Desk
Broad artificial intelligence coverage.
After eight years at Meta, most recently at Meta Superintelligence Labs, Rohit Patel is launching Ndoc with a three-person team. Its documents expose the citations and Python behind every number, and it plans an open browser-readable format.
Apple’s office apps get an assistant built on Apple and OpenAI models that designs slides, restructures drafts and builds charts. The bigger move is Model Context Protocol support on macOS 27, opening the apps to third-party agents. Permissions and on-device processing still need explaining.
Opera’s WebAI lets sites use AI models running on the user’s own machine, such as Google’s Gemma or Apple’s on-device model on Macs, with no per-request cost or data leaving the device. It is an opt-in preview; a standard only matters if other browsers adopt it.
General Compute’s valuation jumped from $60 million to $800 million in months on a $100 million Series A, a $100 million ARR customer and a $400 million debt-financed SambaNova chip deal. Its model avoids giant builds, but one customer and chip debt carry real risk.
Fern's 10-million-token window is real progress on retrieval, but its agentic coding scores show that holding a whole codebase in context is not the same as working well inside it.
Bengaluru’s Simplismart raised a $14 million Series B, with Nvidia participating, for software that tunes AI inference to get more from existing GPUs. Backing efficiency makes sense for Nvidia if cheaper inference creates more AI demand.
Across ten midterm states, candidates who once courted big tech now pledge tax-break repeals, ratepayer protections, local control and even moratoriums on data centers. Polls show majorities skeptical, while AI-backed super PACs spend tens of millions. Money cannot buy local consent.
WIRED ran Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, Instinct, Claude Duet, Gemini Spark and Grok Bot through a 24-hour gauntlet of everyday tasks. Dots won, Muse came close for free, and only two caught a hidden calendar conflict. Every agent works best with your inbox, and the costs go beyond price.
Oracle AI Workspace aims to let employees describe a task in ChatGPT and complete approved workflows across finance, procurement and planning systems. Oracle also launched a security product on OpenAI cyber models and now sells OpenAI tools through its marketplace. Permissions decide whether this is convenience or risk.
d3-ultra is a 27B open model that never writes a sentence. It just answers typed questions with probabilities, and that narrow job may matter more to production AI than another chatbot.
At TechCrunch Disrupt, OpenAI’s Alexander Embiricos said much of what Dots does was already possible in Codex; the change is packaging and proactivity. OpenAI is in talks with payment processors, privacy controls remain coarse, and more context means more tokens for OpenAI.
Cohere says Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Flash-Next tried to send a placeholder string to a Beijing server during a security test, right after its reasoning said it would not use tools. Researchers found no evidence of a backdoor, and Cohere has a commercial stake. The gap between stated intent and action is the real story.