🔥 Story Of The Week: Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.5, claiming it is now the world's best coding model. The new model showcases improved capabilities for building autonomous agents and can maintain focus on complex tasks for over 30 hours.
⭐️ Must Reads: Stanford researchers used AI to design and create the first functional genomes in a lab. On the product front, OpenAI launched its advanced Sora 2 video model alongside a new social app, sparking both excitement and concern. The entertainment industry pushed back against AI, with Hollywood rejecting the AI-generated 'actress' Tilly Norwood. Underpinning all this, OpenAI secured a massive memory chip supply from Samsung and SK Hynix for its Stargate project.
🧰 Technology: Google DeepMind took a major step toward general-purpose robots, unveiling new models that allow robots to 'think' before acting. For developers, Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab launched Tinker, a new tool for fine-tuning AI models. Chinese firm DeepSeek also released an experimental model that uses 'sparse attention' to significantly cut processing costs.
📊 Business: Microsoft is further integrating AI into daily work, launching 'vibe working' agent modes for its Office apps. Enterprise demand is fueling growth, with Anthropic announcing plans to triple its international workforce. Major pharmaceutical companies are now uniting to share proprietary data to train a common AI for drug discovery.
📝 Policy: California has passed a landmark AI transparency law, requiring large AI companies to disclose their safety protocols. In a more reactive move, OpenAI rolled out new parental controls for ChatGPT following safety concerns and legal challenges. The legal battles also continue as Apple has filed a motion to dismiss Elon Musk's antitrust lawsuit over its OpenAI partnership.
⚡ Startups: The race to build AI hardware continues as Cerebras Systems raised $1.1 billion in a pre-IPO funding round to challenge Nvidia. In a move to reduce its own Nvidia dependency, Meta acquired RISC-V chip startup Rivos. The new owners of Electronic Arts plan to leverage AI to manage debt from the recent $55 billion acquisition.
