Elon Musk’s xAI has made Grok 4 available on its free tiers as it seeks to take advantage of initial user dissatisfaction with OpenAI’s new GPT-5. The company has positioned Grok as freewheeling and uncensored, a contrast to GPT-5, which has been criticized on Reddit and other social platforms as a “corporate beige zombie” with too many guardrails. After its February debut, Grok 3 was reined-in with checks including removal of its native image generator in March. Grok 4 was released in July with integrated image and video features as well as a “Spicy” mode for creating risqué content. Continue reading Grok 4 Offered Free in xAI Move on ChatGPT-5 Market Share

OpenAI is rolling a new foundation model, GPT-5, via API for developers and enterprise users in three branded sizes — gpt-5, gpt-5-mini and gpt-5-nano — “to give developers more flexibility to trade off performance, cost, and latency.” The company said Thursday that it is also making GPT‑5 available to all ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Team and Free tier users. Enterprise and Education tier users are promised access this week. While GPT‑5 in the API platform is the reasoning model that powers maximum performance in ChatGPT, “GPT‑5 in ChatGPT is a system of reasoning, non-reasoning, and router models,” OpenAI explains. Continue reading OpenAI Announces Launch of GPT-5 Model Across All Tiers

Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.1, an upgrade to Opus 4 that reportedly improves on agentic tasks, computer coding and reasoning. Pricing has not increased from what customers were paying for Opus 4, and the company promises “substantially larger improvements to our models in the coming weeks.” The move comes as Anthropic nears a new funding round targeting $3 to $5 billion, which could place a valuation of up to $170 billion on the startup. Recurring revenue hit $5 billion as of late July, which could increase to $9 billion by the end of the year. Claude Opus 4.1 was released two days before OpenAI unleashed GPT-5, and performs comparably in coding benchmarks. Continue reading Anthropic Seeks to Raise $5 Billion, Debuts Claude Opus 4.1

OpenAI is releasing two lower-cost, open-weight reasoning models in an effort to be more competitive with Meta, Mistral and DeepSeek and they will be the first OpenAI models available from Amazon. The new offerings — gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b — will be among the model choices on AWS’s Bedrock and SageMaker AI services. Both models are said to be well-suited for agentic use. The gpt-oss-120b model performs comparably to OpenAI o4-mini on core reasoning and can run on a single 80GB GPU. The gpt-oss-20b model is compared to OpenAI o3‑mini and can run on edge devices with just 16GB of memory. Continue reading Open-Weight Models Are a First from OpenAI in AWS Catalog

OpenAI has reportedly secured another $8.3 billion in funding, for a valuation of $300 billion. The new investment is a major coup for the firm, coming months ahead of schedule in its plan to secure $40 billion in funding by the end of the year. The company previously secured a $30 billion commitment from SoftBank if certain goals are achieved by the start of 2026. The funding news comes as ChatGPT is close to reaching 700 million weekly active users, including a significant jump in new users over the last several months. The company has also experienced an increase in paying subscribers as more enterprises and educators turn to AI. Continue reading OpenAI Raises $8.3B as ChatGPT Nears 700M Weekly Users

Adobe competitor Figma went public Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange in a debut that saw the price of its first public trade nearly triple from the $33 per share the company and its institutional investors offered it up at, to $85, for a valuation of about $50 billion, well beyond the $20 billion the San Francisco-based design software startup agreed to in 2022 to essentially be acquired by Adobe. That deal was nixed by European regulators, who determined the move would stifle competition. Figma shares closed Thursday at $115.50, for a valuation of $67.7 billion. Continue reading Software Firm Figma Stuns with $67.7 Billion Valuation in IPO

Multinational retail giant Walmart has created dozens of AI agents in the past months. Now the company is overhauling how the agents are organized in hopes of making them easier to use. The AI assistants will be sorted into four categories of “super agents” designed to interact with customers, vendors, retail employees and software engineers. The vendor category will serve both Walmart’s suppliers and third-party merchants who have digital storefronts at Walmart.com. According to the retailer, each group of super agents will draw on the capabilities of multiple behind-the-scenes agents and present them to users via a unified interface. Continue reading Walmart AI Super Agents Organized to Improve Ease-of-Use

Alphabet reported a 14 percent year-over-year revenue increase to $96.4 billion, propelled largely by growth in the Google Cloud and Google Search divisions. Artificial intelligence had a significant impact across the board, including in spending. Capital expenditure is expected to be roughly $85 billion in 2025, compared to $52.5 billion in 2024. Google Cloud generated $13.6 billion in Q2, up 32 percent from the same period last year. Advertising sales totaled $71.3 billion for the quarter, a 10.4 percent improvement from the year earlier frame. Google Search, which is integral to advertising sales, was up 11.7 percent. Continue reading Q2 Revenue Hits $96B as Google Invests in AI Search, Models

Startup Decart AI is showcasing MirageLSD, a “world transformation model” that can change the look of a camera feed, recorded video or game in real time. Built on the company’s Live-Stream Diffusion (LSD) model, Mirage debuted last week as a demo on the company website with iOS and Android apps scheduled for release this week. Mirage makes it possible to manipulate video continuously, in real time with zero latency. The technology has created buzz as a potential disruptor in the live-streaming space, and it looks like it could be an impactful special effects tool as well. Continue reading Decart AI’s Mirage Transforms Live-Stream Video in Real Time

Oracle and OpenAI have confirmed the $30 billion per year AI data center contract reported earlier this month. The deal will provide OpenAI’s Stargate project with 4.5 gigawatts of additional data center capacity in the U.S. Oracle is a Stargate partner and has been working in partnership with OpenAI on the Stargate I site, coming online in Abilene, Texas. “This additional partnership with Oracle will bring us to over 5 gigawatts of Stargate AI data center capacity under development, which will run over 2 million chips,” OpenAI explains. The “investment will create new jobs, accelerate America’s reindustrialization, and help advance U.S. AI leadership.” Continue reading OpenAI and Oracle Confirm $30B Annual Data Center Contract

Amazon has agreed to purchase AI wearables firm Bee, it was announced via a LinkedIn post by the San Francisco-based startup. Bee’s principal product is a $50 wrist device called the Pioneer that records all audio within range unless manually muted. Combined with a $19 per month subscription the device records and transcribes “daily memories” to create to-do lists and reminders based on what it hears. It can also answer questions. Bee’s website says the product is backordered due to “high demand” with shipments resuming in September. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Continue reading Amazon Buying Startup Bee, Maker of the Pioneer AI Bracelet

OpenAI is adding Google Cloud to its list of global infrastructure providers for ChatGPT after relying exclusively on Microsoft Azure since the chatbot’s 2022 launch until January 2025 when Stargate was announced. Oracle and CoreWeave are also OpenAI cloud providers. Oracle is a Stargate investor, as is Nvidia, which holds a minority interest in CoreWeave. OpenAI has been active as it heads toward a December deadline for transitioning to a for-profit company. Meanwhile, ChatGPT is integrating a payment system to receive commissions on sales it initiates, and yesterday OpenAI launched a new AI agent that can perform complex tasks within a user’s browser. Continue reading OpenAI Contracts Google Cloud and Debuts ChatGPT Agent

Meta Platforms has embarked on an ambitious data center build-out to power its AI ambitions. This includes Hyperion, a massive facility to be built in Louisiana that “will be able to scale up to 5 gigawatts over several years,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on Threads with a graphic illustrating how its planned footprint is nearly big enough to cover most of Manhattan. The first new plant to come online will be Prometheus in Ohio in 2026, Zuckerberg said, indicating his company will not be looking to OpenAI and Stargate partners to power Meta AI processing. Continue reading Meta Power Play Includes Data Centers of Up to 5 Gigawatts

Google scuttled OpenAI’s negotiations to purchase AI coding firm Windsurf (formerly Codeium), by agreeing to pay roughly $2.4 billion to license the startup’s core technology, hire co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan and bring a passel of employees with him to Alphabet. The license is non-exclusive and Google is not taking a stake in Windsurf. Days after the Google deal, AI startup Cognition announced it would be acquiring Windsurf (both startups are backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund). Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen and some members of the Windsurf R&D team are moving to Google to work primarily with DeepMind on agentic coding. The $2.4 billion covers licensing fees and compensation. Continue reading Cognition Acquires Windsurf Following Google Licensing Deal

Nvidia-backed startup Perplexity AI is challenging Google with a new AI-powered web browser called Comet that is built on the company’s proprietary AI search engine. The new browser is initially available to those paying $200 per month to subscribe to the Perplexity Max plan and by invitation to those who register online for the company’s waitlist. The browser also comes with Comet Assistant, an agent that automates routine tasks such as summarizing emails and navigating webpages. Comet Assistant can be opened as a sidebar on any webpage to answer questions about the content being presented. Continue reading Perplexity Launches Comet AI Web Browser for Premium Subs