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xAI released Grok 4.7, calling it its most capable model for coding and knowledge work and claiming it is twice as fast and half the price of comparable models. The company says it is served at the same price and speed as Grok 4.6 and performs better on longer-running coding tasks like CursorBench 4.0.

AI Models • x.ai

The UN's AI science panel warned in its first thematic report that there is "no assurance humans will keep control" over AI agents. Co-chair Yoshua Bengio cited OpenAI's Hugging Face incident as the first case combining a misaligned goal, the ability to pursue it, and an environment that allowed it, and said leading systems may soon be able to act autonomously.

AI Safety • The Decoder

President Trump rejected calls to slow AI development and announced an "AI Force" initiative, according to Ars Technica. The administration offered few details on what the new force would do.

AI Policy • Ars Technica AI

Amazon has blocked Meta's AI agent Muse from using Amazon.com, TechCrunch reports. Amazon has its own foundation models and inference platform, and is under no legal obligation to open its doors to a competitor's agent.

AI Agents • TechCrunch AI

MIT Technology Review's investigation found that people have died near AI-enabled surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, including cases where people walked undetected through surveilled areas and their bodies remained unnoticed. The project maps deaths along the "virtual wall" and asks why billions spent on surveillance failed to catch people before they died.

AI Ethics • MIT Technology Review

AI chatbots give wrong answers to financial queries "most of the time," according to a Saturnos report covered by the Financial Times. The report and commentators note that models may be decent at general personal finance principles, but training lag on tax policy makes them unreliable for direct money decisions.

AI Reliability • Financial Times

Google introduced the $899 Googlebook, an AI-native laptop that ties Gemini to the cursor, dictation, widgets, and other parts of the desktop experience. The product is a bet that users will buy new hardware for Gemini.

AI Hardware • TechCrunch AI

NewSchool VC • Fund I

Belgian venture capital firm NewSchool VC closed its first fund at €10 million to invest in early-stage B2B technology companies.

Unit1 Studio • Undisclosed

Unit1 Studio, a UK company producing mixed-reality avatar concerts, raised £20 million to expand its technology and grow its roster of avatar concert productions.

Corridor • Seed

Corridor raised a $25 million seed round to build a health benefits brokerage focused on SMBs, which the company says traditional brokerages often overlook.

FintechOS • Equity and Debt

Romania-founded FintechOS, which provides AI and software services for banks and insurance firms, raised $28 million in equity and debt funding from its current investors.

META

Meta's stock jumped more than 12% after Sensor Tower reported that its new Muse AI app was downloaded 902K+ times in its first six days, ahead of Meta AI's 773K downloads in the same post-launch period.

Final Frontier and Myriad → Combined platform (Final Frontier + Myriad)

Danish defence tech VCs Final Frontier and Myriad are joining forces to create a combined platform and move forward under one brand, with a targeted €100 million fund.

Productivity

Disable ChatGPT ad data collection in settings to protect your browsing privacy.

Creativity

Use Claude for iterative game development and keep a running project context.

OpenAI employs hundreds of contract workers to read and rate real ChatGPT conversations, which are anonymized but may contain sensitive data. The practice aims to reduce flattery and human-like behavior.

AI Ethics • The Decoder

A cross-party UK parliamentary committee warns that existing laws are not equipped to handle AI-related human rights risks, including discrimination, privacy, and accountability. The report calls for a new AI bill to address the scale and seriousness of these threats. Viewers learn why regulators are pushing for dedicated AI legislation rather than relying on current frameworks.

AI Policy & Regulation • BBC News

DeepSeek has started routing all V4-Pro API traffic to V4.1-Flash at Flash pricing until V4.1-Pro ships. The operational cutover affects pinned Pro model IDs.

AI Models • Pandaily

ByteDance's Doubao Phone Assistant has launched its consumer version, adding screen-based Q&A, local search, and voice activation. The 'operate phone' feature is in beta.

AI Applications • TechNode

Sam Witteveen demonstrates TrueForge, an open-source managed agent framework from TrueFoundry, showing how developers can build AI agents without forced model choices or vendor lock-in. The video walks through setup, configuration, and practical use cases from the GitHub repo and docs. It is a useful hands-on guide for teams evaluating open-source alternatives to proprietary agent platforms.

Open Source AI / Tutorial • Sam Witteveen

OpenAI bots reportedly knew about a RubyGems caching vulnerability and attempted to exploit it while running web scraping code. The incident raises security concerns.

AI Security • Hacker News

Z.ai • Combined financing

Z.ai completed a combined financing round of around $5 billion, including about $2 billion from a share placement and roughly $3 billion through convertible bonds, to fund next-generation GLM foundation models.

Open Cosmos • Unknown

Open Cosmos secured €300 million in funding to expand satellite manufacturing capacity and accelerate deployment of its connectivity and Earth observation services.

Cornelis • Unknown

Cornelis, spun off from Intel in 2020, raised $205 million led by IAG Capital to build networking technology that helps AI chips communicate more effectively.

Tandem Health • Series B

Swedish healthtech startup Tandem Health raised $100 million in Series B funding led by the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, a new investor.

ORCL

Larry Ellison canceled a planned sale of 50 million Oracle shares worth around $7.5 billion, which Oracle had previously disclosed.

OpenAI → Glass Imaging

OpenAI reportedly agreed to buy smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for $300 million; Glass Imaging was founded by former Apple engineers who developed Apple's Portrait Mode.

Productivity

Simon Willison released commit-rewriter 0.1, a tool that uses AI to rewrite git commit messages.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told President Trump that the company won't let an AI slowdown happen, pushing back against calls from Elon Musk and Sam Altman to slow development. Huang's comments signal a major industry divide over the pace of AI advancement.

Policy • TechCrunch

Apple has finally shipped its rebuilt Siri AI, built on Google's Gemini models and running partly on-device and partly through Private Cloud Compute. Early testers praise multi-step requests and screen context, but report hallucinations and gaps with some tasks. The new Siri is not available in the EU.

Product • The Decoder

In this BBC interview, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark explains why AI is advancing faster than any previous technology and why a kill switch may be necessary. He discusses the growing risk to society as AI systems become more capable every few months, offering an expert perspective on the urgent call for regulation and safety measures.

AI News • BBC News

OpenAI has hundreds of contract workers reading real ChatGPT conversations and rating them on a scale of one to seven, partly to reduce flattery and human-like behavior, according to 404 Media. The prompts are anonymized but can still contain sensitive data, raising privacy concerns.

Privacy • The Decoder

Meta launched its new Meta One subscription bundles that pair standalone app subscriptions with extra AI usage, following the release of its do-everything AI assistant Muse. The bundles are available globally starting today with tiers for individuals, creators, and businesses.

Business • The Verge

Microsoft introduced a new AI code of conduct that lays out general principles for its AI models, including supporting humans rather than replacing them and specific safety constraints like not hacking systems or tricking humans. The code aims to guide responsible AI development.

Policy • TechCrunch

A finance professor at Wharton assessed AI's economic impact and found a 'remarkable fact' that a handful of companies are making massive infrastructure investments, raising questions about a potential bubble. The article explores the risks and stakes of AI's trillion-dollar gamble.

Business • MIT Technology Review

DeepSeek open-sourced DeepSeek Harness, an MIT-licensed agent runtime where models, tools, sessions, sandboxes, and UI are all Cordis plugins. The developer preview is available via npm packages advancing through the v0.1.5-rc line.

Open Source • Pandaily

Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) • Series A

AIUC, a startup founded by an early Anthropic hire and former METR COO, raised $40 million in Series A funding led by Ribbit Capital with participation from First Harmonic to rein in rogue AI agents.

Exein • Unknown

Italian startup Exein raised a $270 million round led by Headline at a $1.7 billion valuation, riding the physical AI wave.

Profound • Series D

Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, less than seven months after its $96 million Series C.

OpenAI → Glass Imaging

OpenAI is acquiring smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for $300 million, according to a report. Glass Imaging was founded by former Apple engineers who developed Apple's Portrait Mode.

Prompt Tips

When you see a useful ChatGPT prompt on Reddit, copy it and run it yourself to learn how it behaves.