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AI

Jeff Bezos returns as CEO for new AI startup

Zach Mink • 7 minutes

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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Four years after leaving Amazon, founder Jeff Bezos is back in the CEO chair — but it’s a new AI startup, not his e-commerce giant, that lured him back to the operations side.

With the AI engineering and manufacturing-focused Project Prometheus already armed with $6.2B in funding and 100 employees from top labs, Bezos is treating physical world intelligence like the next Amazon-sized opportunity.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Jeff Bezos returns to CEO chair for new AI startup

  • xAI’s Grok 4.1 with personality overhaul

  • Use ChatGPT record mode to capture meeting insights

  • Anthropic CEO issues more AI warnings

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

JEFF BEZOS

💼 Jeff Bezos returns to CEO chair for new AI startup

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is reportedly returning from semi-retirement to co-lead Project Prometheus, a new startup developing AI systems for engineering and manufacturing across computing, aerospace, and automotive sectors.

The details:

  • The NYT reports the startup has already secured $6.2B in funding, with the move also marking Bezos’ first operational role since leaving Amazon in 2021.

  • Project Prometheus will target building AI that learns from the physical world, with advances that complement Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace goals.

  • The startup has reportedly recruited ~100 employees from leading AI labs, including OAI, DeepMind, and Meta, poaching talent for its physical AI focus.

  • Bezos is sharing CEO duties with Vik Bajaj, a physicist who previously worked at Google's moonshot lab and co-founded Verily, Alphabet's life sciences arm.

Why it matters: Despite Bezos’ “retirement”, one of the world’s richest men still has plenty of irons in the fire — and Project Prometheus sounds like one that pairs perfectly with both his areas of expertise and other investments. With massive funding and Bezos’ big reputation and credibility, the startup immediately becomes one to watch.

TOGETHER WITH WARP

🚀 Warp Agents run your entire terminal

The Rundown: Warp, the top-ranked AI terminal loved by over 700K developers, now has Full Terminal Use — with agents integrated into every step of the terminal workflow.

Warp Agents can now:

  • Run interactive programs like debuggers

  • Use full-screen apps like top, vim, and emacs

  • Monitor long-running commands like servers

  • Start in the middle of full-screen programs

See what the next evolution of development agents looks like. Try Warp today.

XAI

🚀 xAI’s Grok 4.1 with personality overhaul

Image source: xAI

The Rundown: Elon Musk’s xAI just released Grok 4.1, an upgrade to the startup’s top model that claims to take the top spot across a series of rankings and benchmarks, with a focus on creativity and emotional intelligence over pure reasoning power.

The details:

  • 4.1 achieves the highest emotional intelligence score among tested systems, optimizing for personality traits like empathy and conversational tone.

  • The model rolled out earlier this month to small user groups and under the codename ‘quasarflux’ in LM Arena, ranking No. 1 overall for user preference.

  • xAI also reduced the hallucination rate from 12% to 4% compared to its predecessor, also cutting factual errors by 66% in testing.

  • 4.1 also saw a significant upgrade in creative writing tasks, ranking behind just GPT 5.1 on the Creative Writing v3 benchmark.

Why it matters: Everyone is expecting fireworks from Google this week, but xAI is getting in on the launch party — with a 4.1 update that looks to bring increases in more ‘vibe’ areas like creativity and emotion that can often make even more of an experience upgrade for the average user than pure intelligence or coding improvements.

AI TRAINING

🎤 Use ChatGPT record mode to capture meeting insights

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to record and summarize meetings directly in the ChatGPT desktop app without third-party tools like Fireflies or Otter — perfect for companies that block external recording tools or privacy-sensitive teams.

Step-by-step:

  1. Download the ChatGPT desktop app and log in with a Plus, Pro, Business, or Enterprise account (free accounts don't have full access)

  2. Click the "Record" button during your meeting, lecture, or session, and a recording panel appears and runs quietly in the background (always ask permission before recording others)

  3. Click "Stop" when finished, then send the recording to ChatGPT for a structured breakdown including summary, key points, action items, and suggested follow-ups

  4. Chat with your transcript by asking follow-ups like "Rewrite the summary in bullets for a Slack update" or "Highlight any risks or unanswered questions"

Our Take: With ChatGPT record, you get the convenience of tools like Fireflies/Otter without having to invite an awkward bot into every Zoom call.

PRESENTED BY IBM

💡3 actions to help boost agentic AI impact

The Rundown: Businesses face many challenges going from AI ambition to implementation. Success requires more than adopting new technology. It involves intentionally aligning AI with workflows, data, and goals. As AI evolves into a business-wide opportunity, leaders must ensure the right AI is applied to the right challenges.

Explore IBM's playbook on 3 challenges & approaches to boost agentic AI impact:

  • Finding your AI problem

  • Creating a clear AI plan

  • Integrating AI with the tools you use every day

Read the playbook.

ANTHROPIC

⚠️ Amodei issues more AI warnings

Image source: CBS

The Rundown: In a recent CBS interview, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI can find cures for diseases and double the human lifespan, but also warned of massive job loss, misuse of the tech, and societal decisions being made by a few major companies.

The details:

  • Amodei believes in a “compressed 21st century” that results in 10x the rate of progress, including breakthroughs like cancer cures or Alzheimer’s prevention.

  • Amodei said he is “deeply uncomfortable” with AI decisions resting in the hands of a few executives, calling for “responsible and thoughtful” regulation.

  • The CEO reiterated that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, a shift that will be “broad” and “faster” than with previous advancements.

  • When asked "who elected you and Sam Altman," Amodei responded “no one," saying without legislation it’s “up to the companies to police themselves.”

Why it matters: Anthropic continues to be the most vocal of the AI labs when it comes to both safety and regulation, but Amodei denies it’s just “theater” for positive branding. While it’s tough to parse the authenticity of the AI leader’s warnings as they continue to accelerate forward anyway, it’s clear a massive period of change is coming.

QUICK HITS

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  • 🎨 ElevenLabs Image & Video - Generate creatives with top models, then layer in voices, music, and sound effects

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Everything else in AI today

DeepMind unveiled WeatherNext 2, a weather forecasting AI that generates predictions 8x faster and can simulate hundreds of possible weather shifts in a minute.

OpenAI’s VP of research, Jerry Tworek, posted that “a better version” of the model that won gold at the IMO 2025 is set to be released in the coming months.

OpenAI led a $15M seed investment in Red Queen Bio, a startup developing AI-powered defenses against bad actors using the tech to create biological weapons.

Cloudflare acquired Replicate, bringing its 50k+ model catalog and fine-tuning tools to its Workers platform while maintaining Replicate's existing APIs and community.

NVIDIA dropped Apollo, a family of open-source physics models to accelerate industrial simulations in domains like automotive, aerospace, and climate forecasting.

Google rolled out new AI-powered travel planning features in Search, including Canvas for custom itineraries, an expanded Flight Deals tool, and agentic booking.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader J.P. in Kansas City, KS:

"Using Daniel Miessler's Personal AI Infrastructure project as a template, I've used Claude Code to build out an A.I. Assistant named Chiggers that correlates data from various sources to help both manage and surface areas that need attention.

Chiggers plans progressive workouts, analyzes and correlates blood sugar/insulin intake/supplements/food logs to bring insights about managing diabetes, helps with budget planning and holes in my finances, investment opportunities, and much more. This would have taken me a year to build on my own. Claude did it in about 4 days."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

Robotics

UBTech's army of humanoid workers

Jennifer Mossalgue • 5 minutes

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Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. UBTech claims a humanoid breakthrough — $113M in orders and a factory cranking out Walkers by the thousand.

A glossy lineup video sparked a “CGI” accusation from Figure’s CEO, fanning industry credibility wars. But the Chinese giant says it’s charging toward a 2025 mass rollout and a $20K home bot to take on Tesla and Figure.

In today’s robotics rundown:

  • UBTech claims ‘mass production’ of humanoids

  • Soft bots you can eat, with battery and all

  • Tesla drops safety numbers after Waymo jab

  • Squishy robot eye with microscopic vision

  • Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

UBTECH

🤖 UBTech claims ‘mass production’ of humanoids

Image source: UBTech

The Rundown: China's UBTech is claiming a commercial breakthrough in the humanoid race: $113M in orders and 500 industrial humanoids slated for delivery in 2025, with production capacity already exceeding 1K units annually.

The details:

  • The Shenzhen-based company reports over $113M in domestic pre-orders and plans to ship 500+ humanoids in 2025.

  • UBTech released a short video showcasing what it calls the “world’s first mass delivery of humanoid robots,” featuring sleek rows of Walker S2 units.

  • The viral lineup video quickly drew heat from Figure CEO Brett Adcock, who labeled it CGI, sparking some online debate.

  • Walker S2’s hot-swap battery system enables quick changeovers, designed to sustain round-the-clock factory shifts.

Why it matters: UBTech targets 5K Walker shipments next year as it preps to push into the consumer market with a $20K home robot to rival Tesla’s Optimus, Figure 03, and 1X’s NEO. Of course, Adcock’s CGI accusation highlights lingering skepticism around production claims in the heated humanoid race.

EPFL

🍽️ Soft bots you can eat, with battery and all

Image source: EPFL

The Rundown: Switzerland’s EPFL just built a soft robot you can literally eat — battery and all — designed to lure wild boars, deliver their medication, and then dissolve harmlessly so it leaves no e-waste or toxic residue behind.

The details:

  • The soft robot includes an edible pneumatic battery, valves, and tubing — made with gelatin and wax — so the entire device can be safely consumed.

  • The team envisions infusing vaccines into the edible actuators to treat elusive animals like wild boars, drawn to moving prey that the robots mimic.

  • In a new paper, EPFL unveiled ingestible batteries and actuators that together enable what may be the first fully ingestible robot with controlled actuation.

  • A lab demo shows the edible battery inflating and deflating actuators at ultra‑low power, providing simple motion without conventional electronics.

Why it matters: Part of the EU-funded RoboFood project, edible robots like this offer life-saving potential, such as smart pills, ingestible sensors for noninvasive diagnosis, and treating wild animals. The tech also promises environmental gains as the biodegradable pneumatic robots leave no trace in fragile ecosystems.

TESLA

🚘 Tesla drops safety numbers after Waymo jab

Image source: Tesla

The Rundown: Tesla posted a new FSD (Supervised) safety dashboard with detailed methodology, claiming multi‑million‑mile intervals between crashes, just weeks after Waymo’s co‑CEO pressed rivals to release more data.

The details:

  • Tesla claims roughly 5.1M miles per major collision and about 1.5M miles per minor collision for North American FSD users.

  • Tesla says its rates are far lower than the national average, which equates to about one major crash every 699K miles and one minor every 229K.

  • The company counts any collision within 5 seconds of FSD engagement, using airbag deployments and crash frequency as severity proxies.

  • For years, Tesla has released misleading crash safety data for Autopilot, so this is a step up, but the numbers remain self-reported with no third-party auditing.

Why it matters: Waymo has set the bar with methodologically detailed releases, claiming roughly 5x fewer overall crashes and 12x fewer pedestrian incidents than humans, putting pressure on Tesla to publish equally rigorous datasets. While Tesla hasn’t matched Waymo here, this opens a door to more transparency moving forward.

GEORGIA TECH

👁️ Squishy robot eye with microscopic vision

Image source: George Tech / Corey Zheng

The Rundown: Georgia Tech researchers built a squishy robotic eye that autofocuses in response to light without requiring any external power source. The hydrogel lens is powerful enough to resolve microscopic details, such as the hair on an ant’s leg.

The details:

  • The light‑activated hydrogel “muscle” tightens to tune a silicone lens, delivering autofocus with zero motors, wires, or batteries.

  • Resolution is wild: hair on an ant’s leg, lobes on a pollen grain, and micrometer‑scale detail under microscope tests.

  • A polymer‑network hydrogel lens traps and releases water, letting it toggle between liquid‑like and solid‑like states.

  • Target use cases: electronics‑free vision for soft robots, medical tools, and wearables operating in tight, hazardous, or body‑contact environments.

Why it matters: Soft robots designed for hazardous environments or wearables need flexible sensing to match their squishy form, and this hydrogel eye can provide that. Researchers say the design could mimic animal vision, like a cat’s pupil for detecting camouflage or a cuttlefish’s W-shaped retina for perceiving colors humans can’t see.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Unitree Robotics unveiled the G1-D, its first wheeled humanoid designed as an AI training platform that combines mobile lifting capability and dexterous manipulation.

Sunday Robotics, co-founded by ex‑Google DeepMind and Tesla engineer Tony Zhao, posted a clip of dual robotic arms making espresso and teased a Nov. 19 reveal.

Shenzhen's MindOn Tech released a viral clip showing a modified Unitree G1 autonomously doing household chores using grippers.

Amazon’s robotics chief says he aims to wipe out ‘every menial, mundane job’ with AI and automation, as Amazon commits $2.5B to retrain workers for higher‑skill roles.

Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin, is in talks to lead a €1B round in Germany’s Neura Robotics, potentially valuing the humanoid maker at €8–10B.

Google-backed Apptronik is in advanced talks to raise at least $400M, a deal that would peg the company at a $5B pre‑money valuation, The Information reports.

Unitree Robotics completed China’s mandatory pre-listing tutoring for its IPO, clearing a key regulatory hurdle toward a debut floated at a $7B valuation.

Anduril made its Middle East debut in a $200M partnership with the UAE’s EDGE Group to co-develop and produce the Omen hybrid‑VTOL drone in Abu Dhabi.

Locus Robotics slipped its first mobile manipulators into a DHL warehouse for live testing — robot arms that pluck totes from shelves and pick items directly.

U.S. firm XCath used its triaxial EVR neurovascular robot to treat three patients with brain aneurysms in Panama with sub-millimeter precision, in a world first.

Russian aviation company Pobeda claims it deployed the world’s first humanoid flight attendant; a clip shows what appears to be a Unitree G1 mimicking cabin crew actions.

COMMUNITY

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

See you soon,

Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team

AI

Disney star debuts AI avatars of the dead

Zach Mink • 7 minutes

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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. If you thought users forming attachments to AI models was concerning, the future is only going to get weirder.

A new app called 2wai just launched the ability to create interactive AI avatars of deceased relatives — and the immediate backlash calling it "objectively evil" suggests we may have found one of AI's ethical breaking points.

ICYMI: We debuted a new section each Monday showcasing how The Rundown team is using AI in their own lives, both in and outside of work. Check out the latest workflows below!

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Disney star's AI avatar app to chat with the dead

  • The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases

  • Use Claude to organize your business finances

  • Satya Nadella details Microsoft’s ‘positive-sum’ AI future

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

2WAI

 😇 Disney star's AI avatar app to chat with the dead

Image source: 2wai

The Rundown: Disney Channel actor Calum Worthy just launched 2wai, an AI platform that creates interactive avatars of deceased relatives, which can speak and interact across life events — drawing comparisons to the techno-dystopian show ‘Black Mirror.’

The details:

  • The app generates "HoloAvatars" from just minutes of recorded footage, allowing users to talk with digital versions of departed family members.

  • A viral promo video showed an AI grandmother interacting with her grandson from infancy through adulthood, receiving thousands of critical responses on X.

  • The beta version is currently free on Apple's App Store, with plans to transition to a tiered subscription model and expand to Android devices soon.

  • Critics called the idea "demonic" and "objectively evil," arguing it exploits grief and prevents healthy mourning by simulating the deceased without consent.

Why it matters: If you thought users getting emotionally attached to AI models like 4o was strange, things are only going to get weirder. Ethical questions surrounding consent/identity of the deceased and commodifying grief aside, selling a hollow avatar as “preserving a loved one” feels like an AI psychosis event waiting to happen.

TOGETHER WITH MOZILLA DATA COLLECTIVE

🤖 Build better AI with people-first data

The Rundown: Mozilla Data Collective is a new platform for real-world data sharing, home to multilingual, multimodal datasets in 300+ languages, built and curated directly by contributors. They publish unique, permissively licensed datasets for ASR, TTS, Translation, and SLM, accessible via the datacollective Python package.

New releases this week include:

  • Text-to-speech: Bulgarian corpus for TTS

  • Code-switching: Dialogues annotated for codeswitching in Nahuatl

  • Youth speech: Corpus of Indonesian youth-speech audio

Discover unique open datasets on Mozilla Data Collective.

THE RUNDOWN ROUNDTABLE

💡 The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: The Rundown Roundtable is a new weekly feature where we poll members of The Rundown staff on how they are using AI both in work and daily lives.

Joey, Head of Partnerships: I’ve been using Sora as my secret superpower with the kiddos. At a recent family dinner with a pack of 4–7-year-olds, I pulled out Sora and started spinning their wildest ideas into fun mini clips. The kids were entertained, the parents were relieved, and I officially earned the title of “fun aunt.” Win-win!

Shubham, Editor: My Deco mesh network (main unit upstairs, secondary downstairs) struggled to cover the back of the house on the ground floor. Gemini helped walk me through Deco app settings, gave the default router login password (it guessed it correctly), and suggested manual channel tweaks to improve coverage.

When that didn’t work, I shared my ground-floor layout via Gemini live, walking with it. It helped me find the ideal spot for the second unit, where it connected perfectly with the first one and boosted speed. It saved me the expense of a third unit.

Zach, AI Writer: This summer, I used ChatGPT to help me plan, build, plant, and manage our garden. I uploaded pictures of the space, and ChatGPT helped me decide where certain plants should go for optimal sunlight/preferences, companion options that grow together well, helped build out watering schedules, and other helpful tips.

I was able to continually provide pictures and updates as everything grew, asking it questions as my on-demand gardening assistant. A very successful first year, and I’m already excited for next season to expand things even more!

AI TRAINING

📈 Use Claude to organize your business finances

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to organize scattered business finance documents into a neat, visually appealing dashboard using Claude, turning messy spreadsheets into polished financial snapshots without hiring an accountant.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to Claude, sign in (paid plan recommended for more iterations and tools), select Sonnet 4.5, and enable extended thinking and web search in settings

  2. Upload your financial documents (revenue statements, invoices, expenses, inventory) and prompt Claude with what you want: your goal, file types, organization structure, and desired aesthetic

  3. Review the generated dashboard showing metrics like total revenue, expenses, net profit, plus pie charts and bar graphs; request changes in natural language

  4. Add enrichments like "Add a column showing how many days since each invoice to see which pending payments are getting old," then click publish and share the artifact link with stakeholders

Pro Tip: This is a strong use case for small teams. It helps you and your stakeholders see what's working, what's bleeding money, and what needs to be tuned or cut.

PRESENTED BY BLAND

🗣️There’s an AI company without churn?

The Rundown: In San Francisco, there’s an AI company that’s making voice agents that sound human, run 24/7, and never make you wait on hold.

Call Bland and you can:

  • Experience human-sounding AI

  • Role-play with your ideal use case

  • Have a phone call that you actually enjoy

Want to try for yourself? Book a demo today! 

MICROSOFT

🔮 Satya Nadella details Microsoft’s ‘positive-sum’ AI future

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella published a post on the company’s ‘positive-sum’ mentality to building in the AI wave, coming alongside a candid appearance on the Dwarkesh Podcast discussing AGI and the future of the industry.

The details:

  • Nadella pointed to the new AI superfactory as a ‘positive sum’ collaboration, emphasizing partnerships that “catalyze and compound progress.”

  • The CEO said the AI era’s success will be defined when the “overall economy and society themselves reach new heights,” not company valuations.

  • He also revealed a shift from "per user" to "per agent" pricing, treating AI systems as infrastructure customers rather than just tools for humans to use.

  • Nadella also said Microsoft now has access to “all of it” in regard to OpenAI IP (except physical consumer hardware) for seven years under the new deal.

Why it matters: Nadella’s arguing that AI's success shouldn't be measured by which company hits top valuations, but by whether it transforms the world. It’s a noble effort amid surging AI spending, but with society’s growing tension on whether AI will concentrate power or distribute it, skeptics will need more data before feeling the AGI.

QUICK HITS

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  • 🖥️ Holo 2 - Lightweight models for powering computer use agents

  • 🤖 GPT-5.1 - OpenAI’s upgraded model with personality customization

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI launched a pilot of group chats for users in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan, allowing up to 20 people to collaborate in shared conversations.

Google introduced AI shopping upgrades for the holidays, including an agent that calls stores to check inventory, agentic checkout, product browsing in Gemini, and more.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly planning to step down as early as next year, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus viewed as the favorite to replace him.

ByteDance Seed released Depth Anything 3, an AI model that predicts spatially consistent geometry from images to create accurate 3D depth maps.

Sakana AI became Japan’s most valuable private company after a new funding round that valued the startup at $2.6B.

Google announced a $40B investment in Texas through 2027 to build data centers and AI infrastructure, including a $30M Energy Impact Fund and training programs.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Jackie S. in Jersey City, NJ:

"I recently paused my career in tech to be a full-time mom. I became the household's CFO overnight. I’m not a developer, but Google AI Studio made it surprisingly easy to build my own budgeting app with a chat-based “Budget Agent.” Now I just tell it to log expenses, update monthly budgets per category, or give me insights and recommendations for next month. The app also gives me a clean dashboard with dynamic charts that show spend by category and tracks how we’re pacing against each month's budget."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

Tech

Blue Origin nails SpaceX signature move

Jennifer Mossalgue • 5 minutes

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Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Blue Origin just pulled off a major win: bringing its behemoth New Glenn booster back from the edge of space in one piece.

The company’s long-delayed rocket finally stuck a sea landing — and set NASA’s twin Mars probes on their way. After years of trailing SpaceX, is this the moment Jeff Bezos’ space ambitions really take off?

Reminder: Our next workshop, ‘AI Essentials for Leaders & Managers,’ is today at 4 PM EST. Join and learn how to assess organizational AI readiness, choose which AI projects get the green light, and more. RSVP here.

In today’s tech rundown:

  • Blue Origin lands booster and hits major milestone

  • Thinking Machines Lab eyes $50B valuation

  • Privacy-first smart glasses challenge Meta Ray-Bans

  • Immortality startup pivots to AI-clone assistants

  • Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

BLUE ORIGIN

🚀 Blue Origin lands booster and hits major milestone 

Image source: Blue Origin

The Rundown: Space company Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket nailed its first booster recovery at sea during its second flight, delivering NASA’s twin Mars probes to orbit and proving Jeff Bezos can finally play in SpaceX’s reusable rocket league.

The details:

  • The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying twin Mars-bound satellites on their months-long journey.

  • The successful booster recovery marks a major turnaround from New Glenn’s debut flight, where the rocket reached orbit but failed to recover its first stage.

  • Blue Origin has struggled for years to translate Bezos’ deep pockets into orbital success, lagging far behind SpaceX in launch cadence and technology.

  • SpaceX has conducted over 130 Falcon 9 launches in 2024 alone, with a 99% success rate, setting a punishing bar for Blue Origin.

Why it matters: Like SpaceX’s industry-dominant Falcon 9, New Glenn is engineered for partial reusability — a strategy designed to slash launch costs and challenge SpaceX’s grip on commercial launches. This successful recovery proves New Glenn can deliver on its reusability promises, potentially opening the door to lucrative contracts.

THINKING MACHINES LAB

🤑 Thinking Machines Lab eyes $50B valuation

Image source: YouTube / Atomico

The Rundown: Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is negotiating a new round at a roughly $50B valuation, with whispers stretching it to $60B depending on investor appetite, reports Bloomberg.

The details:

  • The funding would more than quadruple TML’s July mark, when the year‑old startup closed a staggering $2B seed at a $12B valuation.

  • Murati left OpenAI in September 2024 after serving as CTO during the company’s ChatGPT explosion, giving her unmatched credibility with investors.

  • A month ago, Thinking Machines unveiled Tinker, a Python-based API for LLM fine-tuning that gives researchers low-level control over training workflows.

Why it matters: Thinking Machines Lab has vaulted from $12B to talk of $50B in under four months, with Tinker still sealed in private beta. If the round hits that mark, it suggests elite AI pedigrees can now summon blockbuster valuations on momentum alone. Not bad for a one-year-old lab muscling into the top tier of private AI startups.

EVEN REALITIES

👓 Privacy-first smart glasses challenge Meta Ray-Bans

Image source: Even Realities

The Rundown: Even Realities just unveiled the G2 Display smart glasses, a camera-free, speaker-less pair pitched as “human-centric” wearables that won’t freak out bystanders or leak your audio into the world. Plus, they come with a smart ring.

The details:

  • The upgraded G2 Display smart glasses, priced at $599, feature the startup’s HAO engine — micro-LED projectors, waveguides, and digitally surfaced lenses.

  • Frames hit 36 grams in magnesium and titanium (down from 44g), with an IP67 rating, adjustable nose pads, prescription support, and clip-on sunglasses.

  • Battery runs two-plus days per charge, while four mics power Conversate AI for real-time translation across 31 languages, teleprompter mode, and navigation.

  • The optional $249 R1 smart ring adds gesture controls and health tracking (heart rate, temp, steps, calories) with a four-day battery.

Why it matters: Shipping smart glasses with only a microphone might seem quaint in an era where every gadget demands AI and camera integration, but Even Realities is betting users will trade features for peace of mind — and the ability to wear them without triggering Meta Ray-Ban levels of privacy anxiety.

URAE.AI

🤖 Immortality startup pivots to AI-clone assistants

Image source: Urae.ai

The Rundown: Immortality startup Eternos just shifted gears with a new name — Urai.ai, pivoting from “digital afterlife” memorials to building AI clones of living people that can speak in your voice and handle real work in real time.

The details:

  • The shift follows early user demand for immediate utility over posthumous sentimentality, and comes alongside a $10.3M seed round.

  • Eternos launched in 2024 to let people record life stories and voices for loved ones after death — a niche product that struggled to find traction.

  • Urae.ai now aims to build an “AI twin” that mirrors your values, judgment, and tone to handle routine tasks, answer questions, and manage email and Slack.

  • The company drew attention when terminally ill client Michael Bommer spent 25 hours recording to create a talkative digital replica for his family.

Why it matters: The shift from digital memorials to full-blown productivity reveals what people might want: not digital ghosts, but personal assistants that sound exactly like them and handle the tedious parts of being online. If Urai.ai can pull that off without triggering identity fraud cases, it could redefine how we delegate our digital selves.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Google, facing a near €3B EU antitrust penalty, offered to tweak its ad tech products even as it appeals the ruling.

Apple launched a $230 knitted iPhone strap designed with Issey Miyake, essentially a designer sock for your phone that the company is calling an “additional pocket.”

Tesla may add Apple CarPlay as soon as late this year in a sharp pivot for the EV giant after years of shunning third‑party infotainment in favor of its homegrown system.

Verizon is reportedly preparing to cut up to 20K jobs and convert roughly 180–200 stores into franchises, marking one of the largest workforce reductions in its history.

Amazon is tightening its Fire TV ecosystem, blocking apps linked to piracy on both new and existing devices to curb illegal streaming.

Starlink rival Project Kuiper is now dubbed Amazon Leo, giving Amazon’s seven-year satellite internet effort an official name.

Airbnb will pilot in‑app Instacart grocery ordering starting in January, letting guests stock kitchens before or during stays while select hosts handle delivery and put‑away.

Divine, a Jack Dorsey–backed app, launched to revive Vine’s six‑second loops, opening access to 100K+ archived clips from pre‑shutdown backups to fight AI slop.

Apple updated its App Review Guidelines to require apps to clearly disclose and obtain explicit user consent before sharing personal data with third‑party AI services.

Uber is quietly testing in‑app video recording for drivers in India to curb rider misconduct and protect against false complaints in a market where dashcams are rare.

COMMUNITY

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

See you soon,

Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team

AI

AI's autonomous attack era begins

Zach Mink • 6 minutes

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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. AI’s agentic powers are advancing fast. One problem? The bad actors are also taking notice.

Anthropic just disrupted what it calls the first “large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention,” showing that cyberattacks are about to get much more sophisticated — and autonomous.

Reminder: Our next workshop, ‘AI Essentials for Leaders & Managers,’ is today at 4 PM EST. Join and learn how to assess organizational AI readiness, choose which AI projects get the green light, and more. RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Anthropic disrupts AI-orchestrated cyberattack

  • DeepMind's SIMA 2 agent can play any game

  • Use Codex to write code on the web with AI agents

  • AI coding startup Cursor hits $29B valuation

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ANTHROPIC AND AI CYBERSECURITY

🔐 Anthropic disrupts AI-orchestrated cyberattack

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: Anthropic thwarted what it believes is the first AI-driven cyber espionage campaign, after attackers were able to manipulate Claude Code to infiltrate dozens of organizations, with the model executing 80-90% of the attack autonomously.

The details:

  • The September 2025 operation targeted roughly 30 tech firms, financial institutions, chemical manufacturers, and government agencies.

  • The threat was assessed with ‘high confidence’ to be a Chinese state-sponsored group, using AI’s agentic abilities to an “unprecedented degree.”

  • Attackers tricked Claude by splitting malicious tasks into smaller, innocent-looking requests, claiming to be security researchers pushing authorized tests.

  • The attacks mark a major step up from Anthropic’s “vibe hacking” findings in June, now requiring minimal human oversight beyond strategic approval.

Why it matters: Anthropic calls this the “first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention”, and AI’s agentic abilities are creating threats that move and scale faster than ever. While AI capabilities can also help prevent them, security for organizations worldwide likely needs a major overhaul.

TOGETHER WITH SLACK FROM SALESFORCE

🤖 Your new personal productivity bestie, Slackbot

The Rundown: Learn how Slackbot has been rebuilt from the ground up as a trusted productivity partner that understands you and your workspace. It draws from your messages, files, and calendar events – synthesizing information across Slack, Google Drive, Salesforce, and OneDrive into clear insights and actionable next steps.

With Slackbot, you can:

  • Get instant answers with unmatched context from all your docs, conversations, and files

  • Automate seamlessly by creating a canvas, scheduling meetings, and drafting content

  • Work with a personal assistant that learns your workstyle and enhances productivity

Watch the free webinar to see how Slackbot transforms your workspace into a productivity powerhouse.

GOOGLE DEEPMIND

🎮 DeepMind's SIMA 2 agent can play any game

Image source: Google DeepMind

The Rundown: Google DeepMind introduced SIMA 2, a Gemini-powered AI agent that can understand instructions, reason, and teach itself new skills in virtual environments, doubling its predecessor's performance and nearing human-level task completion.

The details:

  • The agent completed 45-75% of tasks in never-before-seen games like MineDojo and ASKA, compared to SIMA 1's 15-30% on the same challenges.

  • SIMA 2 improves itself through trial and error, without human training data, using Gemini to create tasks, score attempts, and learn from mistakes.

  • The system navigates games by analyzing on-screen visuals, simulating keyboard/ mouse inputs, and interacting with the user like a gaming companion.

  • DeepMind also tested SIMA 2 in generated worlds from its Genie 3, where it successfully adapted to environments it had never encountered during training.

Why it matters: Gaming continues to be an awesome test environment for AI agents, and SIMA 2 looks like the biggest step yet towards systems that can reason, interact intelligently with users, and reliably take actions regardless of the environment. Our next in-game partner (or even opponent?) may end up being a Gemini-powered agent.

AI TRAINING

💻 Use Codex to write code on the web with AI agents

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use OpenAI's Codex to ship your first change from a GitHub repository without writing code by hand — connecting a repo, planning changes, implementing them with AI agents, and opening pull requests.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to ChatGPT, open the left sidebar, and click "Codex" to access the main interface

  2. Click "Manage environment," select your GitHub organization and repository, then configure code execution settings

  3. Choose "Plan" to discuss scope without touching code, or "Execute" to make changes on a branch — prompt example: "Can you give me insights on what this project is about?"

  4. Enter your implementation prompt (e.g., "Turn this static landing page into a website where users can paste their own stories and poetry"), preview changes with "Run this code and show me the site," then click "Create PR" when satisfied

Pro Tip: Use branches for safety. Avoid writing code directly to main unless required.

PRESENTED BY FIDDLER

🧠 5 Critical Lessons for Production-Ready AI Agents

The Rundown: Fiddler AI breaks down 5 critical lessons to move AI Agents from demo to dependable production. Discover the testing strategies, architectural frameworks, and approaches for building agents that handle complex judgment calls.

In the guide, you’ll learn:

  • A New Testing Playbook using "checkpoint verification" for unpredictable AI systems

  • When to use a single vs. multi-agent design based on domain, governance, or model requirements

  • How to build agents that deliver real value through judgment, rather than rule-based tasks

Download the free guide to get the 5 field-tested lessons for building production-ready AI agents.

CURSOR

🚀 AI coding startup Cursor hits $29B valuation

Image source: Cursor

The Rundown: AI coding platform Cursor announced a new $2.3B raise at a $29.3B valuation, nearly tripling its worth since June and marking the third funding round this year — coming on the heels of the company’s in-house model and 2.0 platform release.

The details:

  • Cursor said the company officially surpassed $1B in annualized revenue, and that the platform “now produces more code than any other agent in the world”.

  • The company has grown to 300 employees in just two years, while reportedly declining acquisition offers from several major AI companies.

  • The startup released Composer 1 in October, its first in-house model, and a new 2.0 platform with the ability to run up to eight coding assistants independently.

Why it matters: Cursor’s hockey-stick growth is a wild rise, being one of the faces of the AI vibe-coding wave that has minted many big winners. While many felt the app-layer would get wiped out by the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and other frontier giants, Cursor has shown there is more than one way to win a slice of the big AI coding pie.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

  • 🤖 ERNIE 5.0 - Baidu’s new SOTA omnimodal foundation model

  • 🌎 Marble - Create persistent 3D worlds from images, videos, and text prompts

  • 🤖 GPT-5.1 - OpenAI’s upgraded model with personality customization

  • ⚙️ Code Arena - LM Arena’s evaluation platform for testing coding models

📰 Everything else in AI today

Baidu released ERNIE 5, the company’s new powerful omnimodal model, and Famou, a ‘self-evolving’ AI agent for discovering optimal solutions in complex scenarios.

LM Arena launched Code Arena, an AI coding evaluation platform that tests models as interactive agents building applications in real-time.

Google announced Deep Research in NotebookLM, alongside new support for Google Sheets, images, Word documents, and PDFs from Google Drive.

H Company introduced Holo2, a new series of lightweight AI models that power cost-efficient computer-use agents for SOTA results across benchmarks.

Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed that the company is exploring AI-generated video tools for Disney+, which would allow viewers to create and consume short-form content.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Christine C. in Washington, D.C.:

"I built a workflow that takes all my potential Flexible Spending Account (FSA) purchases and puts them in a specific Google Drive folder. From there, I’m able to pull them into the Google NotebookLM to run specific prompts to review the items, tell me which ones are appropriate to submit FSA, and all the information I need, like cost, date, and merchant. It has seriously sped up my workflow!"

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

Robotics

'Putin lookalike' robot face-plants

Jennifer Mossalgue • 5 minutes

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Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Russia’s new “Putin lookalike” humanoid, AIdol, made its grand debut to the ‘Rocky’ theme — only to wobble like a drunk guy stumbling home before face-planting on stage.

The flagship robot’s big moment turned into viral gold. Epic fail. But let’s not forget, Elon Musk’s first “Tesla Bot” reveal was literally just a guy in a spandex suit.

In today’s robotics rundown:

  • Putin’s robot doppelgänger takes a dive

  • Waymo launches service on highways

  • Anthropic tests Claude as a robot coding coach

  • Android creator’s stealth robotics startup

  • Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

HUMANOIDS

🤖 Putin’s robot doppelgänger takes a dive

Image source: Idol Robotics

The Rundown: Russia’s new humanoid, AIdol, strutted onto the stage to the ‘Rocky’ theme — and promptly face-planted. Handlers nervously flanked the country’s “first anthropomorphic robot” as it took a few shaky steps before collapsing mid-debut.

The details:

  • The humanoid collapsed during its Moscow unveiling on Tuesday, with journalists watching as the country's robotics ambitions hit the floor in real time.

  • Staff scrambled with a black cloth cover to block cameras and dragged the robot off stage.

  • Organizers blamed the robot’s malfunction on lighting and calibration issues, with its developers saying the bot was still in the stages of learning.

  • Vladimir Vitukhin’s Russian firm Idol claims that AIdol integrates movement, object manipulation, and human-like interaction through embodied AI.

Why it matters: To be fair, AIdol joins a long blooper reel — Atlas, Optimus, and Figure have all seen their share of glitches. But while U.S. and Chinese rivals iterate past their stumbles toward autonomy, Russia’s comically bad display suggests it's still solving problems competitors cracked years ago, and for Moscow, that’s a problem.

WAYMO

🛣️ Waymo launches service on highways

Image source: Waymo

The Rundown: Waymo’s robotaxis are hitting the highway. Starting now, the company’s autonomous fleet will gradually weave freeway driving into its routes across Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The details:

  • In the Bay Area, the service map now stretches down the Peninsula to San Jose and adds 24/7 curbside pickup and drop-off at San Jose’s international airport.

  • Highway segments kick in when they’re meaningfully faster, with Waymo claiming travel times could drop up to 50% as freeway coverage scales.

  • Launch coverage targets defined stretches like US-60, I-10, I-17, and Loop 202, with the real test being transitions between surface streets and freeways.

  • Waymo is coordinating with the California Highway Patrol and other safety agencies as it scales freeway operation.

Why it matters: Waymo execs call freeway autonomy “easy to learn, hard to master” — higher speeds and aggressive lane changes demand split-second decisions that separate cautious robots from confident ones. If this works, it unlocks faster, cheaper rides and a path to Austin and Atlanta expansions.

ANTHROPIC

🐶 Anthropic tests Claude as a robot coding coach

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: Anthropic turned its office into a robot proving ground with "Project Fetch," a one-day experiment where two teams of non-roboticists raced to program quadruped robots to fetch beach balls — with one using Claude as their coding coach.

The details:

  • Teams started from zero robotics experience, with one relying on Claude to translate English instructions into code and the other going “Claude-less”.

  • The project was designed as a real-world stress test of whether language models can actually bridge the expertise gap in physical AI applications.

  • The AI-assisted team connected to sensors quickly, iterated smoothly, and built a natural-language controller that let them command the robot.

  • The unassisted team got their robot moving, but spent precious hours debugging basics while their Claude-equipped rivals were teaching tricks.

Why it matters: If non-experts can program functional robots through conversation alone, it could radically expand who gets to build physical AI beyond the small circle of trained roboticists. But one day of beach ball retrieval is a proof of concept. The real test is whether this works beyond controlled demos in the messy real world.

ROBOTICS STARTUPS

🎌 Android creator’s stealth robotics startup

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Android creator Andy Rubin quietly launched Genki Robotics, a Tokyo-based stealth startup building humanoids — marking his return to hands-on hardware after years out of the spotlight.

The details:

  • While the company has no public site or job listings, it is already prototyping from a Tokyo office and quietly recruiting to build out the team.

  • Rubin confirmed the humanoid venture to The Information but offered zero product specifics, timelines, or clues about what Genki’s bots will actually do.

  • The name “Genki” means “vibrant and healthy” in Japanese, which hints at something agile, designed for everyday use-cases.

  • Rubin’s track record includes creating Google’s robotics division and leading acquisitions on both sides of the Pacific, including a Tokyo humanoid startup.

Why it matters: Rubin’s an avid robotics enthusiast who led Google’s acquisition of eight robotics and AI companies in 2013, including Schaft, a humanoid startup from the University of Tokyo. His choice to launch Genki in Japan isn't likely coincidental but strategic, tapping into the country's robotics talent and manufacturing infrastructure.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter says home robots won't arrive until costs drop and safety tech improves, predicting that to be in about 5 to 10 years.

Self-driving trucking company Einride plans to go public via a SPAC merger at a $1.8B valuation just six weeks after raising $100M.

French IT giant Capgemini and nuclear fuel operator Orano unveiled Hoxo, an AI-powered humanoid now deployed at a nuclear site in France to handle high-risk tasks.

Foxglove, a San Francisco-based startup building a data platform for robotics, raised $40M in Series B funding, taking its total capital raised to $58M since its 2021 founding.

Doctors in Scotland and the U.S. carried out what is believed to be the first remote, robot‑assisted stroke thrombectomy, removing a blood clot from a cadaver’s brain.

Switzerland’s CircuBAT unveiled an AI‑guided robotic line that identifies mixed EV battery packs, safely tears them down, and recovers materials to reduce waste.

Polish YouTuber Nikodem Bartnik built a real-time conversational robot head, whose PC‑hosted “brain” answers like an ancient Greek philosopher.

King’s College London and Carnegie Mellon research finds that robots powered by today’s popular foundation models are unsafe for general‑purpose, real‑world use.

UCLA launched a fully automated AI‑driven robotic system from Molecular Devices to grow, monitor, and analyze cells and tissues, funded by a $1.9M NIH grant.

COMMUNITY

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

See you soon,

Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team

AI

World models go mainstream

Zach Mink • 6 minutes

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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. We've heard plenty of commentary about world models being the future, but the public has had few ways to meaningfully access them.

AI 'godmother' Fei-Fei Li just changed that with World Labs’ Marble, an editable 3D environment generator that could finally carry ‘spatial intelligence’ from research hype into real creative workflows.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Fei-Fei Li's World Labs launches Marble

  • OpenAI’s GPT 5.1 with new personality presets

  • Use ChatGPT Projects to onboard new hires

  • OpenAI battles court order on ChatGPT logs

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

WORLD LABS

🌎 Fei-Fei Li's World Labs launches Marble

Image source: World Labs

The Rundown: AI ‘Godmother’ Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs just released Marble, its first commercial world model that generates persistent 3D environments from text, images, videos, or 3D layouts, positioning it ahead of rivals like Google's Genie and Decart.

The details:

  • Users can both create new worlds via text, image, and video prompts or edit, combine, and expand on existing ones to make granular changes.

  • The platform lets creators export worlds as Gaussian splats, meshes, or videos, allowing for use and import into gaming, VFX, and VR workflows.

  • The model is now generally available after its initial September release in preview, offering both freemium and paid tiers starting at $20/mo.

  • Marble coincides with Li’s essay on spatial intelligence, saying world models are a crucial step forward from LLMs without grounding in physical space.

Why it matters: While areas like gaming and VR might be the first use cases to come to mind, the list of applications is limitless — from simulated environments for robotics, architecture design to cinematic world building. Like image and video models, world models feel like a tool that is going to be in many workflows across domains very soon.

TOGETHER WITH COMPANY

🤑 Turn AI into your income engine

The Rundown: HubSpot’s new “200+ AI-Powered Income Ideas” free guide offers actionable strategies to turn artificial intelligence into your own personal revenue generator — unlocking a gateway to financial innovation in the digital age.

With this guide, you can:

  • Explore hundreds of revenue-generating ideas across industries with real-world applications

  • Follow simple, step-by-step instructions that make AI accessible to everyone

  • Adopt cutting-edge strategies to keep you ahead in today's fast-paced market

Access your free guide here.

OPENAI

👋 OpenAI’s GPT 5.1 with new personality presets

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI just rolled out GPT-5.1, an upgraded version of its flagship model that emphasizes a more conversational tone and new user customizations — introducing eight personality presets alongside improvements to reasoning speed.

The details:

  • The release includes 5.1 Instant, which OAI describes as warmer and more instruction-focused, and Thinking, which upgrades efficiency and clarity.

  • Users can now select from eight tone presets (Default, Professional, Friendly, Candid, Quirky, Efficient, Nerdy, and Cynical) to steer and customize the model.

  • The company also introduced experimental characteristic tunings like emoji use, warmness, and response scalability, available via ‘Personalization Settings’.

  • OAI did not provide benchmarks for the 5.1 rollout, only showing a chart comparing the model’s time spent on easy vs. hard tasks compared to GPT-5.

Why it matters: The GPT-5.1 rollout is an odd one for OAI, feeling rushed with less hype, benchmarking, and fanfare than a typical release. This may signal a push to get ahead of a rival release (any day now, Gemini 3), or it might just be a shift towards a smaller, more incremental update cadence between full reveals like Google and others.

AI TRAINING

🤝 Use ChatGPT Projects to onboard new hires

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use ChatGPT Projects to build a private, shareable workspace with uploaded SOPs, custom instructions, and project-specific memory for onboarding new hires smoothly.

Step-by-step:

  1. Open ChatGPT, enable the sidebar, select "Projects," then "New project," and name it (e.g., "Onboarding")

  2. Upload your SOP files to the Project, balancing context carefully to avoid overloading the AI's memory

  3. Share the Project by adding your new hire's email; they'll access the workspace with all files, chats, and memory intact

  4. New hires start with a kickoff prompt using Dictation mode: "I'm a new hire. Role: [title]. Goal: [objective]. Do not start yet. First, ask clarifying questions about my role before onboarding"

  5. Continue chatting for targeted answers from uploaded SOPs, then share specific chat threads by copying the chat link

Pro Tip: Use dictation mode to work faster, limit the memories to that Project only, and provide just enough context without overloading the context window.

PRESENTED BY IBM

🌐 Redefining Network Intelligence with AI

The Rundown: IBM Network Intelligence introduces a new human-AI model that blends analytical AI with “reasoning” AI — a dual approach developed to help enterprises filter noise, identify issues, and scale operations seamlessly.

With IBM Network Intelligence, you’ll experience:

  • Fast, accurate insights

  • AI that scales while humans guide strategy

  • Less tool bloat, more efficiency

Learn more.

OPENAI & THE NEW YORK TIMES

🏛️ OpenAI battles court order on ChatGPT logs

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI is pushing to appeal a ruling that requires the AI leader to hand over 20M anonymized ChatGPT conversations to the New York Times as part of an ongoing copyright lawsuit, calling the request an “invasion of user privacy.”

The details:

  • A judge ruled that the requested chat logs were appropriate discovery material, saying OAI’s de-identification process already protects users’ privacy.

  • The NYT originally requested 1.4B chats, before narrowing to a random sample of 20M from Dec. 2022 to Nov. 2024 to look for potential copyright violations.

  • OpenAI aims to remove the order in a letter to the court, also publishing a blog publicly detailing its stance on user privacy and the “baseless lawsuit.”

  • OpenAI argued that "99.99%" of the transcripts have no connection to the copyright claims, calling the request a "speculative fishing expedition.”

Why it matters: OAI continues to fight, but it sounds like the court has made up its mind — though positioning the issue as a violation of user privacy is a good way to swing consumers on your side. While these anonymized chats will likely be in the hands of the NYT eventually, ‘AI confidentiality’ feels ready to become a bigger discussion.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

  • 🤖 Tiger Data - AI-Native Agentic Postgres for iterative Agents — smart MCPs, Vector search & Forkable infra. Try the CLI free*

  • 🌎 Marble - Create persistent 3D worlds from images, videos, and text prompts

  • 🤖 GPT-5.1 - OpenAI’s upgraded model with personality customization

  • ⭐️ Iconic Marketplace - ElevenLabs licensing platform for celebrity voices

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Everything else in AI today

Anthropic announced a massive $50B investment in U.S. AI infrastructure, building out the company’s first custom data centers in Texas and New York starting in 2026.

Baidu released ERNIE-4.5-VL-28B-A3B-Thinking (and they say OAI needs work on naming!), a multimodal reasoner that claims to beat GPT-5 high and Gemini 2.5 Pro on visual benchmarks.

ByteDance’s Volcano Engine launched Doubao-Seed-Code, an AI coding assistant that matches Claude Sonnet on benchmarks while undercutting rivals by 60% in price.

Even Realities unveiled G2, a line of smart glasses with a ‘spatial display’ that projects info at different visual depths and an R1 control ring for gesture-based interactions.

Weibo AI open-sourced VibeThinker-1.5B, a model reportedly trained for just $7,800 that shows strong performance on math, coding, and reasoning at a tiny size.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Atanas N. in London, U.K.:

"As a Data Manager, I noticed a recurring issue: marketing often needs facts from our research reports for content or PR, and they will ask the research team, which is busy with other priorities. I built a solution using Zapier agents. Each agent is trained on the latest version of a report. I also created a classifier agent that routes questions to the right report agent.

I published everything in Microsoft Teams and set up a shared chat. Now marketing can ask any question and get an instant answer with a citation to the exact page and chapter. Even the CEO uses it to quickly check facts.”

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

AI

Meta's chief AI scientist maps his exit

Zach Mink • 6 minutes

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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The tension between Meta's AI old guard and its flashy new hires has been rippling through the company, but a coming departure may cause the biggest wave yet.

AI pioneer and Chief Scientist Yann LeCun is reportedly planning to leave for his own world models startup, turning the company's internal battle into a real-world test of competing visions for AI's future.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Meta’s Chief AI Scientist plans to exit

  • ElevenLabs’ celeb AI voice licensing platform

  • Use AI as a personal tutor to learn anything

  • SoftBank cuts Nvidia shares to go ‘all-in’ on OpenAI

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

🚪 Meta’s Chief AI Scientist plans to exit

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: Longtime Meta Chief AI Scientist and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun is reportedly planning to leave the company, with fundraising talks and plans already underway to launch his own startup based around developing world models.

The details:

  • According to FT, LeCun has told colleagues he plans to leave Meta in the coming months, ending his run leading the company’s FAIR arm since 2013.

  • LeCun's upcoming venture will reportedly focus on world models that learn from video and spatial data rather than text-based systems.

  • LeCun began reporting to Alexandr Wang as part of Meta’s massive AI restructure, with friction this summer between FAIR and the new direction.

  • Meta recently cut around 600 positions from its AI divisions, which included FAIR but not the recently formed TBD Lab overseen by Wang.

Why it matters: This coming departure is… not a surprise. There has been tension between Meta’s old guard and new hires throughout the reorg, and LeCun’s AI critiques are constantly at odds with Meta’s new AI direction. Time will tell if the upcoming venture ultimately proves him right or if the high-profile talent proves its worth instead.

TOGETHER WITH AUGMENT CODE

📘 AI-Powered Engineering at Scale

The Rundown: Augment Code’s new adoption playbook, AI-Powered Engineering at Scale, offers exclusive insights and tools to help you accelerate your AI adoption process and scale across the enterprise.

In Augment Code’s guide, you’ll explore:

  • real frameworks from CTOs who’ve scaled AI

  • ready-to-use checklists for AI transformation

  • organizational self-assessment tools

Stop experimenting and start scaling. Download the playbook today.

ELEVENLABS

⭐️ ElevenLabs’ celeb AI voice licensing platform

Image source: ElevenLabs

The Rundown: ElevenLabs just debuted its Iconic Voice Marketplace, connecting brands with AI-replicated celebrity voices through rights-holder agreements, featuring 28 licensed options spanning actors, historical figures, athletes, and more.

The details:

  • The platform brokers licensing deals between companies and estates or living celebrities, with ElevenLabs synthesizing the approved voice content.

  • Living celebrities available on the platform include actor Michael Caine, joining actress Liza Minnelli and musicians Art Garfunkel and Michael Feinstein.

  • Deceased figures like Maya Angelou, Babe Ruth, Alan Turing, and Mark Twain were recreated from archived recordings via estate partnerships.

  • The company also announced that actor Matthew McConaughey (an investor in ElevenLabs) is using the tech to voice his newsletter for Spanish readers.

Why it matters: A ‘Cameo’ platform for AI voices (and eventually full likenesses) has felt like an inevitability — and while most of the library is historical, it’s a first step into a weird world of ‘cloned’ IP. With AI image/video apps (looking at you, Sora) muddying the waters, ElevenLabs could offer an ethical option for both brands and celebrities.

AI TRAINING

👨🏻‍🏫 Use AI as a personal tutor to learn anything

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use ChatGPT's Study and Learn mode to get tutoring-style guidance that breaks problems into steps, checks your reasoning, and adapts to your level instead of just giving you answers.

Step-by-step:

  1. In ChatGPT, click the "+" icon on the chat composer, select "More," then activate "Study and learn" mode

  2. Describe your learning goal (e.g., "Teach me how to program in Python" or "Help me solve this finance problem")

  3. Answer context questions the AI asks, then follow the step-by-step guidance as it nudges you toward solutions rather than providing direct answers

  4. Use for comprehensive understanding and problem-solving skills; switch to Regular mode for quick facts or content generation

Pro tip: For creating study guides and quick quizzes, you can also try NotebookLM.

PRESENTED BY IBM

🌐 Redefining Network Intelligence with AI

The Rundown: IBM Network Intelligence introduces a new human-AI model that blends analytical AI with “reasoning” AI — a dual approach developed to help enterprises filter noise, identify issues, and scale operations seamlessly.

With IBM Network Intelligence, you’ll experience:

  • Fast, accurate insights

  • AI that scales while humans guide strategy

  • Less tool bloat, more efficiency

Learn more.

SOFTBANK, NVIDIA, & OPENAI

💰 SoftBank cuts Nvidia shares to go ‘all-in’ on OpenAI

Image source: Bloomberg @ Tokyo AI Summit — Jensen Huang with Masayoshi Son

The Rundown: SoftBank Group sold its complete $5.8B Nvidia position to finance a wave of AI infrastructure investments with OpenAI, with CEO Masayoshi Son declaring the company "all in" on the AI leader despite growing questions about AI capital returns.

The details:

  • The Nvidia sale marks SoftBank's second complete exit from the chipmaker, after selling a $4B stake in 2019 for shares now valued above $150B.

  • Son revealed that pre-2019, CEO Sam Altman asked him to invest $10B, but Microsoft ultimately won the deal and became the exclusive computing partner.

  • The CEO believes "OpenAI will be listed eventually… and will become the most valuable company in the world," driving SoftBank's $33.2B planned investment.

  • Son’s concentrated approach has produced both big wins (like Alibaba's $20M investment to $150B) and catastrophic losses, including $11.5B on WeWork.

Why it matters: Masayoshi Son is no stranger to making massive generational investments, and this time he’s putting his chips on the AI leader — and pulling them off of the AI chipmaking king. But OAI will still be buying Nvidia’s chips to power its massive compute needs, so the circular AI ball of money continues to grow regardless.

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COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Jeff L. in San Francisco, CA:

"I created a Gemini Gem called "AIML Tutor" to help me get up to speed in AI/ML. It is instructed to provide answers at a beginner level and increase in complexity as I prove to have grasped concepts. I asked it to use metaphors since I've found that's the best way for concepts to stick with me. I use it all day to explain concepts and have also used it to create learning plans with links to external materials like YouTube videos."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

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