Perplexity launches Hybrid Compute, which splits workloads between frontier cloud models like Opus 5 and local LLMs, for all users of its Mac app (Igor Bonifacic/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/2248548/perplexitys-hybrid-compute-splits-sensitive-tasks-between-cloud-and-local-ai/
https://www.engadget.com/2248548/perplexitys-hybrid-compute-splits-sensitive-tasks-between-cloud-and-local-ai/
Engadget
Perplexity's Hybrid Compute splits sensitive tasks between cloud and local AI - Engadget
Local processing could keep costs down too.
Starman Optical agrees to acquire GoPro in an all-cash deal valued at $285M, a premium of 29.5% to GPRO's last close; GoPro hit a market cap of $4B in 2014 (Prathik Jayaprakash/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/gopro-be-acquired-by-starman-optical-285-million-deal-2026-09-01/
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/gopro-be-acquired-by-starman-optical-285-million-deal-2026-09-01/
PE firm Epiris agrees to buy European enterprise communications provider Gamma Communications for about £1B, a 53% premium to Gamma's share price on April 7 (Shona Ghosh/Bloomberg)
https://www.techmeme.com/260901/p24#a260901p24
https://www.techmeme.com/260901/p24#a260901p24
Techmeme
PE firm Epiris agrees to buy European enterprise communications provider Gamma Communications for about £1B, a 53% premium to Gamma's…
Shona Ghosh / Bloomberg: PE firm Epiris agrees to buy European enterprise communications provider Gamma Communications for about £1B, a 53% premium to Gamma's share price on April 7
DataAgent, which is developing AI agents that autonomously fix failures inside companies' own cloud infrastructure, emerges from stealth with a $10M pre-seed (CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/h1vdhnvoge
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/h1vdhnvoge
ctech
DataAgent emerges from stealth with $10 million pre-Seed to build self-healing infrastructure
The Israeli startup is taking aim at the cost and complexity of observability by putting autonomous agents directly inside production environments.
A consortium of 21 banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs, plans to establish a company and launch its stablecoin venture in H1 2027 (Gina Heeb/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/these-banks-are-banding-together-to-launch-a-stablecoin-6de07eff
https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/these-banks-are-banding-together-to-launch-a-stablecoin-6de07eff
The Wall Street Journal
These Banks Are Banding Together to Launch a Stablecoin
Twenty-one firms including several megabanks plan to establish a company that would help guard against competition from digital assets.
Air Security, which builds a security service for extensions and other tools installed on AI agents, emerges from stealth with $50M led by Sequoia and Greenoaks (Meir Orbach/CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r13apdnugg
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r13apdnugg
ctech
Six-month-old AIR Security raises $50 million to build a firewall for AI agents
The Israeli startup emerged from stealth with research showing thousands of AI add-ons rely on untrusted sources, as companies give autonomous agents access to more data, tools and systems.
Google launches Google Pics, a creative design suite powered by Gemini and Nano Banana to compete with Canva and Adobe Express, available as a Workspace app (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/987423/google-pics-ai-image-editor-generator
https://www.theverge.com/tech/987423/google-pics-ai-image-editor-generator
The Verge
Google Pics is like Canva, but with even more AI
By more, we mean it’s all generative AI.
AI power infrastructure company SB Energy, which is backed by SoftBank, OpenAI, and Nvidia, files for an IPO, and says it is "substantially dependent" on OpenAI (CJ Haddad/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/sb-energy-ipo-softbank-open-ai-nvidia.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/sb-energy-ipo-softbank-open-ai-nvidia.html
CNBC
Softbank's SB Energy files for IPO, says it's 'substantially dependent' on OpenAI
SB Energy hasn't generated any revenue from its data center business, and none of its data centers are operational yet.
John Deere is testing JD, an AI assistant for farmers, to help with best practices and find trends based on farmers' "field, machine, and operational data" (Stevie Bonifield/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/987486/john-deere-jd-ai-chatbot
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/987486/john-deere-jd-ai-chatbot
The Verge
John Deere launched an AI chatbot for farmers
Farmers can ask “JD” about their equipment and trends.
LLM Token Expenditure Index: average cost per million tokens has fallen to 97 cents, part of a sharp months-long decline since hitting a high of $2.07 on May 28 (Alex Harring/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/ai-token-prices-lows.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/ai-token-prices-lows.html
CNBC
AI token prices are hitting new record lows
A closely followed measure of artificial intelligence token prices touched fresh lows.
Félix, an AI-powered WhatsApp remittance platform focused on Latinos in the US, raised a $200M Series C co-led by a16z and GC, including $113M in debt (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/fintech-whatsapp-remittance-startup-felix-raises-200m-a16z-general-catalyst/
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/fintech-whatsapp-remittance-startup-felix-raises-200m-a16z-general-catalyst/
Crunchbase News
WhatsApp Remittance Startup Félix Secures $200M Series C Led By A16z, General Catalyst
Félix, a Miami-based AI-powered WhatsApp remittance platform for Latino immigrants, announced on Tuesday that it has secured $200 million in Series C funding co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst.
Anthropic says Fable 5.1 will cost an estimated 25% less than Fable 5 for typical workloads and up to 45% less for highly agentic work (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-01/anthropic-says-new-fable-5-1-ai-model-is-cheaper-better-at-coding
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-01/anthropic-says-new-fable-5-1-ai-model-is-cheaper-better-at-coding
Bloomberg.com
Anthropic Says New Fable AI Model Is Cheaper, Better at Coding
Anthropic PBC is releasing a new version of its powerful Fable artificial intelligence model that it says is better at coding and science tasks, as well as more economical — all changes it says are in response to customer feedback.
Anthropic unveils Claude Fable 5.1, which is generally available, and Mythos 5.1, for trusted partners and with cybersecurity and life sciences safeguards (Anthropic)
https://www.anthropic.com/claude-fable-and-mythos-5-1
https://www.anthropic.com/claude-fable-and-mythos-5-1
Anthropic
Introducing Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1 \ Anthropic
Our most advanced models for coding and knowledge work. Their research capabilities also offer an early glimpse of how AI models will contribute to scientific progress.
Anthropic launches Enterprise Frontier Safeguards to let businesses control how their data is reviewed, stored, and managed, after pushback from customers (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/anthropic-data-retention.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/anthropic-data-retention.html
CNBC
Anthropic changes data retention policy after pushback from customers
Anthropic's Enterprise Frontier Safeguards are a response to customer feedback.
Aslan, which offers AI agents for the FBI and wider intelligence community that can pose as analysts and undercover spies in online forums, raised $20.8M (Sam Sabin/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/01/aslan-agentic-ai-national-security-funding
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/01/aslan-agentic-ai-national-security-funding
Axios
This startup is building AI undercover agents for the FBI and other agencies
Aslan raised $20.8M to build out its tech team and scale its customer base.
Anthropic says Fable 5.1 sets new standards on coding, knowledge work, and long-running problem-solving tasks, and can fix the root causes of software issues (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)
https://venturebeat.com/technology/anthropics-claude-fable-5-1-and-mythos-5-1-arrive-with-a-75-cost-reduction-for-fable-cache-reads
https://venturebeat.com/technology/anthropics-claude-fable-5-1-and-mythos-5-1-arrive-with-a-75-cost-reduction-for-fable-cache-reads
Venturebeat
Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 arrive with a 75% cost reduction for Fable cache reads
Anthropic has cut a Fable 5.1 cache hit to just $0.25 on input, down from $1.00 for Fable 5. That's also just 2.5% of Fable's normal input-token price of $10, rather than the 10% multiplier used by most other Claude models.
Wafer, which makes AI agents that optimize open-source models for a business's workload, raised a $40M Series A, a source says at a $200M+ valuation (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/wafer-inference-provider-uses-non-nvidia-chips-lands-acquisition-offers-200-million-plus-valuation
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/wafer-inference-provider-uses-non-nvidia-chips-lands-acquisition-offers-200-million-plus-valuation
The Information
Wafer, An Inference Provider That Uses Non-Nvidia Chips, Lands Acquisition Offers and $200 Million-Plus Valuation
Developers and chip designers are increasingly upbeat about the benefits of using AI to supercharge the process of designing and optimizing AI chips, as my colleague Phoebe wrote about last week. Now, a year-old inference provider, Wafer, is trying a similar…
Meta launches Muse Voice Transcribe, MSL's first real-time audio perception model, with streaming automatic speech recognition, trained with 70+ languages (Meta AI Research)
https://research.meta.ai/blog/introducing-muse-voice-transcribe
https://research.meta.ai/blog/introducing-muse-voice-transcribe
Meta AI Research
Introducing Muse Voice Transcribe
Introducing Muse Voice Transcribe, a real-time audio perception model for streaming speech recognition, diarization, and endpointing.
Sources: AfterQuery, which sells coding and finance training data to AI labs, has hit a valuation of $3.2B, up from $300M in April, and is profitable (Anna Tong/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/annatong/2026/09/01/afterquery-becomes-ycs-fastest-unicorn-at-32-billion/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/annatong/2026/09/01/afterquery-becomes-ycs-fastest-unicorn-at-32-billion/
Forbes
AfterQuery Becomes YC’s Fastest Unicorn At $3.2 Billion
Twenty three year-old Spencer Mateega pivoted his YC startup into the fastest unicorn in the accelerator’s history, fueling AI's shift toward human reasoning data.
OpenAI says it plans to publicly release a version of Astra "soon" but will make its advanced cyber capabilities available only to select partners (Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-astra-first-ai-model-with-critical-cyber-abilities/
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-astra-first-ai-model-with-critical-cyber-abilities/
WIRED
OpenAI Is About to Release Its First AI Model With ‘Critical’ Cyber Abilities
The company will give select partners early access to its Astra AI model—so they have time to shore up their defenses.
OpenAI says Astra is its first model to reach its "Critical" cyber threshold and warns safeguards may mistakenly flag legitimate activity as cyber misuse (Ina Fried/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/01/openai-astras-cyber-critical
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/01/openai-astras-cyber-critical
Axios
OpenAI to limit access to Astra's most powerful cyber capabilities
A broad release is coming soon, but only a limited group of testers will be able to tap its full power.