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Illia Polosukhin on NEAR AI and Decentralized Private AI

Illia Polosukhin, co‑founder of NEAR AI and co‑author of the Transformer paper “Attention Is All You Need,” discusses building a private, decentralized AI stack atop the NEAR blockchain. He recounts NEAR MainNet’s October 2020 launch and NEAR AI’s 2024 relaunch, and describes products including NEAR AI Cloud, IronClaw, confidential compute, NEAR Intents and an Agent Market for matching natural‑language requests to agents. Polosukhin argues TEEs (with MPC for key generation) are the only currently feasible path for confidential inference, while FHE remains too slow. He outlines limits for multi‑node confidential pretraining today, highlights trends toward smaller specialized models and mixture‑of‑experts, and predicts agentic commerce (agents with wallets using stablecoins) and greater emphasis on privacy and user data ownership.

Flink: Billion-Valuation Rise and Near-Insolvency

In an OMR Podcast interview, Flink founder Oliver Merkel recounts the rapid rise and near-collapse of the grocery delivery startup. Flink grew from launch to €80 million revenue in its first year, achieved a valuation above $2 billion and received early acquisition interest from Gopuff. Merkel attributes competitive advantage to an early purchasing deal with Rewe (better wholesale prices) and an extensive micro‑hub logistics setup. He says the company faced a cash crisis at the end of 2023 after an investor withdrew a funding commitment, forcing talks with potential buyers including Getir; Flink ultimately secured financing, avoided a sale, returned to profitability and continued operations. Merkel also discusses the marketing origin of the 10‑minute delivery promise, early operational errors (e.g., inventory “Banana Gate”) and his plans for a new venture called Blocks.

Nano Banana 2 Near Launch: Google Clues

Google is expected to roll out Nano Banana 2, the next iteration of its AI image-generation models, following Nano Banana (2025) and Nano Banana Pro. The article notes that Nano Banana has already appeared in multiple Google environments including AI Mode, Lens, NotebookLM, and Chrome, with a broader rollout teased. Public signals about Nano Banana 2 come from Google insiders on X, including Logan Kilpatrick (Google AI Studio, Gemini API) and Ammaar Reshi (Product Lead for Google AI Studio), who used playful banana emojis that fans interpret as hints. Additional indicators include mentions that Nano Banana 2 could appear as Gemini 3.1 Flash Image in Vertex AI catalog and that various sightings refer to Nano Banana Flash/Flash 2 with Gemini 3.1 Flash Preview in TestingCatalog Arena. The official name and release window remain unconfirmed, though Google is expected to share details on naming, features, pricing, and availability. An Ads feature is cited for asset suggestions.