AI News

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Academic Researcher Program, initially for 10,000 researchers at selected universities, expanding to 100,000 later. Participants get advanced ChatGPT with higher usage limits and larger context windows, plus four free colleague invitations.....

Moonshot AI's Kimi closed a $3.5B+ Series F round, reaching a $35B post-money valuation. Oversubscribed 3x, it closed early. A Series G (pre-IPO) originally set for August has already launched with a $50B pre-money valuation, leaving almost no gap between rounds as capital pursuit accelerates month by month.....

Moonshot AI's product Kimi has closed a Series F funding round exceeding $3.5 billion, with a post-money valuation of $35 billion. The round was oversubscribed by over three times, leading to an early close and the launch of a Series G (Pre-IPO) round at a pre-money valuation of $50 billion. Kimi's strong market validation, driven by practical features like long-context processing, and the massive fundraising reflect high investor enthusiasm for ....

Anthropic released the fifth version of its model context protocol specification, with the core change being a shift to a stateless architecture, no longer requiring clients and servers to maintain a persistent connection, completely reengineering the underlying communication mechanism, considered the most disruptive revision since the creation of MCP.

According to Bloomberg, the distributed database vendor OceanBase is in discussions with several top institutions for a Series A funding round of RMB 2 to 3 billion, aiming to enhance its independent operations and accelerate expansion into an AI data platform. According to insiders, OceanBase's annualized revenue reached over RMB 1.4 billion in 2026, representing a year-on-year growth of around 70%. It has thousands of customers, including China Communications Construction Bank and China Mobile, and has already established a presence in Southeast Asia, Japan, India, and Latin America. Ant Group, OceanBase

Google DeepMind has quietly disbanded the Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold team. Core figures Hassabis and Jumper just won the 2024 chemistry Nobel for this system, but over the past year, most original paper authors have been reassigned to other projects, breaking up the star team.....

xAI adds Build mode to Grok: describe in natural language to instantly generate websites/apps with custom domains, zero code, refine iteratively. Early beta, only for $300/month SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, multi-device.....

Amazon is strategically scaling back its AI R&D, halting active development of most Nova models, including flagship models and video/image generators, shifting to maintenance for existing customers. This follows the disbanding of its AGI division and closure of related labs. Proprietary models struggle to compete, so Amazon pivots to infrastructure strength, building Amazon Athena—a unified platform to integrate third-party cutting-edge models fo....

ChatGPT’s weekly active users are about to reach 1 billion, roughly 7 months behind schedule. Yet, achieving this in under 4 years still makes it one of the fastest-growing products. A spokesperson declined to comment. Slowing growth is attributed to intensifying competition as Google Gemini deeply integrates its ecosystem of billions of users, shifting growth engines.....

In H1 2026, Xianyu's AI service orders hit 9.816M, up 157% YoY, with nearly 5M buyers (+98%). AI skill services accounted for 45.1%, AI courses 8.1%. Diverse supplies like AI templates emerged. AI is blending into daily second-hand trading.....

ChatGPT's weekly active users are nearing 1 billion, 7 months behind the target. Still, reaching this scale in under 4 years makes it one of the fastest-growing apps. OpenAI declined to comment.....

Fish Audio launched the production-grade voice model S2.1 Pro for real-time conversations. Available via API with free quota, it offers ~90ms first-frame latency, supports 83 languages, and uses unified voice tech for smooth real-time dialogue.....

OpenAI silently updated ChatGPT rules to ban replicating the distinct style of living authors. Requests to mimic openings, adapt classics, or use stylistic traits are now refused, aiming to avoid copyright risks. The restriction has been confirmed to be active.....

1,134 employees from top AI firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta signed an open letter urging the U.S. government to support international cooperation and develop tools for AI governance, even calling for a deliberate slowdown if necessary. The initiative, named "Steering the Frontier," has rare public backing from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, with Anthropic's CEO and co-founders also signing, highlighting urgent industry consensus on safe AI....

Alipay upgrades its AI developer incentive program, offering up to 5,660 yuan in token subsidies and lowering barriers. Individual developers integrating AI pay-as-you-go, AI web, or mobile payment can benefit from now until August 21.....

Apple credits AI models for vulnerability discoveries in a security update for the first time. Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's Codex Security, and NVIDIA's AI red team helped fix multiple flaws, signaling tech giants' deep integration of AI into security research to harden OS defenses.....

OpenRouter unveils official LangChain integrations (Python: langchain-openrouter, TypeScript: @langchain/openrouter) allowing direct use of 400+ models from 70+ providers without code refactoring, replacing previous ChatOpenAI endpoint workarounds.....

AI accelerates vulnerability discovery; popular product flaws could double by 2026. US NVD has already logged 45,207 vulnerabilities this year, nearing last year's total, which itself was a record in 2025. AI acts as both a magnifying glass for security teams and an accelerator for hackers, escalating the vulnerability warfare.....

OpenAI launched the open-source Codex Security CLI tool on July 29. It is a code security scanner that detects and verifies vulnerabilities in repositories, integrates into CI/CD pipelines. Discovered before release, it's an early version; OpenAI will iterate based on developer feedback.....