Good morning, AI enthusiasts. AI is already being integrated into laboratories across scientific fields… But what happens when a team of agents runs its own lab entirely?

Stanford’s virtual AI lab is doing just that, with specialized AI scientists running meetings, designing experiments, and producing lab-ready results in days instead of months — speeding us into the era of autonomous, 24/7 scientific discovery.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Stanford’s AI-powered virtual scientists

• Meta targets Mira Murati's startup with massive offers

• Build apps with leading open-source AI

• ChatGPT’s new Study Mode for deeper learning

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI & SCIENCE

👨‍🔬 Stanford’s AI-powered virtual scientists

Image source: James Zou (@james_y_zou on X)

The Rundown: Researchers from Stanford and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub just developed a “virtual lab” of AI scientists that design, debate, and test biomedical discoveries — already generating COVID-19 nanobody candidates in days.

The details:

• The lab features an “AI principal investigator” that assembles specialized agents that conduct meetings lasting seconds instead of hours.

• Human researchers needed to intervene just 1% of the time, allowing AI agents to request tools like AlphaFold to aid in research strategy independently.

• The AI team produced 92 nanobody designs, with two successfully binding to recent SARS-CoV-2 variants when tested in physical laboratories.

• The AI lab also releases full transcripts of the AI team’s reasoning, letting human researchers review, steer, or validate the process as needed.

Why it matters: The arrival of teams of AI research teams means science is no longer capped by human limits on time, energy, resources, and expertise. With agentic capabilities only continuing to scale, the pace of discovery is about to completely change, along with the traditional notions of scientific research.

TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT

🧠 100+ ChatGPT prompts to revolutionize your workflow

The Rundown: HubSpot’s free, comprehensive  “How to Use ChatGPT at Work” guide provides 100+ ready-to-use prompts to help professionals boost efficiency and adopt AI-driven workflows.

Inside, you’ll find:

• A quick crash course to master ChatGPT in under 30 minutes

• Practical industry use cases to spark real-world inspiration

• 100+ prompts to streamline tasks and accelerate productivity

• Expert tips to tackle common AI roadblocks with confidence

Get your free copy and join 10,000+ professionals leveling up with AI.

META & THINKING MACHINES LAB

💰 Meta targets Mira Murati's startup with massive offers

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: Meta has approached over a dozen employees at ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab, according to Wired, offering massive compensation packages (including one exceeding $1B) to join its superintelligence team.

The details:

• Zuckerberg’s outreach reportedly includes personally messaging recruits via WhatsApp, followed by interviews with him and other executives.

• Compensation packages ranged from $200-500M over four years, with first-year guarantees between $50-100M for some, and one offer over $1B.

• The report also detailed that Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth’s pitch has centered on commoditizing AI with open source models to undercut rivals like OpenAI.

• Despite the offers, not a single person from the company has accepted, with WIRED reporting industry skepticism over MSL’s strategy and roadmap.

Why it matters: We thought the naming of Shengjia Zhao as chief scientist might be a final bow on the MSL team, but Zuck clearly isn’t stopping in his pursuit of top AI talent at all costs. TML’s staff decline is both a potential testament to their incoming first product and a window into how the industry is viewing Meta’s new venture.

AI TRAINING

💻 Build apps with leading open-source AI

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Alibaba’s new Qwen 3 Coder, a competitive coding model that matches premium offerings — featuring both browser-based chat and CLI access for developers.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Qwen Chat, create a free account, and select Qwen3-Coder as your model

2. Test with simple prompts like “Create a Twitter clone in one file” and use the Preview button to see results

3. Refine with follow-up prompts: “Add images and make it more complete” to expand functionality

4. Install CLI with npm install -g qwen-code/qwen-code, then type qwen in your terminal for command-line access

Pro tip: Qwen gives you 1M free tokens and performance on par with premium tools—plus, it’s fully open-source. Perfect for devs who want power without the paywall.

PRESENTED BY GOOGLE CLOUD

📶 Scale your AI startup with Google Cloud

The Rundown: Google for Startups Cloud Program connects AI innovators with cutting-edge technical applications to fuel your product’s journey from early development to massive scale, leveraging infrastructure built to handle your rapid growth.

Inside the program, you’ll gain:

• Up to $350K in cloud credits to scale faster

• Access to Google’s core AI tools like Vertex AI and Gemini

• Dedicated expert guidance for customized support and solutions

Start building with Google Cloud — apply now.

OPENAI

📚 ChatGPT’s Study Mode for deeper learning

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI just rolled out Study Mode for ChatGPT, a new feature designed to guide students through problems step-by-step, using Socratic questions and feedback instead of just providing solutions.

The details:

• Study Mode uses custom instructions created with teaching experts to ask guiding questions and provide interactive learning instead of direct answers.

• The AI guides learners with interactive prompts, hints, and knowledge checks to encourage active participation and deeper understanding.

• ChatGPT will actively resist requests for quick solutions in this mode, instead redirecting students back to the learning process.

• The rollout begins immediately for Free, Plus, Pro, and Team users, with educational institutions receiving access within the next few weeks.

Why it matters: AI has shown huge promise in offering personalized learning, but many teachers would also say it’s upended the educational system. Tools like Study Mode offer the potential for AI to be an educational partner instead of a shortcut, but right now, their success might largely depend on student buy-in.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🎥 Wan2.2 - Alibaba’s new open MoE model for AI video generation

• 🤖 GLM-4.5 - Z.ai’s new SOTA open-source agentic AI family

• 📊 Shortcut AI - AI agent for Excel spreadsheets

• 🖥️ Copilot Mode - New agentic capabilities for Microsoft Edge

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• ⚙️ The Rundown - Growth and Content Strategist

• 💰 Meta - AI Research Scientist, Monetization AI

• 🧩 UiPath - Senior Sales Engineer

• 🖥️ Palantir Technologies - Systems Engineer, Microsoft 365

📰 Everything else in AI today

Meta’s superintelligence team poached AI researcher Bowen Zhang from Apple’s foundation models group, marking the fourth departure in the last month.

Google’s NotebookLM is rolling out Video Overviews, giving users the ability to generate narrated slides on any topic or document.

Microsoft is reportedly nearing a deal to retain access to OpenAI’s tech even after the company’s AGI milestone, a current point of contention in terms of the partnership.

xAI opened the waitlist for its upcoming “Imagine” image and video generation feature, which will reportedly include audio capabilities similar to Google’s Veo 3.

Adobe unveiled new AI features for editing in Photoshop, including Harmonize for realistic blending, Generative Upscale, and more.

Ideogram released Character, a character consistency model allowing users to place a specific person into existing scenes and new outputs from a single reference photo.

Writer launched Action Agent, an enterprise AI agent that executes tasks and uses tools in its own environment, beating Manus and OAI Deep Research on benchmarks.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, August 1, at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of this workshop, you’ll have practical strategies to get the AI to do exactly what you want.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team