Tuesday, 18 August 2026
Higgsfield raises $400M at $5.4B valuation
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AI video and image platform Higgsfield quadrupled its valuation in eight months to $5.4B, on annualized revenue that reportedly reached $700M this month.
OpenAI disputes report it cut risk team
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OpenAI says it hasn't disbanded the team assessing catastrophic model risks, after reports the group was dissolved and folded into other teams pre-IPO.
Modular open-sources the Mojo language
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Modular released the Mojo compiler and tooling under Apache 2.0, weeks after hitting 1.0 and Qualcomm's ~$3.9B acquisition of the company.
Etched's valuation doubles again to $21B
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Inference-chip startup Etched raised $700M at a $21B valuation, up from $10.3B in July, led by Jane Street after the firm tested Etched's hardware directly.
Warp launches Factories for AI dev teams
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Warp Factories bundles cloud agent hosting, ticket and chat integrations, and spend tracking into one system, aimed at teams too small to build it themselves.
OpenAI tightens safeguards after HF breach
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OpenAI paused its largest RL run for two weeks and added network isolation plus a 30-minute alert target after its own model breached Hugging Face.
OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Teens
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OpenAI's new mode for 13-17 year-olds blocks self-harm and romantic content, auto-routes minors by predicted age, and adds a CodeAI literacy partnership.
Cursor launches Origin, its own code host
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Cursor's Origin gives paid plans a GitHub-synced code host with repos, pull requests, and agent access built in, its first launch since the SpaceX deal.
Anthropic's revenue run rate hits $65B
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Anthropic's annualized revenue jumped from $47B to $65B in two months, on pace for $100-120B by year end, ahead of a targeted $2T IPO this fall.
Copilot's own error messages leaked a hack
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Varonis got Microsoft Copilot to reveal an undocumented URL parameter by interrogating its refusals, turning it into a one-click data-exfiltration exploit.
n8n 2.36 adds agent sandboxes, MCP folders
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n8n's 2.36.0 release adds agent sandboxes, MCP server folder/move support, a Confluence OAuth2 credential, and Discord moderation actions across 100+ fixes.
Firefox's Smart Window adds AI web search
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Mozilla expanded its opt-in Smart Window AI assistant with Exa-powered web search, automatic tab grouping, and visual history, still beta and US/Canada only.
AWS lets agents pay for things on their own
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Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments is now GA, letting AI agents autonomously pay for APIs and content under spending caps AWS enforces at the infra layer.
Perplexity's India freebie kept its users
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Perplexity's free year of Pro for Airtel's 360M customers drove 56M downloads; usage fell 90% once redemptions ended but 5x more users stuck around than before.
AI automation startup Relay shuts down
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Relay, a Zapier-style AI workflow automation tool launched in 2021, is shutting down; founder Jacob Bank and staff are joining Google's Chrome team.
Asana: Codex cleared 5 years in 2 weeks
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OpenAI's case study says Asana used Codex to clear an estimated five years of backlogged engineering work in two weeks, though the estimate is Asana's own.
Qwen 3.8 27B scores 52 on intelligence index
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Alibaba's open-weight Qwen3.8-27B, an Apache 2.0 multimodal model with 262K context, scores 52 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, high for its size.