The AI Era (2022-)
ChatGPT launches and reaches 100M users in 60 days. GPT-4, Claude, Gemini. The first true generative-AI products ship and immediately become the new computing substrate.
Part of Technology
43 moments in this segment.
- — GPT-4 Released. March 14, 2023. OpenAI releases GPT-4. Multimodal (text + image input), substantially more capable than GPT-3.5. Bar-exam-passing capability. The first AI model that knowledge workers built daily workflows around.
- — Gemini Fake Demo Controversy. December 6, 2023. Google's Gemini intro video edited to look more real-time than it was. The first major AI-marketing credibility scandal; framed how every subsequent AI launch was scrutinised.
- — Sam Altman Fired (and Rehired). November 17-22, 2023. OpenAI board fires Sam Altman on Friday. By Tuesday, 700+ OpenAI employees threaten to follow him to Microsoft. The board reverses. The five wildest days in 21st-century tech.
- — NVIDIA Hits $1 Trillion. May 30, 2023. NVIDIA market cap crosses $1 trillion. AI-training GPU demand drives it to $3.6T by Dec 2024 — the most valuable company in the world. CEO Jensen Huang becomes one of tech's most consequential CEOs of the decade.
- — NVIDIA Hits $1 Trillion. May 30, 2023. NVIDIA crosses $1T market cap on AI demand. Within 18 months: $3.6T — the most valuable company in the world.
- — Jensen Huang Computex Keynote. May 2023. Jensen Huang's Computex keynote in Taipei. The leather jacket. The H100 explainer. The moment NVIDIA stopped being a "gaming card" company and became the AI infrastructure company.
- — Sundar Pichai on Bard Launch. February 6, 2023. Sundar Pichai announces Bard — Google's ChatGPT competitor — three months after ChatGPT. Google's stock drops $100B the next day on a factual error in the demo.
- — iPhone 15 Pro USB-C. September 12, 2023. iPhone 15 Pro switches to USB-C — Apple's response to EU charging-port mandate. The end of Lightning after 11 years.
- — Hank Green iPhone Demo. 2023-2024 viral genre. Tech YouTubers demoing one feature in extreme depth. Hank Green, MKBHD, iJustine, Linus all in their stride. The era when tech reviews became a genre rivaling cable news.
- — Apple Vision Pro. February 2, 2024. Apple Vision Pro ships at $3,499. The most-talked-about consumer tech launch of 2024 but commercial disappointment. Marks the AR/VR plateau and Apple's first major product flop in the modern era.
- — OpenAI Sora. February 15, 2024. OpenAI demos Sora — minute-long photorealistic video from text prompts. Veo (Google, May 2024) and Runway Gen-3 (June 2024) follow within four months. The first commercial-quality text-to-video models.
- — GPT-4o Multimodal. May 13, 2024. OpenAI releases GPT-4o — natively multimodal across text, image, audio. Real-time voice conversation. The first AI assistant that feels like the science-fiction default.
- — Mira Murati Founds Thinking Machines. October 2024. Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati founds Thinking Machines Lab — the highest-profile AI-research spinoff of the decade. Raises $1B at $9B valuation within 4 months. Signals AI talent's ongoing diffusion across labs.
- — OpenAI Sora — Tokyo Walk Demo. February 15, 2024. OpenAI demos Sora — first commercially-quality text-to-video model. The "Tokyo Walk" demo went viral globally; reshaped the AI-video debate overnight.
- — GPT-4o Demo — Live Voice. May 13, 2024. OpenAI demos GPT-4o's real-time voice mode. The Spring Update — natural speech, interruptions, emotional inflection. The first AI assistant that felt like sci-fi default.
- — Claude 3.5 Sonnet Demo — Artifacts. June 20, 2024. Anthropic launches Claude 3.5 Sonnet with Artifacts (side-pane previews of generated code/docs). Reframed AI chat as a workspace. Becomes the developer-AI of choice for the next year.
- — Apple Vision Pro Launch Day. February 2, 2024. Apple Vision Pro ships at $3,499. Launch-day photographs from Apple stores; viral "guy wearing it in public" videos. The most-talked-about flop of 2024.
- — Humane AI Pin Demo. April 2024. Humane AI Pin launch reviews — Marques Brownlee's "Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed" became one of the most-cited tech-review takedowns of the decade.
- — Apple Intelligence Keynote. June 10, 2024. Apple announces Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024. "AI for the rest of us." Partnership with OpenAI; on-device processing.
- — Meta Llama 3 Launch. April 18, 2024. Meta releases Llama 3 — open-source flagship LLM. Mark Zuckerberg: "open-source is the future of AI." Sets the open-vs-closed-AI battle for the next 18 months.
- — Devin AI — First Software Engineer Agent. March 12, 2024. Cognition Labs unveils Devin — pitched as the first AI software engineer. Demo videos go viral; controversies follow about how doctored some demos were. Defined the agentic-AI hype cycle.
- — Mira Murati Announces Thinking Machines. October 2024. Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announces Thinking Machines Lab. Within 4 months: $1B raise at $9B valuation. Most-watched AI-lab founding announcement since OpenAI.
- — Cursor IDE Goes Viral. June 2024. Cursor — the AI-native VS Code fork — goes viral in tech-Twitter. By end of 2024, $100M ARR. The first AI-native IDE to find product-market fit.
- — Sam Altman on Lex Fridman. March 18, 2024. Sam Altman's second Lex Fridman podcast. 2.5 hours. Covers the November 2023 board firing, Q*, AGI timelines. One of the most-referenced AI interviews of 2024.
- — WWDC 2024 Keynote. June 10, 2024. Apple WWDC 2024. Apple Intelligence reveal. Tim Cook in person; massive emphasis on on-device processing as differentiator from cloud-AI competitors.
- — NVIDIA GTC 2024 — Blackwell Reveal. March 18, 2024. Jensen Huang reveals NVIDIA Blackwell at GTC. The chip that powered every flagship AI model launched in late 2024 and 2025.
- — Starship IFT-5 Booster Catch. October 13, 2024. SpaceX catches the returning Super Heavy booster with the launch tower's chopstick arms. The most replayed aerospace footage of the decade.
- — Claude Computer Use Demo. October 22, 2024. Anthropic ships "Computer Use" — Claude can take screenshots and control a mouse + keyboard. The first widely-deployed AI agent that operates a real computer. Defines the 2025 agent-AI roadmap.
- — Tesla Cybercab + Robovan Reveal. October 10, 2024. Tesla's "We, Robot" event. Cybercab two-seater autonomous taxi + Robovan. Stock drops 9% next day. Defines the autonomy-vs-execution debate in EVs.
- — Figure 01 + OpenAI Demo. March 13, 2024. Figure 01 humanoid robot demo with OpenAI conversation backend. Asked to identify items, hand over an apple, explain why. The most-viewed humanoid-robot demo since Boston Dynamics.
- — Tesla Optimus Walks Among Crowd. October 2024. Tesla Optimus humanoids serve drinks at the "We, Robot" event. Skeptics quickly determined they were tele-operated; controversy around AI vs. teleoperation framing.
- — Boston Dynamics Atlas Goodbye + Hello. April 16-17, 2024. Boston Dynamics retires the hydraulic Atlas with a "farewell" video; reveals all-electric Atlas the next day. The most-watched robotics handoff in history.
- — OpenAI Sora API Open. December 9, 2024. OpenAI ships Sora to ChatGPT Plus + Pro subscribers. First widely-available text-to-video product to consumers.
- — DeepSeek is a Game Changer for AI — Computerphile. In January 2025 the open-source DeepSeek R1 reasoning model rivalled the best proprietary models at a fraction of the cost, upending the AI industry.
- — GPT-4o Image Generation. March 25, 2025. OpenAI releases GPT-4o's native image generation. Within hours: "Ghibli-style" pictures of every famous photograph flood social media. The most-discussed AI release of 2025.
- — Manus AI Agent Demo. March 2025. Chinese startup Manus releases an autonomous AI agent demo that goes viral globally. The agent-AI hype cycle peaks; thousands sign up for invite-only access in 24 hours.
- — Claude Code Released. February 2025. Anthropic releases Claude Code — agentic coding from the terminal. Within months, default daily-driver for many engineers; the productivity-AI category continues its consolidation around Claude.
- — Claude Opus 4 Launch. May 2025. Anthropic ships Claude Opus 4 — frontier reasoning model. Sustained 7-hour autonomous coding tasks. The release that solidified Anthropic's position alongside OpenAI at the AI frontier.
- — Gemini 2.5 Pro Released. March 2025. Google DeepMind ships Gemini 2.5 Pro — first to top LMSYS leaderboard above OpenAI/Anthropic in all major categories. Google's comeback in the AI race becomes real.
- — Apple Foundation Models. June 9, 2025. WWDC 2025: Apple opens its on-device Foundation Models to third-party developers. The first major mobile-AI platform shift since the iPhone.
- — Cursor Hits $100M ARR. January 2025. Cursor (Anysphere) crosses $100M ARR; closes $105M Series C at $2.6B valuation. The first AI-native IDE to scale to enterprise revenue.
- — GPT-5 Launch Demo. August 2025. OpenAI ships GPT-5 — unified model spanning text + image + code + reasoning. The model-class boundary that closed most measurable gaps to human-expert performance.
- — GPT-5. 2025. OpenAI ships GPT-5 — extended thinking, agentic workflows, unified text+image+code reasoning. The model class that closes most measurable gaps between AI and human-expert performance.
