Yearly Archives: 2026 - Page 109

Manus raises more than $500m after Beijing blocked Meta's takeover. Tab emerges at a $300m valuation. Nvidia reportedly discusses another $1bn for Figure. ElevenLabs says it has passed a $600m run rate, and Synthesia launches Syren in beta. A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds most Americans think government is not taking AI risks seriously enough.

A former Tesla Optimus AI lead is reportedly building non-humanoid factory robots. AWS has published open sample code for training robot software in the cloud. Locus keeps its top AMR ranking in the Americas, and ZS Robotics brings a low-profile pallet shuttle to the US. What is confirmed, what is reported and what is company-claimed.

A new benchmark, TasteVal, says the best AI model now reaches expert-level results on eight AI research tasks with 2.3 times less compute, though its authors list reasons that may overstate progress. Preference Model has open-sourced Karotte, a framework for training environments that are harder to game, and DatologyAI has released Zephon, a data loader that keeps experiments repeatable when the GPU count changes. What each claims, and who measured it.

Scale AI and Elorian's Humanity's Sixth Sense benchmark finds people score 93.1% on everyday visual questions while the best model, GPT-6 Astra, scores 53.6%, mostly because models misread the picture. A separate preprint, not yet peer reviewed, says base models can reason almost as well as RL-trained ones when their answer starts with the right word.

DARPA has moved Atom Computing, Diraq, IBM and IonQ into the final, hands-on stage of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, and says it increasingly expects a useful quantum computer by 2033. UK trapped-ion firm Universal Quantum has raised more than $100m, IonQ claims big speed-ups for error-corrected operations in simulations, and a peer-reviewed Cornell paper shows a full gate set on a qubit that partly tolerates its main error. Plus a Jülich preprint and Infineon's ion-trap chips. What each confirms, and what is only claimed.

A GAO audit found none of 24 major US agencies had fully done three basic steps to prepare for quantum-safe encryption, and only one had a complete inventory of vulnerable systems. The same day, Chrome 155 gave web developers built-in post-quantum algorithms and OpenSSH 10.6 added quantum-resistant login signatures; Surfshark says its WireGuard VPN is now post-quantum for authentication too. What each means, and why quantum-safe website certificates are a separate, later job.

Cognition has given its Devin coding agent a memory: short notes kept in a Git repository and tidied each night by a "dreaming" session, with the format open-sourced. Separately, Hark has released Hark Pro, a free assistant built on a model trained to use computers. What each launch is, and which claims are the companies' own.

A critical Langflow flaw let MCP server settings run any command. Researchers say GitHub's Copilot CLI followed encrypted instructions that it refused in plain text; GitHub says that is not a vulnerability. Meanwhile Atlassian has split its 220+ agent tools into read, write and destructive tiers, and OpenAI has made Codex Auto-review free. What each one confirms.

Anthropic has expanded its Cyber Verification Program into three tiers, Defense, Red Team and Specialized, that relax Claude's cyber safety blocks for vetted security teams on Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Mythos 5.1. Specialized applicants are reviewed with the US government. What each tier allows, and what Anthropic's own test shows.

CoreWeave plans 240 MW in Navi Mumbai, Bell Canada's Regina campus could reach 1.2 GW with its own gas plant, and Applied Digital reported $341.9 million in quarterly revenue alongside $6.4 billion of debt. Meanwhile the bond financing Meta's Louisiana data centre hit a record low, and Entergy's CEO let slip that the site will draw 4,500 MW. What each company confirmed, and what is reported.