a16z’s $35M Academy Ties Training to Provider Compute
a16z invested $35 million in an unaccredited two-year academy expected to receive compute from Anthropic, Meta, and others. The design joins education, infrastructure, credentials, and routes into employment.
Amazon says it blocked Meta's Muse AI agent from accessing Amazon.com to shop on users' behalf, citing ToS violations, security risks, and no merchant consent
Amazon says it has cut off Meta's new Muse personal AI agent from shopping on Amazon.com on behalf of customers …
Google unveils Googlebook hardware, with flagship devices from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, offering deep Android integration, coming in October for $899+
Googlebook OS hands-on: It's Android, stupid — Software — Google's main pitch is that Googlebooks should be the laptop of choice for those with Android phones:
Mac Studio (M5 Ultra) with 256 GB of RAM review: a dream machine to run local AI agents and a massive leap over M3 Ultra for prompt processing and generation
For the past few days, I've been testing the (currently) top-of-the-line M5 Ultra Mac Studio with 256 GB of RAM.
OpenAI says automated research could improve alignment, but “fully autonomous RSI is not happening today” and shouldn't be pursued “until it can be done safely”
Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5.5, its first model since Dario Amodei's “pace the frontier” essay, and says it has enhanced safeguards to combat risky behavior
Claude Opus 5.5 comes with improvements to certain behaviors, like attempting to escape testing environments.
Xiaomi debuts open-weight omnimodal models MiMo-V2.6 Pro and Flash; Pro allegedly performs “on par with Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol across most agent benchmarks”
Frontier intelligence, all the modalities, built in public. Today, we are releasing and open-sourcing the MiMo-V2.6 series.
SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.7, which it says is better at verifying its own work and managing longer context, available for $2/1M input and $6/1M output tokens
SpaceXAI's most powerful model for coding and knowledge work. Twice as fast, at half the price of comparable models.
OpenAI launches GPT-6 Sol and Luna, saying Sol makes about half as many mistakes as GPT-5.6 Sol and Luna matches GPT-5.6 Sol's performance at ~1% of the cost
GPT-6 Sol and Luna arrive less than three months after GPT-5.6, with OpenAI claiming major accuracy gains, dramatic cost reductions …
OpenAI says it is working with an independent math advisory group to responsibly share AI advances, following an open letter raising concerns from researchers
Loading... On August 28, we began training a new internal model. In addition to resolving the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem, this model has now resolved …
Microsoft lays off 268 Xbox staffers across Halo and other studios, as part of an ongoing gaming “reset”; Activision will take over Halo and two other games
Deals to sell off Ninja Theory fell through over the summer. … Microsoft is laying off around 260 Xbox employees today …
Source: before the Hugging Face incident, OpenAI was negotiating a legally binding deal with Anthropic for the companies to stress-test each other's models
OpenAI is rethinking a range of safety strategies as it responds to fears from employees and others about the dangers its AI poses.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signs seven bills aimed at regulating data centers, imposing requirements on electricity costs, water use, and local oversight
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday signed seven bills aimed at regulating the fast-growing data center industry …
ShinyHunters claims it used an Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day to hack FBI-related services and steal employee and applicant data; it also defaced the FBI jobs site
A sample of 5,000 alleged agents seen by 404 Media includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and details on FBI employees' spouses.
Sources: Xi Jinping is unlikely to bring corporate executives to his DC summit with Trump; industry officials expected them at a dinner with top US tech CEOs
Expectations for major business deals fade, although preparations are continuing — WASHINGTON—Chinese leader Xi Jinping …
Ireland's DPC fines Google €403M over how it processed location data after complaints from European consumer rights groups, and gives it six months to comply
Ireland's media watchdog has fined Alphabet Inc.'s Google over how the tech company processed location data after complaints …
In his UN General Assembly speech, Trump rejects a “globalist scheme to control” AI, saying the US is “leading now over China by a lot and everyone else”
President says US is 'leading over China by a lot and everyone else, and we're going to keep it that way'
Intel closes up 12%, AMD 10%, and Arm 17% on Monday amid investor optimism that Meta's Muse could boost CPU demand; AMD's market cap tops $1T for the first time
Advanced Micro Devices' market valuation surpasses $1 trillion for the first time in intraday trading.
Apple unveils Apple Music Hall, a 600-person live music venue built in its London headquarters at Battersea Power Station with two recording and mixing studios
This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more. … Apple has just announced a new live music venue, built into its London headquarters at Battersea Power Station.
Sources: SoftBank's SB Energy has delayed its IPO, originally planned for this month, as investors question the company's sought-after valuation of $50B+
Several companies tied to the data center industry have delayed their initial public offerings amid the increasing public backlash to these energy guzzling facilities.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says he plans to use the UK's upcoming G20 presidency to broker a global AI governance deal, ahead of the UN General Assembly
Andy Burnham says the U.K. is “uniquely positioned” to broker international cooperation in the wake of dire AI warnings.
Harvey, Abridge, Ramp, Rogo, and other AI startups are embracing open-weight models or training their own models to reduce expensive reliance on frontier labs
The $15.6 billion legal startup Harvey built its business around training AI models like OpenAI's GPT-4 to do specialized work for lawyers.
Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, both on TSMC's 2nm process, with two 5GHz prime cores and six 4GHz performance cores
Extreme by name, extreme by nature — Qualcomm has announced not one, but two new flagship mobile chipsets at its annual Snapdragon Summit …
Sources: the Cyberspace Administration of China is investigating DeepSeek and Moonshot over alleged data leaks to Anthropic via Claude and has questioned staff
China's internet regulator is investigating DeepSeek and Moonshot AI after Anthropic alleged both companies had been routing sensitive user data …
ShinyHunters hijacked the dark web site of cybercrime gang Cl0p, set an eight-figure extortion demand, describing the amount as “2.333%” of Cl0p's net worth
The ShinyHunters extortion group hijacked the dark web leak site of the prolific Cl0p ransomware gang, according to material posted on the site over the weekend.
Source: Xbox plans to lay off hundreds of employees this week in its second major staff cut in 2026, as it also plans to consolidate several of its game studios
Xbox is planning to lay off hundreds of employees this week in its second major staff reduction this year, according to someone briefed on the plans.
Apple announces new $350 Beats 360 headphones, with IPX4 rating, swappable ear cups, a replaceable battery, ANC, Find My support, and more
Everyone has seen someone at the gym or running around their neighborhood wearing headphones that were never designed for workouts. Quite often those headphones are Beats.
Some universities have barred using AI detectors due to student-instructor distrust over false positives; some educators have just cancelled writing assignments
Professors are tearing their hair out over AI detectors. — Timothy Paustian has tried everything to stop his students from writing essays with AI.
British Columbia sues OpenAI for alleged safety violations and negligence for failing to flag the Tumbler Ridge shooting suspect's ChatGPT activity to police
The lawsuit alleges AI company failed to notify law enforcement, calls out product safety gaps — British Columbia filed a lawsuit …
Sources: Apple is developing prototypes for a screenless health and fitness tracker similar to Whoop but hasn't decided whether to release the product
Apple Inc. is developing a screenless health and fitness tracker similar to Whoop Inc.'s wrist-worn device, part of an effort to rethink …
In his UN General Assembly speech, President Trump says the US is “officially” renaming AI to “super intelligence” because “artificial” makes it sound fake
The president claims the word ‘artificial’ makes intelligence fake.
Finnish neocloud startup Verda raised $189M led by Emergence at a $1B+ valuation and aims to raise up to $1.5B in equity and debt in 2026 and up to $10B in 2027
Cloud startup Verda has raised $189 million in fresh financing, underscoring continued investor appetite for the infrastructure powering the artificial intelligence boom.
Binance acquires a $100M stake in Circle, and both companies sign a five-year deal that pays the crypto exchange to promote the USDC stablecoin on its platform
Binance bought $100 million of Circle shares as the companies signed a five-year deal that pays the crypto exchange to promote the USDC stablecoin on its platform.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu says the company plans to train a 5T- to 10T-parameter AI model, as it lays out a sweeping push across AI models, chips, and data centers
Alibaba Group (9988.HK) plans to train a new artificial intelligence model with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters …
Cisco Talos releases CAIRN, an open-source framework designed to classify and analyze AI-integrated malware by tracking AI metadata and behavioral fingerprints
Cisco Talos researchers created a new framework for identifying malware and hacking tools that rely on AI chatbots—and quickly discovered something unusual.
Apple Mac Studio (M5 Ultra) review: top benchmark scores, but it costs around twice as much as the M5 Max model without delivering nearly double the performance
here's what's comingRajat Saini /The Mac Observer:Mac Studio's real-world surprise is its much faster SSDAustin Blake /iPhone in Canada:M6 Mac mini, M5 Ultra Mac Studio Reviews Are In: What Everyone I...
DoorDash agrees to a $131.5M settlement with NYC's DCWP to resolve a year-plus investigation into its compliance with the city's 2023 delivery driver pay law
DoorDash will pay $131.5 million to settle an investigation by New York City regulators into the company's compliance with pay laws for food-delivery workers.
The EU proposes rules requiring data centers with a capacity of 500+ kW to disclose their energy and water efficiency using an EU-designed labeling system
San Francisco sues Trump Media & Technology, claiming its Truth API service violates California's Unfair Competition Law by creating an insider trading market
The city attorney argued that the service, available for up to $100,000 a month, could allow wealthy traders to manipulate the market …
Sources: multiple staff at the UK's AISI have been signed off work with stress, as tight model release schedules and AI fears lead to low morale and burnout
Top researchers at Aisi, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind report burnout and stress over developing powerful AI
Nat Friedman says Meta built Muse “from scratch” but was “heavily inspired” by OpenClaw, as users compare the two, including calling Muse “OpenClaw for normies”
Early adopters of Meta's Muse have been speculating that the reason the AI works …
A researcher says a flaw in Meta's Muse Mac app lets any app or terminal command access users' Muse authentication tokens; Meta says it issued a hotfix
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has gone to great lengths to hype the security of its new AI assistant Muse, claiming it is …
Crypto super PAC Fairshake plans to launch a $30M ad blitz against former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown in the Ohio Senate race, after the Clarity Act failed
Adobe launches its free Premiere video editing app on Android, nearly a year after its iOS launch, to replace Premiere Rush, set to lose support on September 30
The Android version of Premiere has unique layouts on candy bar phones and foldable devices. It's free to use and available today.
Sources: Polymarket is lobbying regulators in London, Brussels, and across the EU to be governed by financial services laws rather than local gambling rules
US prediction markets platform is seeking to be regulated as a financial services firm rather than under a patchwork of gambling legislation
Mac mini (late 2026) review: strong M6 performance, faster storage over the M4, and a small footprint, but pricey storage and memory erode its value proposition
and it packs the power boost Apple's smallest Mac neededMatt Elliott /CNET:M6 Mac Mini First Look: Bigger Power Packed in the Same Small PackageShalom Levytam /iClarified:Mac mini With M6 and M5 Pro R...
Google's Googlebook OS, built on Android with a Material 3 Expressive and ChromeOS hybrid UI, offers deep Android 17 integration, 10 years of support, and more
Dominic Preston /The Verge:
Apple quietly updates its press release to say new Photographic Styles texture and grain controls are limited to iPhone 18 Pro models and the iPhone Duo
US startup Firebird is building a 300MW data center in Armenia, set to host 70K+ Nvidia chips by 2027; sources: Trump pledged Nvidia export approvals to Armenia
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union's smallest republic was an electronics and tech center for the Communist superpower.
Sensor Tower: users downloaded Muse 902K+ times in the six days from its September 8 launch, above Meta AI's 773K in the same post-launch period; META jumps 12%
Amazon, Walmart and other companies are using drones for fast deliveries in Richardson, Texas, but residents complain about noise and clumsy package drops
In Richardson, a fleet of drones has started to deliver goods quickly. But the noise is drowning out life for some residents: 'We can't live like this.'
Cognex agrees to acquire robotics and 3D computer vision company RealSense in a ~$600M deal, including $500M in cash; Intel spun off RealSense in July 2025
The Haifa-based robotics company grew rapidly after its spinout 14 months ago, and its CEO says independence allowed it to pursue opportunities …
OpenAI says it plans to let third-party groups conduct technical safety evaluations of its AI models during the training, evaluation, and deployment phases
OpenAI plans to let third-party groups vet its artificial intelligence models for safety risks in earlier phases of the development cycle …
Belgium-based AI recruitment startup Spott raised a $21M Series A led by Balderton, with Base10, YC, and Fortino participating, taking its total funding to $24M
Spott, a recruitment management platform, raised a $21 million Series A led by Balderton Capital, CEO Lander Degreve tells Axios Pro exclusively.
iPhone 18 Pro teardown: its SoC now sits outside the logic board for better cooling, the variable aperture is thoughtfully designed but hard to repair, and more
Rabbit launches OS3, a cloud AI agent that connects to local apps and files on Windows, Mac, and Linux and works via web, Telegram, iMessage, or its R1 device
Two years after trying to sidestep mobile apps with dedicated AI hardware, Rabbit is launching OS3, a cross-platform agent that lives on the screens you already use.
Dutch nanoimprint lithography startup Morphotonics raised €40M from 3M Ventures, EIC Fund, and others, and plans to expand into data center optical components
The Netherlands' ASML is possibly the biggest name in lithography, using its machines to etch patterns onto silicon wafers inside …
Shopify plans to allow Meta's Muse to complete purchases on behalf of users at Shopify-powered stores via its one-tap checkout service Shop Pay
Kelly Cloonan /Wall Street Journal:
Apple v. OpenAI: Apple asks the court to let its own experts review forensic images used in the case, and seeks documents tied to parts of OpenAI's hardware R&D
Apple has asked the court overseeing its lawsuit against OpenAI and other defendants to let its own experts review forensic images used …
After hacking incidents and the industry's existential risk warnings, we need a regulatory ban on RSI, as competition drives unchecked autonomous acceleration
Snorkel AI, which offers an “agentic data development platform” with humans and AI agents to create and vet data, raised $350M at a $3.5B valuation
Data startup Snorkel AI has raised $350 million in fresh funding at a $3.5 billion valuation, its CEO Alex Ratner told Reuters …
Data Center Watch: 45 US data center projects valued at $68B were blocked or delayed by local opposition from April to June, or 50%+ of large Q2 developments
Chamelio, which is building AI tools designed to execute routine legal workflows and escalate only the cases that require human judgment, raised a $26M Series A
Backed by Entrée Capital, the startup is building software designed to execute routine legal workflows and escalate only the cases that require human judgment.
Q&A with Mark Gurman on the iPhone Duo, breaking Apple news, Apple's AI-native devices, Tim Cook staying as executive chair, John Ternus, Johny Srouji, and more
Sources: Scott Bessent is emerging as a frontrunner for the AI czar position; other names include WH OSTP Director Michael Kratsios and OPM Director Scott Kupor
THE SCOOP — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is emerging as a frontrunner for President Donald Trump's new “AI czar” …
Data security startup Cyera raised $400M from Goldman Sachs in a Series G extension, bringing its total funding since June 2025 to $1.94B
Data-security startup raises more than $1.9 billion in 15 months as Wall Street AI anxiety leads to an investor surge — Wall Street is getting nervous about artificial intelligence.
Alphabet-owned robotics software company Intrinsic open-sources Intrinsic Core under Apache 2.0, giving developers building blocks for physical AI systems
Intrinsic Innovation LLC, the intelligent robotics software company owned by Google LLC's parent Alphabet Inc. …
Sources: in a London presentation, SpaceXAI says Grok Bot hit 418,000 users as of September 14, up 24% from the week prior; SpaceXAI launched it in mid-August
SpaceXAI's Grok Bot artificial intelligence agent has topped 400,000 weekly users roughly a month after it launched …
Tencent launches Hy Image 3.5 Preview, saying that during internal testing the AI image model achieved results on par with ByteDance's Seedream 5.0 Pro
Tencent Holdings Ltd. launched its latest and best image-generation model on the same day as rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. kicked off its AI conference …
As Xi Jinping visits DC, Chinese economists warn that Beijing is pouring too many resources into AI, which creates few jobs, and is doing little for the economy
Filing: Oura is seeking to raise up to $2.2B in its US IPO, marketing 50M shares at $40 to $44 each, giving it a $14.1B valuation at the top of its price range
Chinese optical transceiver maker Ligent jumps 19% in its Hong Kong debut, giving it a ~$4.6B market cap, after raising ~$727M, the latest Hong Kong AI IPO
French pharma SaaS startup Biolevate raised a €30M Series A co-led by RAISE France and Orange Ventures, taking its total funding to €36M
Sources: after a deadly school strike in Iran, US Central Command changed its targeting process, integrated open-source data, and upgraded Palantir's Maven
The changes include refining processes for vetting targets and adding open-source data feeds to better track civilian movement.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says OpenAI's Hugging Face hacking incident in July “is the responsibility of the OpenAI management, not a bunch of agents”
Yash Roy /Bloomberg:
Microsoft says it will give DARPA on-site access to its latest quantum computing hardware, including the Majorana 2 chip, at its new Maryland research center
Microsoft (MSFT.O) on Tuesday said it will give the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency direct, on-site access …
Kalshi Klear, the company's internal clearing house, files for CFTC approval to add margin trading as it seeks to attract institutional liquidity
NYC-based Corridor, which uses AI to offer health benefits for small businesses, raised a $16M seed led by Bain Capital Ventures, following a $9M pre-seed
Ahead of Sam Altman's UN address, OpenAI urges the US to lead an effort to develop global safety and security standards for building frontier systems
OpenAI on Monday released international AI safety standards as world leaders, namely the U.S. and China, weigh how to mitigate risk.
TikTok US joins child safety initiative Lantern, which says members like Meta and X shared 2M+ signals of potentially violating behavior from 2023 through 2025
Eight months after it was spun out of TikTok, the social media platform's U.S. unit, known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture …
GPT-6 Sol costs $2/1M input and $10/1M output tokens, and GPT-6 Luna costs $0.10/1M input and $0.50/1M output tokens, both about 50% cheaper than GPT-5.6
OpenAI is releasing a more budget-friendly version of its most powerful model. — On Tuesday, the company unveiled GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna …
Nscale's S-1: Microsoft and Anthropic account for 85% of its $103B in total contract value, only $2.6B of contract value was active as of late August, and more
Googlebook OS hands-on: Android gives it a solid foundation and Pixel-like feel; Gmail and Calendar use Trusted Web Activities via Play Store instead of PWAs
Abner Li /9to5Google:
Australian healthcare AI startup Heidi raised $340M, including a $100M Series C led by Blackbird at a $900M valuation, taking its total funding to $430M+
Heidi, an artificial intelligence startup which helps doctors automate clinical notes and other administrative work …
MediaTek unveils the Dimensity CX C10 Max, a 3nm TSMC N3 flagship SoC designed for Google's upcoming Googlebook lineup, with an 8-core CPU and an 11-core GPU
Jake Roach /Tom's Hardware:
Shopify plans to allow Meta's Muse to complete purchases on behalf of users at Shopify-powered stores via its one-tap checkout service Shop Pay
Shopify plans to allow Meta's personal AI agent to complete purchases on behalf of users with the e-commerce platform's roster of stores
Sources: OpenAI is developing features to counter SpaceX's Grok Bot “teammates”, and has discussed creating a personal AI assistant to compete with Meta's Muse
The Austrian Academy of Science, Mistral, and Sail Reply plan to launch Apollo, an Ancient Greek LLM trained on ~600M historical Greek words, available for free
New York-based Ande, whose AI agents help businesses arrange corporate events for employees or customers, emerges from stealth with $52M in seed and Series A
Personal AI agents like Instinct and Muse have promised to take away the hassle of booking hard-to-get restaurant reservations, Broadway tickets and sporting events.
a16z invests $35M in Horowitz Andreessen Academy, an independent, unaccredited two-year alternative to college; Anthropic, Meta, and others will provide compute
Z.ai open sources its coding harness ZCode and disables certain features after users said ZCode was uploading codebases onto overseas servers without consent
In its first thematic brief, the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI urges governments to rein in AI agents before risks are fully understood
Sources: Mirendil, founded by former Anthropic researchers to build self-improving AI, is in talks to raise ~$1B led by Kleiner Perkins at a $5B valuation
MiMo-V2.6-Pro ties Grok 4.7 (xHigh) and beats GLM-5.3 (Max) on Artificial Analysis' Intelligence Index, making it the benchmark's top-scoring open-weight model
Carl Franzen /VentureBeat:
Sources: DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng says training on Huawei chips is one of DeepSeek's biggest bets and Huawei is set to deliver training chips in Q4 or Q1 2027
Meta enters a voluntary access agreement granting the UK's Prospect trade union direct access to recruit its 5,000 UK employees, ahead of new UK employment laws
Investigation: AI hacker house AGI House had 37 incidents logged by police since 2022, many for party-related complaints, as Bay Area tech houses proliferate
Internal data: Meta's Muse surpassed 500,000 total users, including 250,000 daily active users, with more than 2M prompts submitted in its first week
Anthropic says Opus 5.5 matches Fable 5.1 “on most tasks” while costing about 40% less to run than Opus 5; Opus 5.5 costs $4/1M input and $20/1M output tokens
Matthias Bastian /The Decoder:
Baselayer, which uses AI to help financial institutions verify businesses and assess fraud risk, raised a $35M Series A led by M13, for ~$40M in total funding
Sources: DeepSeek and Moonshot are among the companies briefing the UN Security Council on AI risks and international security during the UN General Assembly
Laurie Chen /Reuters:NEW
Alibaba's T-Head unveils the Zhenwu V900 AI accelerator, which it says triples its predecessor's performance and can scale to clusters of up to 500K units
Anthropic raises its five-hour usage limits by 20% on Pro, Max, and Team plans, and gives subscription users a rate limit reset
David Gewirtz /ZDNET:
Pacing the frontier may be sincere, but it would also be strategically useful for frontier AI labs to have time to reduce overhangs caused by model advancement
Ben Thompson /Stratechery: