The Big Four, tracked.
The live wire from the labs, refreshed every 15 minutes. Our verified read on the big launches lives in Phantom Notes.
§ Lab spotlight
AnthropicAUG 29, 2026 ↗Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theftThis latest lawsuit is particularly broad and homes in on accusations of illegal piracy.OpenAIAUG 28, 2026 ↗Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXOur decision to wind down our contract providing OpenAI models to Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX.Google DeepMindAUG 27, 2026 ↗Piloting the world's first double-blind AI evaluationsPiloting the world's first double-blind AI evaluationsxAIJUL 08, 2026 ↗xAI Releases Grok 4.5, an "Opus-Class" Flagship at Half the PriceGrok 4.5 launches at $2/$6 per million tokens with a 500K context window, ranking 4th on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Trained alongside Cursor, it wins Snorkel's GDPVal+ professional-work benchmark and ships day one in Cursor and Grok Build.
§ Our verified coverageAll of Phantom Notes →
AUG 15, 2026Gemini 3.7 Flash Is Smarter and Half Price. Read the Fine Print on Both.→JUL 24, 2026Kimi K3: The Largest Open Model Ever Does Not Exist Yet. It Is Due Monday.→JUL 22, 2026Meta Killed Llama in April. Now It Wants You to Rent Muse Spark Instead.→JUL 21, 2026Gemini 3.6 Flash Is Not Smarter Than 3.5. Google Says That Is the Point.→JUN 27, 2026OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Is Its Best Model Yet. You Cannot Use It Yet, and That Is the Story.→
§ The full wire· 9 items
AUG 29, 2026“We’re not doing 30 bets a year”: Vijay Pande on betting small after running $4 billion at a16zVijay Pande — who left a16z's roughly $4 billion biotech practice last year to start the much smaller, AI-native VZVC — talks about why biology is finally shifting from a "discovery" science to an "en...TechCrunch · industry↗AUG 28, 2026Anthropic gets its first court win over the Pentagon’s supply-chain risk labelA federal judge ruled the Trump administration illegally labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk, handing the AI company a victory as its second Pentagon lawsuit continues in Washington.Anthropic · industry↗AUG 28, 2026Meta executive leaves for OpenAI as the social media giant faces growing scrutiny in IndiaSandhya Devanathan will oversee some OpenAI operations across Southeast Asia and Australia in her new role.OpenAI · industry↗AUG 28, 2026How I built thisBen s session #4Ben's Bites · industry↗AUG 28, 2026Open-weight AI companies are the Valley’s hottest acquisition targetsThere's a lot of capital pouring into the business of giving models away.TechCrunch · industry↗AUG 28, 2026Neocloud Lambda secures $1B in debt to buy more chipsNeocloud Lambda has raised $1B in private debt to buy Nvidia AI chips and lease them to Microsoft. It's the latest in a string of loans, underscoring the high cost of the AI boom.TechCrunch · industry↗AUG 27, 2026Nvidia closes in on Hugging Face acquisitionNvidia has reportedly agreed to buy Hugging Face, the popular open-source AI hub, for $12.9 billion in a move that would let Nvidia both protect its chip empire and jump back into the cloud business.TechCrunch · industry↗AUG 27, 2026Anthropic and OpenAI are joining the AI stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the AI Stage is back to dig into the single hottest topic in the community for the past few years, presented by Google for Startups.OpenAI · industry↗AUG 26, 2026Robotics startup Generalist reaches $3B valuation, sources sayThe $200 million extension comes just months after the physical AI startup reached a $2 billion valuation.TechCrunch · industry↗