Last Week’s AI News #3

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world faster than ever before. New tools appear every week, companies launch ambitious projects, and technologies that seemed futuristic just yesterday are becoming part of our daily lives.

In this post, we review the most important AI news from the past week — from massive investments and new models to exciting startups and advanced devices. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, programmer, researcher, or simply an AI enthusiast, you’ll find everything you need to know about last week’s developments here.

OpenAI Becomes the Most Valuable Private Company in the World

OpenAI has officially become the most valuable private company in the world, with a valuation of $500 billion, after employees sold $6.6 billion worth of shares in a secondary market transaction. The deal also serves as a retention tool to keep talented employees from moving to competitors, such as the revitalized Meta AI lab.

This milestone comes just weeks after a $40 billion investment in August and highlights massive infrastructure projects.

Where Startups Are Actually Spending on AI

Andreessen Horowitz released an AI spending report based on data from more than 200,000 startups collected by Mercury.

Top positions:

• OpenAI – 1st place

• Anthropic – 2nd place

• Perplexity (No. 12) and Merlin AI (No. 30) – among general-purpose assistants

Code creation tools such as Replit, Cursor, Lovable, and Emergent show AI’s expansion into the IT business sector.

Creative tools are the largest category (10 tools), including Freepik (No. 4), ElevenLabs (No. 5), Kling (No. 15), and Canva (No. 17). AI meeting assistants, role-specific AI tools, and agent tools are also gaining popularity.

Apple Enters the Smart Glasses Market

Apple has reportedly canceled plans to redesign its Vision Pro headset, according to Bloomberg. Instead, the company is now focusing on AI-powered smart glasses that will compete with Meta’s Ray-Ban line.

Periodic Labs: AI Scientists for the Physical World

ChatGPT co-founder Liam Fedus’s new startup, Periodic Labs, has launched with a mission to create AI scientists that learn from real physics experiments. The team includes over 20 researchers from top AI labs.

The company is building autonomous labs where robots will conduct thousands of experiments. Each lab will generate gigabytes of unique data per experiment, and AI systems will analyze results and plan future experiments. Periodic Labs has raised over $300 million in funding.

Amazon Launches New Devices with Alexa+ Integration

Amazon unveiled a new lineup of devices featuring AI-integrated Alexa+. This includes Echo home systems, Ring cameras, Fire TV, Kindle readers, and more. Alexa+ now supports more natural conversations, service requests, smart home control, and complex autonomous tasks.

Ring AI Updates:

• Alexa+ Greetings – personal AI doorman

• Familiar Faces – facial recognition

• Search Party – lost pet search

OpenAI Introduces Instant Checkout via ChatGPT

OpenAI launched an Instant Checkout feature for U.S. users, developed in collaboration with Stripe. It currently works for Etsy sellers and will soon expand to over a million Shopify stores.

Users can click “Buy” after a ChatGPT product recommendation, review the order, and pay directly within the chat interface.

Anthropic Releases Claude Sonnet 4.5 Model

Anthropic unveiled Claude Sonnet 4.5, the latest model for autonomous computing and programming. The unsupervised model can create applications, generate thousands of lines of code, and manage complex tasks — performing more than three times better than its previous version.

Popular AI Tools

• Comet – Perplexity AI browser, now available globally

• Tinker – Thinking Machines API for language model applications

• Claude in Slack – AI-powered information retrieval directly in Slack

• IBM Granite 4.0 – new efficient hybrid models

• Sora 2 – advanced OpenAI image-generation AI

• GLM-4.6 – open-source LLM with enhanced reasoning

• Octave 2 – Hume AI next-gen multilingual text-to-speech model

• Agent Mode – Microsoft Office “vibe working” AI features

• Essential – “Nothing” digital playground for app creation with text prompts

• Incogni – allows deletion of personal data from the internet

• Loveable AI & Cloud – add AI features to your apps

Other Notable AI Developments Last Week

• Perplexity - Comet AI browser: Now free worldwide, helps businesses find information faster and integrate AI into workflows.

• IBM - Granite 4.0: Efficient LLMs automate agent tasks and business processes, saving time and boosting productivity.

• Microsoft - Agent Mode Office: Excel and Word can create documents, tables, and presentations via text prompts, speeding up work.

• Hume AI - Octave 2: Multilingual text-to-speech with voice conversion and editing, improving international customer support.

• OpenAI - Sora social app: Encourages marketing and user engagement through AI video features.

• Zhipu AI - GLM-4.6: Open-source LLM with large context window, better for processing big business datasets.

• Lovable Cloud & AI: Platform for building apps with integrated server and AI features, simplifying startup and enterprise work.

• Google - Gemini 2.5 Flash Image: Updated image-generation tools with customizable proportions, useful for advertising and product visualization.

• Samsung & SK Hynix join OpenAI Stargate: Aim to increase memory chip and data center production in the region, crucial for tech business development.

• NBA + AWS – Inside the Game: New platform with AI analytics and player tracking, providing tools for sports content creation and data analysis.

Artificial intelligence is transforming not only the tech sector but also everyday life, from work efficiency to creative solutions. Last week’s news confirms that AI is becoming an inseparable part of our reality - and this trend is only set to grow.

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