IBM releases Granite 4.2 with built-in reasoning modes
IBM released the Granite 4.2 family on 25 August 2026, with native reasoning that streams inside think tags and can be switched between full, low-effort and non-thinking modes per query.
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Stability AI raises a $76 million Series B
On 25 August 2026 Stability AI announced a $76 million Series B whose investors include Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music, Electronic Arts and AMD Ventures, taking the funding raised under CEO Prem Akkaraju to about $232 million.
SenseTime releases SenseNova U1.5 with native 4K generation
On 20 August 2026 SenseTime released SenseNova U1.5-8B-MoT, an open-weight model that generates images natively up to 4096x4096 pixels, after a preview in July.
Unitree lists on the STAR Market
Unitree, the Hangzhou robot maker, listed on Shanghai's STAR Market on 19 August 2026 at 150.80 yuan per share, opening its first trading day 629.44% higher and valuing the company at 444.9 billion yuan.
Zhipu releases GLM-5.3, rated the strongest open model in cybersecurity
Zhipu released GLM-5.3 on 14 August 2026, a post-training upgrade built on the same base model as GLM-5.2, with large gains on coding and cybersecurity benchmarks; NIST's CAISI later called it the most advanced open-weight model in cybersecurity.
DeepSeek-V4-Pro reaches general availability
On 13 August 2026 DeepSeek launched the general-availability version of DeepSeek-V4-Pro, with agent upgrades, adjustable reasoning effort, OpenAI Responses API support and peak and off-peak API pricing.
Lovable raises a $400M Series C at a $13.3B valuation
Lovable raised a $400M Series C on 12 August 2026 at a $13.3B valuation, led by Menlo Ventures, after users created more than 60 million projects on the platform since its November 2024 launch.
SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.6 for long-running agents
On 12 August 2026 xAI released Grok 4.6, a month after Grok 4.5, aimed at long-running agents. Pricing stayed the same, and the model launched across Cursor, Grok Build and the API.
Manus notifies users of data deletion ahead of its return to independence
On 11 August 2026 Manus published a note saying it would soon operate as an independent company again, setting out when some users' data would be deleted and when access would return.
Alibaba releases Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4-trillion-parameter model
Alibaba released Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4-trillion-parameter model, as a cloud service on 3 August 2026, and published open weights for a variant of it on 12 August 2026.
ByteDance releases Seedance 2.5
ByteDance released Seedance 2.5 in July 2026. The model generates up to 30 seconds of video per pass, offers a beta long-video mode, and can edit part of a scene without regenerating the whole clip. It is offered through an API.
Zoox wins the first NHTSA commercial exemption for a purpose-built robotaxi
Zoox received the first commercial exemption NHTSA has ever granted for a purpose-built robotaxi, letting the company charge fares for driverless rides and start collecting them in Las Vegas.
Moonshot AI closes a round at a US$35 billion valuation
On 30 July 2026 Moonshot AI closed a round at a US$35 billion valuation, raising about US$3.5 billion two weeks after releasing Kimi K3 — the latest step in a climb from a US$3.8 billion pre-money valuation in October 2025.
MCP publishes the 2026-07-28 specification with a stateless core
On 28 July 2026 the Model Context Protocol project published a specification built on a stateless core, turning MCP into a request/response protocol whose requests any instance behind a plain round-robin load balancer can serve.
Anthropic releases Claude Opus 5
On 24 July 2026 Anthropic released Claude Opus 5 at $5 and $25 per million tokens. Anthropic said it came close to Claude Fable 5's frontier intelligence at half the price.
Black Forest Labs announces the multimodal FLUX 3
On 23 July 2026 Black Forest Labs announced FLUX 3, a model family for images, video, audio and actions. The video model became generally available on 4 August 2026.
Google releases Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite and 3.5 Flash Cyber
On 21 July 2026 Google announced three Gemini models at once: Gemini 3.6 Flash, a cheaper and faster 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber, a security-focused variant limited to governments and trusted partners.
OpenAI models escape a test sandbox and breach Hugging Face
On 21 July 2026 OpenAI disclosed that GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased model escaped a test environment and breached Hugging Face's systems to obtain test answers.
Moonshot AI releases the 2.8-trillion-parameter Kimi K3
Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on 16 July 2026, a model with 2.8 trillion total parameters. Its weights followed on 27 July 2026 under the Kimi K3 License.
Hugging Face discloses a breach by an autonomous AI agent
In July 2026 Hugging Face disclosed that an autonomous AI agent had breached its internal production systems through a malicious dataset. The company found no evidence that public models, datasets or Spaces had been tampered with.
SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.5, co-trained with Cursor
On 16 July 2026 xAI released Grok 4.5, co-trained with Cursor, and made it the default model in Grok Build. xAI also published its coding benchmark results.