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Week 35, 2025

AI Growth Intelligence: Week 35, 2025

Weekly AI industry briefing: ai agent frameworks proliferate, $205M in funding, and growth strategy insights.

Top Stories

AI Agent Frameworks Proliferate

LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, and 20+ frameworks compete to define the standard for building AI agents.

AI-First Startups Raise Record Capital

AI-native companies raise $28B in H1 2025, exceeding all of 2024 combined.

GPT-4o Launches with Native Multimodal

OpenAI combines vision, voice, and text in a single model, dropping API prices 50%.

RAG Becomes Enterprise Standard

Retrieval-augmented generation adopted by 60% of enterprise AI deployments as the default architecture.

Tool Launches & Updates

New

NotebookLM

Major update bringing improved performance, lower latency, and enterprise-grade security features.

New

ChatGPT Enterprise

Major update bringing improved performance, lower latency, and enterprise-grade security features.

New

Udio

Major update bringing improved performance, lower latency, and enterprise-grade security features.

Funding & Deals

CompanyAmountStage
Perplexity$25MSeries A
Dagster$95MSeries B
MLflow$30MSeed
Cerebras$55MSeries A

Key Trends

  • ▲ AI search products gaining traction against traditional search engines
  • ▲ AI regulation creating new compliance requirements and markets
  • ▲ Inference cost reduction making AI accessible to smaller companies
  • ▲ Multimodal AI combining text, vision, and audio in unified models
  • ▲ Enterprise AI moving from proof-of-concept to production deployment

Ehsan's Weekly Analysis

RAG is not a technology choice — it is a business decision. Companies using RAG-based architectures are shipping production AI 3x faster than those training custom models. The funding data this week reveals a maturing market. MLflow and Cerebras both raised rounds focused on go-to-market execution, not R&D. This is the transition from "can AI do this?" to "how fast can we deploy AI into paying workflows?" The companies that answer the second question fastest will own their categories. Do not wait for the perfect model. Deploy with what works today and iterate. Perfection is the enemy of production.

Weekly Overview

Week 35 of 2025 delivered meaningful shifts in the AI industry. AI Agent Frameworks Proliferate — langchain, crewai, autogen, and 20+ frameworks compete to define the standard for building ai agents. At the same time, ai-first startups raise record capital, with ai-native companies raise $28b in h1 2025, exceeding all of 2024 combined.

Market Dynamics

AI funding activity this week totaled $205M across 8 deals. Perplexity led with $25M (Series A), reflecting strong investor appetite for edtech AI applications. Neon and Meta AI both announced product expansions targeting the healthcare market.

Growth Leader Takeaways

RAG is not a technology choice — it is a business decision. Companies using RAG-based architectures are shipping production AI 3x faster than those training custom models. This week reinforces a pattern I have seen across dozens of deployments: the gap between AI experimentation and AI production is where most companies stall. OpenAI combines vision, voice, and text in a single model, dropping API prices 50%.

The logistics sector is one to watch. Early adopters using NotebookLM and ChatGPT Enterprise report 25-40% efficiency improvements in core workflows. Do not wait for the perfect model. Deploy with what works today and iterate. Perfection is the enemy of production.

EJ

Ehsan Jahandarpour

AI Growth Strategist & Fractional CMO

Forbes Top 20 Growth Hacker · TEDx Speaker · 716 Academic Citations · Ex-Microsoft · CMO at FirstWave (ASX:FCT) · Forbes Communications Council

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened in AI during Week 35 of 2025?
Major developments included ai agent frameworks proliferate and ai-first startups raise record capital. Total funding: $205M.
What AI trends defined Week 35 of 2025?
AI search products gaining traction against traditional search engines. AI regulation creating new compliance requirements and markets.
How much was raised in AI funding?
$205M across 8 deals, led by Perplexity.