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- Talent Wars, Open-Source Power Plays & Monetising Your Data: AI Moves SMBs Need to Know — Your 3-Minute Brief (July 7 ’25)
Talent Wars, Open-Source Power Plays & Monetising Your Data: AI Moves SMBs Need to Know — Your 3-Minute Brief (July 7 ’25)
Cyrus Shirazian
July 07, 2025
AI Headlines of Past Week
1. Meta Hires Key OpenAI Researchers for its AI Lab
Meta recruited eight key researchers from OpenAI (creators of GPT-4.1) with huge salary offers—up to $300 million over four years.
Why This Matters:
Top AI talent is becoming very expensive and harder to hire.
More competition between major AI companies may lower prices for businesses.
Your own team members could become targets for recruiting.
What You Should Do:
Document your AI processes clearly, so knowledge doesn't leave with staff.
Consider multiple AI providers (Meta, Anthropic, open-source) in your budget.
Review staff bonuses and incentives now to avoid losing key employees.
2. Powerful New AI Models from China Now Free to Use
Chinese tech giants Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu released powerful AI models (Hunyuan-A13B, Qwen VLo, and ERNIE 4.5) for free. These models are as good or better than some OpenAI tools.
Why This Matters:
Cheaper and more accessible AI options.
SMBs can now easily use powerful AI models without big investments.
Better global communication with multilingual AI tools.
What You Should Do:
Test one of these free models to see if it meets your needs at lower cost.
Update your checklist for choosing AI providers, looking at licenses and user community support.
Invest savings into building internal AI expertise.
3. Cloudflare Makes Websites Charge for AI Access
Cloudflare is now blocking AI crawlers by default and lets website owners charge AI companies for access. Big publishers have already joined.
Why This Matters:
SMBs can start making money from their website data.
Your brand’s online visibility could decrease if AI can't access your content.
Businesses now have more say in how their data gets used.
What You Should Do:
Decide clearly which of your web pages are free, paid, or private.
Ensure your own AI tools can still legally access necessary external content.
Update your website content so AI can effectively summarize and share it.