From the archive
AI models are the systems behind chatbots, coding assistants and tools that work with text, images, audio and video. Follow new language model releases, open-weight models, local AI and benchmark results. Our coverage looks at capabilities, context limits, access, pricing and evaluation methods so you can compare the evidence behind a launch, not just the claims in its announcement.
Lead story
Liquid AI has released two open d1 decision models, including one it says can answer a question in under 50 milliseconds on each of four tested NVIDIA devices. The models return structured decisions in a single pass rather than generating text, offering developers a smaller, faster option for…
Read the report & discussion ↗Nous/Hermes Watch
Nous Research says it has raised a Series B to take Hermes Agent into new areas, including a planned mobile app. The funding could widen the reach of an open-source AI agent that has so far been known chiefly as software for computers and developers.
Watch Desk
Torch Systems has raised $11.5 million to expand its AI-powered monitoring of outdoor infrastructure, from solar sites to transmission corridors. Its solar-powered TerraNode devices combine cameras and environmental sensors with on-device AI to flag changes such as fires, overheating equipment and intrusions.
AWS AI Watch
AWS has published a framework for assessing the business value of agentic automation, arguing that time saved is only part of the return. Its practical warning: freed hours do not become financial savings unless an organisation turns them into a measurable outcome.
Mistral AI Watch
Mistral has unveiled ML4, an open-weight model the French company says can match leading closed systems on several business tasks. If that holds up, the attraction is not just another model score: organisations could adapt and run it on their own infrastructure.
Watch Desk
Brandenburg AI lab Deepslate has raised €7.7 million to develop speech-to-speech models built and hosted in Europe. The funding is aimed at expanding model training and European infrastructure, in a field where latency, language coverage and control of data all matter.
Microsoft AI Watch
Alberta says it is using AI and modern software to update government services, while publishing 22 papers on how it is doing the work. The province’s partnership with Microsoft gives the project a practical question: can its methods make public services faster and cheaper without leaving other governments…
Watch Desk
EqualAI president Miriam Vogel argues that public trust in AI depends on practical ways to check systems, correct mistakes and challenge decisions, not simply on assurances from companies. Her advice to organisations is concrete: map where AI is used, arrange independent evaluation, prepare to handle significant incidents, assign…
Meta AI Watch
Meta has brought its Muse AI assistant to iPad and added connectors for work and everyday apps, including Asana, Canva, Dropbox, GitHub and Notion. The expansion gives Muse a larger screen and a broader set of services to work with, while Meta’s new business features put the agent’s…
Watch Desk
Stacklok is building Mecatl, an open-source harness designed to run AI coding agents as cloud-managed infrastructure rather than as tightly coupled desktop tools. The pitch is aimed at organisations that want to govern agent sessions, execution and access centrally, instead of leaving them scattered across developers’ machines.
Watch Desk
AI agents may be setting up the next cloud-style cycle of vendor lock-in and expensive migrations, argues Guickly founder Prashant Jalan. His practical advice for companies adopting agents: measure costs independently, keep key assets in their own repositories and plan for switching before a platform makes it painful.
NVIDIA Watch
Nvidia considered a bid for AI model marketplace OpenRouter this summer, but did not make a formal offer before Stripe won the company with an $8 billion bid, The Information reports. The episode offers a glimpse of Nvidia’s widening dealmaking ambitions beyond chips.
Meta AI Watch
Meta says it has added AI tools to identify adverts that appear to direct people towards child sexual exploitation material, including adverts whose wording looks harmless on its own. The measures target a shift towards covert signposting and links to illegal material hosted elsewhere.
Watch Desk
Google has launched Playground, a browser-based tool for making games from AI prompts, and revealed Unity Spark, a more professional, collaborative game-making experience in development. The notable shift is that people can build, tweak and share playable games through conversation, without needing to start with code.
AMD Watch
AMD is pitching its upcoming Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495, known as Gorgon Halo, as a way to run larger AI models locally by giving the system up to 192GB of shared memory. The most eye-catching benchmark claims are workload-dependent, but the memory capacity points to a real…
AMD Watch
AMD plans to open an AI research centre in South Korea by the end of this year and hire several hundred researchers. The centre would make Korea a base for global AI research and bring AMD chips together with locally developed AI processors.
OpenAI Watch
Common Sense Media says tests of ChatGPT’s teen experience found gaps in crisis referrals and parental alerts, prompting the group to urge OpenAI to keep teenagers off the service. OpenAI disputes the evaluation, and says some of the behaviour identified was intentional rather than a failure of its…
