Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5, which it says comes close to Fable 5 performance at half the price; it is the new default model on Claude Max
Claude Opus 5 is available today. It's a thoughtful and proactive model that comes close to the frontier intelligence of Claude Fable 5 at half the price.
Sources: OpenAI's models breached Hugging Face from July 11 to 13 and OpenAI realized their models were behind the hack several days later
The OpenAI agent that broke into tech firm Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn't notice until well after the threat …
In their letter defending open-weight AI, tech companies urge lawmakers to avoid “premature restrictions” that “stifle competition or drive innovation overseas”
Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir and more than 20 other companies released a letter on Friday urging policymakers …
Sources: OpenAI and Anthropic quietly lobby Washington regulators to restrict open-source AI models, even as Sam Altman publicly says he supports open source AI
Anthropic and OpenAI are clashing with the rest of the tech industry over whether “open-source” models from China should be freely available or restricted.
Nvidia plans to invest $1B in Naver to help finance an AI data center in South Korea, and partners with SK Group to build more than 2 GW of AI data centers
Nvidia Corp. will invest $1 billion in Naver Corp. to help finance an AI data center under construction in South Korea …
The DOJ is prosecuting a Cop City protester for allegedly providing CBP with a “duress” passcode that wiped the contents of his GrapheneOS phone
Concern over US effort to prosecute Sam Tunick, accused by authorities of wiping his phone using GrapheneOS
Sources: Apple has pitched Trump on using Chinese memory chips in its products sold outside the US; Micron warned such a plan could destroy the US chip industry
Two of the president's priorities—cutting prices for U.S. consumers and increasing domestic semiconductor output—come into conflict
A joint preliminary evaluation by the UK's AISI and the US' CAISI finds Kimi K3 trails leading US frontier closed weight models on cyber capability
The UK Artificial Intelligence Security Institute (UK AISI) and the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) (UK AISI / CAISI) …
Sources: Waymo is exploring exiting its Uber partnership, with their relationship souring amid an intense lobbying battle over the future of robotaxis
Partnership between two groups has soured amid intense lobbying battle over rollout of autonomous vehicles
Samsung announces a $200B+ contract to make chips for Broadcom through 2030, focusing on its 2nm and below process technologies for Broadcom's products
Samsung Electronics Co. won a contract worth more than $200 billion to make chips for Broadcom Inc., as the companies race to win a larger share of the AI infrastructure market.
Cognition acquires the makers of Poke, an AI assistant that users can access via messaging services, in a deal valuing Poke's parent in the “low nine figures”
Poke, the AI assistant you text like a friend, is making its next big move. The company behind the assistant …
As student protests spread across India, Narendra Modi turns to Reels, swapping his trademark cinematic videos for self-recorded messages aimed at Gen Z
As student protests spread across India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has turned to Meta Platforms Inc.'s Instagram Reels …
China's market regulator says it had fined and confiscated ~$770M from Trip.com for abusing its dominant position in the domestic online hotel-booking market
China's market regulator said on Saturday it had fined and confiscated a total of 5.2 billion yuan ($770 million) from Trip.com Group …
A profile of Hangzhou-based Unitree, which shipped 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025, accounting for 25%+ of the global market, as it prepares for a Shanghai IPO
Spectators typically leave a UFC fight with ringing ears and a sheepish resolve to get back to the gym. Wang Xingxing went straight to his laboratory.
Meshy, whose AI-powered tech lets users generate 3D assets from text and image prompts, raised a ~$400M Series B at a $1.5B valuation
- Meshy raises nearly $400 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, which it says is the largest round any dedicated AI-3D company has raised.
Sources: DeepSeek told investors it is suspending its second funding round after remarks attributed to Liang Wenfeng on US-China AI competition went viral
DeepSeek has told prospective investors in its second fundraising round that it's suspending the deal for now, people familiar with the matter said …
Verizon CEO Dan Schulman says Verizon will provide dark-fiber connectivity for Google's data centers in a $1B+ deal, with more such deals in the pipeline
Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said on Friday the company has secured a deal with Google (GOOGL.O), valued at more than $1 billion …
Trump says the US will initiate a probe into the EU's practice of “robbing” US tech giants with fines, threatening the bloc with “substantial” tariffs
Several universities including Yale, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Waterloo have restricted or disabled their use of AI detectors over accuracy concerns
Some institutions are overhauling assessment and trying to move away from the emphasis on surveillance
SK Group Chair Chey Tae Won says Anthropic has asked SK Hynix for supplies to make its own chips, calling it remarkable that an AI developer has chip ambitions
AI developer Anthropic PBC has asked SK Hynix Inc., one of the world's biggest manufacturers of memory chips …
Sources: Prentis, which develops computer use models and is co-founded by Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus, is in talks to raise $100M at a $1B valuation
Prentis, a new AI research lab focused on computer use models, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das and tech heavyweights Reid Hoffman …
Neocloud Fluidstack, which has partnered with Anthropic, announces that it raised an $830M Series A led by Situational Awareness at a $7.5B valuation in January
Fluidstack Ltd., a startup helping Anthropic PBC build artificial intelligence data centers, has raised $830 million in funding.
Candid Health, which develops tech and AI agents to automate medical billing and claims processing workflows, raised a $120M Series D led by Sixth Street Growth
Candid Health cofounder Doug Proctor spun his laptop around to show me a herd of wild horses grazing behind him in upstate New York during our first Zoom call.
Progress Software agrees to acquire Domo's AI and data platform business for $400M; Domo will remain publicly listed and change its name after the deal closes
Progress Software said it will acquire Domo's AI and data platform business for $400 million. — According to Progress Software …
A profile of Yang Zhilin, founder of Moonshot AI, which faced early doubts over revenue and model capabilities before its Kimi K3 delivered a “DeepSeek moment”
Known as ‘Yang the genius’ by classmates, his new K3 model has closed the gap with leading US rivals
Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and others sign a letter defending open-weight AI models; Jensen Huang, in his first X post, says open models strengthen cybersecurity
Many of the largest U.S. tech companies signed a joint letter on Friday defending open-source AI software as the Trump administration …
Meta launches Facebook Verified, a free program it says will verify that users are real humans by analyzing a facial recognition selfie and assigning badges
An appeals court narrowly blocks Texas from enforcing a monitoring and filtering requirement under its children's online safety law, over Section 230 preemption
Analysis: US tech companies have cut ~140K jobs YTD, or more than 33% of announced US layoffs in 2026, with ~50K cuts from Amazon, Oracle, Meta, and Microsoft
Investment spree is reshaping Silicon Valley while wider US jobs market holds steady — US tech companies have shed nearly 140,000 jobs since …
Facebook plans to test a full-screen “immersive video” player when users open the app, replacing the newsfeed, in select international markets this year
Anthropic says Opus 5 is the company's “most aligned model to date”; it is Anthropic's fourth model release in less than two months
Madison Mills /Axios:
Anthropic expects Opus 5 “classifiers to intervene around 85% less often than they do for Fable 5”; Opus 5 is not included in its 30-day data retention policy
Igor Bonifacic /Engadget:
Midjourney bought astrology app Co-Star, which uses AI to offer personalized advice, in the spring and is building its first standalone image-generation app
An OpenAI staffer says the Hugging Face breach is “a big warning shot” externally but internally “related incidents have been happening for a while”
Harry Booth /Time:
World Foundation, the nonprofit behind the World protocol, raised $52.5M led by Pantera through a strategic sale of its WLD token with a one-year lockup
Nvidia and SK Group unveil a $500B+ AI initiative that includes an SK Hynix partnership to secure next-gen memory supply for Nvidia and joint development of HBM
Meta updates Meta AI with Muse Spark 1.1-powered agentic capabilities, connecting to Gmail and Google Calendar to perform tasks like creating daily updates
Letter: Qualcomm tells customers it plans to raise prices by double digit percentage points, after exhausting its ability to absorb higher costs from suppliers
The US, China, and other APEC economies release a statement supporting open models, while emphasizing respect for security, data protection, and IP rights
Sources: CXMT expelled Huawei-linked SiCarrier staff from its R&D zone amid a pricing dispute, as Chinese memory makers flex their newfound clout to hike prices
After a backlash, Meta pauses its plan to “rate limit” Conversation Focus, an accessibility feature for its glasses that runs on-device
Opus 5 improves coding, reasoning efficiency, and prompt-cache-friendly tool use, and is priced at $5/1M input tokens and $25/1M output, same as Opus 4.8
I do not have to sell my kidney for using it? [embedded post]