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· 2 items
AUG 26, 2026India’s Ringg gets backing from Peak XV as it pushes voice AI past the phone callRingg has raised $10 million from Peak XV as a part of its Series A extension.TechCrunch · voice↗AUG 26, 2026Radar makes podcasts searchable — and usable by AI agentsParticle’s new podcast intelligence platform transcribes and analyzes more than 130,000 podcasts, making their conversations searchable on the web and accessible to AI agents through an API and MCP.TechCrunch · voice↗