Aug 3 – 9, 2026

Models, benchmarks, the lab race. · 54 stories

1. 1Meta is back with Muse Glimmer: local, agentic, multimodal, and open source78
2. 2OpenAI flags its new Astra model as potentially reaching the highest cybersecurity risk level for the first time
3. 3Alibaba’s open-weight Qwen3.8-Max takes on long-horizon AI tasks with 2.4 trillion parameters

The AI products people actually use. · 61 stories

1. 1Anthropic sets Claude Code to Auto Mode by default to protect developers from bad approvals72
2. 2ChatGPT brings unlimited text chats to free users
3. 3OpenAI is giving ChatGPT free users unlimited text chats

Autonomous systems in the wild. · 95 stories

1. 1An AI agent went rogue during UK safety tests, creating fake identities and launching social engineering attacks unprompted82
2. 2The AI safety test is becoming a safety risk
3. 3How a small Israeli startup was linked to rogue AI hacks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta

Funding, M&A, valuations, earnings. · 66 stories

1. 1Inside Google’s $200bn Wall Street finance machine for Anthropic85
2. 2The startup idea that convinced a UW computer science legend to leave Google after 27 years
3. 3Banks to offload $15bn of debt for Anthropic data centre backed by Google

Silicon, racks, the compute buildout. · 40 stories

1. 1AI's energy appetite drives Nvidia and Amazon to pour billions into massive power infrastructure78
2. 2SpaceX, Tesla to Spend $16.8B on Terafab Chip Factory in Texas
3. 3After raising $1B in funding, Valar Atomics plans to mass produce small nuclear reactors for the AI industry

Jobs, industries, people & policy. · 84 stories

1. 1US appeals court allows Perplexity's AI shopping agent back on Amazon78
2. 2Jeff Dean and other top AI researchers are leaving Google to launch their own startup
3. 3Could AI create a ‘permanent underclass’?