The week ran on hardware and big politics: OpenAI unveiled its first chip, the White House put the brakes on GPT-5.6, and Google kept losing key researchers. Here's the roundup.
🤖 AI
White House slows GPT-5.6 rollout
OpenAI opened the model not to everyone, but to 20 government-approved partners — after two White House agencies asked to stretch out the release for safety review. The reason: GPT-5.6's capabilities put it close to Anthropic's discontinued Mythos 5.
Liquid AI releases a 230M parameter model
The startup unveiled LFM2.5-230M — a compact non-transformer model that matches models three times its size on edge tasks. Runs directly on phones and laptops, no cloud needed.
💻 Software
Gemini 3.5 Flash learns to control a computer
Google built computer use right into Flash: the model looks at a screenshot and clicks, scrolls, and types in a browser, on a phone, or on desktop by itself. OSWorld benchmark: 78.4 vs. 65.1 for the previous version.
Vercel releases AI SDK 7
The update turns fragile agent prototypes into production-ready code: action confirmation, durable workflows, telemetry, and support for third-party harnesses — Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode. The SDK has 16M weekly downloads.
⚙️ Robots and hardware
OpenAI shows its first chip, Jalapeño
Together with Broadcom, the company unveiled an inference accelerator designed in nine months — partly by its own models. They're promising notably better performance per watt than current chips, with first shipments by end of 2026.
Qualcomm signs Meta as first data center customer
At Investor Day, the company unveiled the Dragonfly C1000 server processor and signed Meta as its first major customer. Production starts in H2 2028, with a claimed 2x performance-per-watt improvement.
Tesla and Sunrun build a 16.8 GW virtual power plant
Tesla, Sunrun and Renew Home pooled home batteries and thermostats into the US's largest distributed power plant — to meet growing data center demand. 300 MW is already operational in Virginia's "Data Center Alley."
💰 Business
Google loses two more key Gemini researchers
Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel are leaving for Anthropic — the fourth high-profile departure in six days. Pre-IPO startups are luring people away with the rare shot at a big pre-listing payout.
Qualcomm acquires Modular for $3.9B
To plug the software gap, Qualcomm acquired AI platform Modular in an all-stock deal. The technology runs models across CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and custom ASICs without rewriting for each accelerator.
🎭 Behind the scenes
$500M raised to beat the common cold
Stripe, Anthropic, OpenAI and Bill Gates launched the Intercept fund — it will back vaccines and air purification systems with the goal of eventually wiping out respiratory viruses entirely.