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AI Daily Brief — 4 April 2025

Microsoft turned 50 and used the moment to ship its biggest Copilot upgrade in two years. China answered Trump’s Liberation Day with a flat 34% retaliatory tariff on all US imports. Tech megacaps shed $1.8T over the two-day rout. Llama 4 was being teed up for Saturday.

Top stories

  • Microsoft 50th Anniversary Copilot overhaul. Satya Nadella and Mustafa Suleyman unveiled Memory & Personalization, Actions (autonomous task agents for tickets/reservations/shopping via Expedia, OpenTable), Pages canvas, Shopping assistant, Deep Research mode, AI Podcasts (two-AI conversation generated from notes/links), Copilot Vision expansion to Windows and mobile, and custom Copilot avatars. The event reunited Gates, Ballmer and Nadella. via Microsoft
  • China imposes 34% retaliatory tariff on ALL US goods. Beijing announced a flat 34% additional tariff on all US imports effective April 10, plus new export restrictions, trade-sanction list additions and government investigations. Direct response to Trump’s 34% reciprocal tariff on Chinese imports. China’s commerce ministry called it ‘typical unilateral bullying.’ via CNBC
  • Markets bloodbath day 2 — Mag 7 sheds $1.8T over two days. NVIDIA fell ~7.5% (closing near $94.31, down from $110 on Apr 2), AMD plunged ~8.9%. NVIDIA alone shed ~$393B in market cap across the two sessions. Nasdaq logged its worst weekly drop in five years on tariff/recession panic. via CNBC
  • SandboxAQ closes $450M+ Series E at $5.75B. Alphabet spinout added Ray Dalio, Horizon Kinetics, BNP Paribas, Google and NVIDIA as investors. Total raised since 2022 spinout: ~$950M. Capital targets Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) for biopharma, materials science, cybersecurity and finance. via SandboxAQ
  • Semiconductors carved out of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs — TSMC reprieve. Analysts confirmed semis exempt from the Apr 2 package (Taiwan was hit with 32% on other goods). Andy Hsu framed the exemption as the payoff of TSMC’s earlier $100B US investment pledge (Mar 3). The White House signaled chips ‘will be addressed separately,’ leaving future tariff risk open. via Taipei Times

Who shipped

Microsoft ran the day — the Copilot overhaul touched memory, autonomous actions, canvases, vision and avatars in one package. Apple shipped visionOS 2.4, bringing the first Apple Intelligence features (Writing Tools) to Vision Pro along with a new iPhone-side companion app.

Open-source pulse

Llama 4 leak teasers circulated through tech press and AI Twitter ahead of Meta’s Saturday launch. Meta‘s Llama 4 Scout + Maverick (plus Behemoth tease) was 24 hours away.

Money, infra & hardware

SandboxAQ’s $450M+ Series E at $5.75B shows quantum/large-quantitative-models pulling capital even through the tariff rout. NVIDIA participating signals the strategic angle on cross-domain scientific AI.

Quiet corners

No major Anthropic or OpenAI launches dated Apr 4. No notable arxiv landmark.

By the numbers

  • 34% — China’s flat retaliatory tariff on all US goods (effective Apr 10)
  • $1.8T — Magnificent 7 market-cap loss over two days
  • $393B — NVIDIA two-day market-cap drop
  • $450M+ / $5.75B / $950M — SandboxAQ Series E / valuation / cumulative funding
  • 7+ — distinct Copilot features unveiled at Microsoft 50
  • Most-mentioned company: Microsoft

Compiled by AI Feed’s editor from verified web sources for 4 April 2025.