting, and guest interactions.

Google

Google’s Gemini 3 Pro and Nano Banana Pro Signal AI Winning Streak

Google has taken the AI world by storm by rolling out Gemini 3 Pro, its most powerful model yet. It’s already woven into Google app and Search. It beats every other model across 95% of official benchmarks and has a deeper multimodal experience - understanding text, images, and audio all at once, opening the door to richer answers and more helpful visuals.

Nano Banana Pro, its newest image model as part of the launch, is a big step in accuracy and creative control. The model checks angles, lighting, and depth before it begins generating, helping it produce more realistic scenes, sharper text, and smoother multi-step edits.

*The world is having fun re-creating pictures of the world’s AI leaders in cute shots using Nano Banana Pro, as shown in the picture.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos Back in the Operating Seat with $6.2B AI Raise

Bezos has hung up his retirement hat and re-entered the founder ring with Project Prometheus - an AI lab for real world engineering. The lab has raised $6.2B in fresh funding and has already hired 100+ elite talent from the likes of Deepmind, OpenAI and Meta.

The company aims to build AI that learns from physical experimentation to design and manufacture computers, spacecraft, and vehicles. This is another bet on physical AI, an area which Yann Le Cun recently left Meta to explore. Watch this space.

Flock’s AI helps fashion brands go from manufacturing to marketing instantly through customized models and apparel consistency

Flock provides brands with an AI-powered platform to create customized imagery that reflects your customers and brand aesthetic. Generate production-quality model imagery with never-before-seen speed and brand consistency for fashion and beauty.

Why it matters: It’s faster, easier and higher converting than a photoshoot with 10x cost savings and 30%+ average increase in conversion.

Check out Flock AI.

Intuit

TurboTax Owner Intuit and OpenAI Strike $100M Deal

Intuit has struck a multiyear deal with OpenAI, expected to generate $100M in revenue for OpenAI. The partnership exposes Intuit’s business and financial software products, which includes QuickBooks and Credit Karma, to a broader range of potential users on OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Intuit will also gain substantial access to OpenAI’s APIs, which the companies say will allow the tech giant to explore more use cases across its business.

Nvidia, Microsoft & Anthropic

Nvidia & Microsoft Commit $15B to Anthropic

Anthropic, Microsoft and NVIDIA ink deal whereby Anthropic commits to Azure cloud (worth up to $30B), NVIDIA invests up to $10B and tunes Claude for its chips, and Claude becomes available on all major clouds with up to $5B from Microsoft.

This means you can now use Claude wherever you work (e.g. Azure, AWS or Google Cloud). For enterprises that have been hesitant to depend on a single model provider, this shift gives enterprises real bargaining power on pricing, performance tests and feature demands.

📈 AI Venture Deals of the Week

• Cavela, an AI startup that helps brands automate supplier sourcing, raised $6.6 million in a Seed funding round.

• Runlayer, a startup providing security for AI agent infrastructure built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), raised a $11 million Seed.

• NcodiN, a deep-tech startup developing photonic interconnects for AI and high-performance computing, raised its €16 million Seed round.

• Redrob, an AI research startup, raised $10 million in a Series A funding round.

• Tidalwave, a mortgage-technology startup using agentic AI to streamline underwriting and verification, raised its $22 million Series A.

• Genspark, an AI company building autonomous “agentic” work-platforms for knowledge workers, raised its $275 million Series B.

⚒️ New AI Product Launches You Don’t Want to Miss 

• Gemini 3, Antigravity (AI code generation) and Nano Banana Pro (image generation), all absolute blockbusters from Google.

• New Design Mode by Replit, using Gemini 3 model, to create static sites in under 2 mins.

• GPT-5.1-Codex-Max, Open AI’s latest agentic coding tool.

• Token Economics Calculator, by Tensordyne.

• DR Tulu, an open-source deep-research AI agent, by Ai2.

Upcoming Events 📅

• AIF Founder Supper Club @ Sicily Osteria - Tuesday, December 9

• AIF Founder Supper Club @ Whiskey Club - Wednesday, January 21

• AIF Founder Supper Club @ Wine Bar - Wednesday, February 18

Interested in meeting the Who’s Who of AI?

The AI Hot 100 Summit is back for its third edition on May 7th, 2026 in New York City. The only AI Summit built for real connections where startup innovation meets enterprise implementation. Join over 500 AI Executive Leaders, Founders and Investors for a jam packed day of enterprise AI lightning talks, innovation showcases, and curated networking.

Get ready to meet and greet speakers and attendees from OpenAI, NVIDIA, Haleon plc, Legora, Anthropic, Cursor, Eleven Labs, Adobe, Walmart, Insight Partners & more.

🗓️ May 7, 2026

📍New York City