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Meta’s AI fallback plan: Forming a cloud computing company

Meta could soon be renting out excess compute, as it continues to build out capacity. (Picture: Adobe)

Already sitting on one of the world’s largest compute clusters with plans to add some $145 billion worth more just this year — Meta is making contingency plans.

Bloomberg (paywalled) is reporting that they are now planning to form a cloud computing company to compete with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, aiming to sell «excess capacity» to paying customers.

The idea is a hedge against overcapacity, Axios reports, quoting Zuckerberg as saying in May: «that is an option that we have, and that is partially what gives us confidence in investing in building this out.»

The new unit would offer raw compute to companies looking to train models, or could offer access to models from other AI labs and rent out the infrastructure to power them. This would be similar to services from Amazon and Azure.

SpaceX, now incorporating X.ai, faced a similar problem when their compute power got bigger than their needs, and struck deals with Anthropic and Google to sell excess compute access, Reuters notes.

It is estimated that Meta currently sits on 20 gigawatts of capacity, and it plans to add another 14 GW over the next years, Axios says.

Read more: Bloomberg (paywalled), Axios, Reuters, CNBC, and Engadget.

US government lifts restrictions on Anthropic’s Fable 5

Fable 5 spooked the government enough to ban it, but now it’s back online with even stronger safeguards. (Picture: Shutterstock)

As of July 1, the Mythos-class model is available on wide release to paying customers, after the Commerce department lifted their export controls on June 30.

Anthropic hails the news, but cautions that recent events have highlighted the need for a «consistent way to assess and fix potential «jailbreaks,»» after two weeks of grueling exchanges with the administration.

Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said on X that they had «worked closely with Anthropic to […] ensure alignment across the US Government and strengthen America’s leadership in AI,» Axios reports.

The Fable 5 model became somewhat of a joke in the AI community for having such strong safeguards that it would not answer anything even remotely related to security or biology, but Amazon engineers got it to output code for an exploit, leading to the export ban on June 12.

This behavior is now blocked 99% of the time, and Anthropic has agreed to even further safeguards on the model, pledging to work even more closely with the government in the future, including on vetting pre-release models.

Read more: Anthropic’s announcement and X post, Lutnick’s letter, Axios, Politico, CNBC.

Apple says security updates must be more frequent due to AI hacking

AI accelerated hacking is changing how Apple deals with system patches. (Picture: generated)

After releasing a 26.5.2 update across its devices to fix over 25 bugs today, Apple said the fixes were originally intended for the next point release of their operating systems — the 26.6.

Concerns about AI-accelerated hacking tools made the company push up the updates sooner in a dedicated release, according to Reuters.

This is the new reality, they say, where the time to develop malware has been greatly reduced by AI — and the time window for fixing bugs has likewise decreased.

Apple did not say if any of the vulnerabilities they rectified in the latest release had been exploited in the wild yet, which used to be the criteria for a rapid response.

The company is one of the «trusted partners» on Project Glasswing, and enjoys access to Anthropic’s Mythos Preview model to probe and detect flaws in their software, MacRumors notes, but it is not known if Mythos was used in this particular case.

Read more: Reuters, MacRumors, 9to5Mac.

OpenAI’s new hardware device is a shortcut keypad for Codex

The Codex keypad looks like an iteration of an existing product, not something entirely new. (Picture: OpenAI)

The OpenAI Developers account on X teased a video of a square device with backlit keys made in collaboration with Work Louder, along with the date July 15th.

It’s likely a small keypad for common Codex shortcuts, as mentioned by the post, and it will be the first hardware device (co-)developed by OpenAI. Not a flashy new phone or the highly anticipated AI hardware device, which would take years to develop.

Work Louder is mostly famous for mechanical keyboards and custom keypads, and makes a $144 13-key wireless pad, complete with a tiny joystick.

The device being teased in the video looks like a carbon copy of the Creator Micro 2 pad described above, save for the backlit keys.

That should offer a hint for how OpenAI will be playing its hardware — as a premium Codex add-on, likely also with a premium price.

Read more: The X post, The Verge, 9to5Mac.

Chinese model GLM-5.2 almost reaches parity with Opus 4.8 in coding, cyber

Opus 4.8 was released in May, meaning the gap to Chinese models has closed considerably. (Picture: generated)

While not matching GPT-5.5 or Opus 4.8 across the board, the GLM-5.2 is the first open model to come within spitting distance (about 1% on some tests) on coding and cybersecurity tasks at open source benchmarks.

That means Chinese AI lab Z.ai is catching up to cyber capabilities considered by some to be too dangerous to release publicly, and is edging closer to Mythos or GPT-5.6.

The concern is that the new model, released on June 16, is open source and open weight with an MIT license — meaning that anyone can adjust its guardrails and play around with it on any computer capable of running it.

That has researchers worried that China is not only catching up, but that the model might find its way into the hands of bad actors — who will be supercharged when looking for hacking targets, causing what they term «bugmaggedon.»

With Mythos and GPT-5.6 being blocked by the US government, security teams might be tempted to turn to these models at a sixth of the cost of the American frontier, especially as they develop further, notes benchmark provider Semgrep.

Read more: Z.ai’s presentation with benchmarks, Semgrep tests, The Wall Street Journal, and The Verge. Discussion on r/Singularity and Hacker News.

US government clears Mythos 5 for limited release to «trusted partners»

Mythos 5 will become available on Project Glasswing after the government lifts its ban. (Picture: Shutterstock)

After two weeks of purgatory and almost daily explanatory meetings, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent a letter to Anthropic on Friday, clearing one of two models on hold for release:

— I have determined that appropriate safeguards are in place to permit certain trusted partners to access the Claude Mythos 5 Model, he writes to chief compute officer Tom Brown, according to Semafor, who scooped the story.

Mythos 5 was only intended for a limited release through the Glasswing project, for use by a trusted set of government agencies and corporations to test their cyber defenses.

UPDATE: On Saturday, Axios is reporting that Fable 5 might be next in line, with «insiders» predicting it might be released next week, and Anthropic anticipating access «soon.»

The letter also says that «Anthropic has committed to work with the U.S. government on protocols and standards and releases,» and talks are progressing toward a release of Fable, though «the timeline is unclear,» according to Semafor.

Read more: Scoop by Semafor, comment from Anthropic, Reuters, CNBC, and Politico.

OpenAI «launches» GPT-5.6 models in preview, hopes for quick public release

The flagship GPT-5.6 Sol is the new state of the art for cyber capabilities. (Picture: Adobe)

Caught in yet another government AI debacle, the new models won’t be publicly released until «the coming weeks.» It is getting presented today, and released to «a small group of trusted parties,» said by Axios to number in the twenties.

— We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default, writes OpenAI, and says — we [are working] with the Administration to develop the cyber Executive Order framework and a repeatable process for future model releases.

In its presentation, OpenAI details three models in the GPT-5.6 series. Sol is the state-of-the-art Mythos-beating model, while Terra is «a balanced model for everyday work,» and delivers on par with GPT-5.5 at half the cost, and Luna is the cost-focused model «delivering stronger capability at our lowest cost.»

Strong on cyber
The models, particularly Sol, are very strong on cyber defense, and are able to identify security vulnerabilities, but not able to execute automated attacks due to strong safeguards, built using 700,000 A100-equivalent GPU hours of red-teaming.

Sol beats Mythos 5 on coding and cybersecurity and uses fewer tokens for better performance on biology tasks. It also comes with a new max mode, which gives more time for better reasoning, and an ultra mode which uses subagents for more complex work.

Prices for Sol are at $5 input/$30 output, for Terra is $2.50 input/$15 output, and Luna is at $1 input/$6 output, and general availability is up to higher powers.

Read more: OpenAI’s presentation, launch thread, Axios, Reuters, and TechCrunch. Discussion on r/Singularity.

GPT-5.6 release on hold for a few weeks due to government intervention

GPT-5.6 is officially under government review due to «security concerns.» (Picture: generated)

First reported by The Information, OpenAI has agreed to the Trump administration’s demands that it stagger the release of the upcoming GPT-5.6 over security concerns.

The model is said to be on par with Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable 5, which were abruptly pulled from the market after an export ban from the administration just two weeks ago.

Axios is quoting sources familiar saying that GPT-5.6 will only be released to a «small set of government-approved partners,» as the White House previews its abilities.

This preview period is expected to last «a couple of weeks,» CEO Sam Altman told staff in an internal OpenAI meeting, TechCrunch reports.

During this time, the administration itself will supposedly approve access to the model on a case-by-case basis, according to The Verge.

The Trump admin issued an executive order on AI about three weeks ago, setting up a voluntary mechanism for AI labs to submit their models for 30 days of pre-release testing. This gave the government 60 days to come up with criteria, but it isn’t quite ready yet — hence this ad-hoc approach.

Read more: The Information, Axios, TechCrunch and The Verge.

OpenAI delivers Jalapeño, a state-of-the-art chip made in only nine months

The Jalapeño chip offers substantially better performance per watt than anything on the market. (Picture: OpenAI)

The new inference chip, developed with help from OpenAI’s models in collaboration with Broadcom, has compressed what is normally a glacial, years-long process into just a short sprint.

— We believe [this] to be the fastest ASIC development cycle ever achieved in high-performance advanced semiconductors, OpenAI says.

The chip is designed specifically for OpenAI’s needs on current and upcoming language models, and to combine the power of current AI accelerators with the shorter latency of «specialized systems,» like Cerebras’ hardware.

— The world is moving to a compute-powered economy, says Greg Brockman, President and Co-Founder of OpenAI. — Jalapeño is part of our long-term full-stack infrastructure strategy to make compute more abundant.

The new silicon will be deployed at gigawatt-scale data centers just as fast as it was made, starting with Microsoft «and other partners» already in 2026, Broadcom says. It is only the first design in what the companies expect to be generations of products.

Jalapeño is already running LLM workloads in the lab, delivering «substantially better» performance per watt than «the current state-of-the-art,» OpenAI says.

Read more: OpenAI’s presentation, CNBC, CNN, Reuters, and TechCrunch.

OpenAI updates GPT-5.5-Cyber, claims better performance than Mythos 5

The new Cyber model not only finds flaws, but offers to fix them automatically. (Picture: Adobe)

Less fabled than the recent Mythos releases, GPT-5.5-Cyber is just as capable, OpenAI claims, and has benchmarks to show it.

The update scores 85.6% in CyberGym versus 83.8% for Mythos 5, and is likewise only available to vetted cybersecurity professionals.

— AI has changed the physics of cybersecurity, OpenAI says, — The bottleneck historically has been finding vulnerabilities, but now defenders are overwhelmed with the number of vulnerabilities found.

Therefore, their Daybreak suite, which includes the Cyber model and Codex Security, moves beyond just threat scanning to actually offering vulnerability patches to fix them.

Since the launch as preview in March, OpenAI claims to have scanned over 30 million commits across 30,000 codebases, with humans having marked 70,000 findings as fixed and 500,000 findings having been fixed automatically.

Read more: OpenAI’s announcement, Launch tweet, writeup on SiliconAngle. Discussion on r/Singularity.

From the grapevine; GPT-5.6 coming shortly, Mythos smashes the NSA, and Google’s upcoming «instant ramen»

Lots of talk on socials doesn’t always relate to hard news, but here are some topics making the rounds. (Picture: Adobe)

GPT-5.6 in overdrive on the hype machine
The rumor mill is kicking into high gear for OpenAI’s next GPT-5.6. It’s supposed to be largely on par with Fable 5, or kick it to the curb on some tests, according to X leaker Chetaslua who claims to have been testing it for a while.

OpenAI’s chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, pre-announced the model as a «meaningful improvement,» but would not point to a timeline.

According to prediction markets, Kalshi has it out before July 15th, while Polymaket predicts it between June 30 and July 31, which seem like safe bets.

Continue reading “From the grapevine; GPT-5.6 coming shortly, Mythos smashes the NSA, and Google’s upcoming «instant ramen»”

G7 leaders urged by labs to regulate AI, will begin «assessment»

Altman asked the G7 not to leave regulation of increasingly powerful models to the AI labs. (Picture: generated)

Amodei, Altman and Hassabis were all present at a working lunch with the Group of Seven countries Wednesday, and they all asked «the free world» for stronger regulation.

— Do not cede your responsibilities to AI labs like mine, OpenAI’s Sam Altman said, according to Reuters. — We develop the technology, and the citizens of the free world make the rules.

The leaders gathered for the summit had been spooked by the US government’s shutdown of Mythos 5 just last Friday, with especially European nations worrying about reliance on US tech:

— From one day to the next [the USA] can turn off the switch, said French President Emmanuel Macron, reported by The Financial Times, as he, too, called for stronger regulation and cooperation.

There was also a strong push at the meetup to expand access beyond the USA to Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and the Mythos Preview model, used in a race to find cyber vulnerabilities in critical systems before the capabilities become widely available.

The meeting ended in an official joint statement that would task finance officials, regulators and cybersecurity experts with evaluating AI’s impact on financial stability, productivity and labor markets.

Read more: Reuters, The Financial Times, and CNBC.

Report: OpenAI earned $2 billion a month, spent $34 billion in 2025

OpenAI made $2 billion a month by the end of 2025. (Picture: Adobe)

The spending came on a revenue of $13 billion, with a one-time accounting charge of $30 billion, The Financial Times reports, citing people familiar with the audited figures.

This charge was related to a change in governance from a non-profit to a Public Benefit Corporation. Previously, the FT explains, investors were paid interest on their capital, and this was accounted for as liabilities. As a PBC, they now pay in equity, and the cost won’t be reoccurring.

The numbers also show that the company spent $19 billion on developing models and research, and around $6 billion on sales and marketing.

At the end of 2025, OpenAI was earning $2 billion in revenue per month, as opposed to $1 billion per quarter in 2024, which the FT says makes it one of the fastest growing companies in history.

Without the one-time accounting charge, OpenAI’s losses for 2025 were «only» $8 billion.

OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO last week, stating that they had not decided on a timeline.

Read more: Original reporting by The Financial Times and raw data by Ed Zitron.

Speaking in «different languages,» Anthropic struggles with White House

Finding themselves thrust into politics, Anthropic is having difficulty getting through, Axios reports. (Picture: Shutterstock)

As security researchers and executives are urging a retreat from the Mythos ban, Axios is reporting that Anthropic is failing to «communicate effectively.»

They were scheduled to meet in person with the White House on Monday, sources tell CNBC, and are now finding themselves deeply enmeshed in current politics.

Government officials are now candidly telling Axios that Anthropic «screwed» them, saying they failed to «honor» the recent Executive Order on AI — which calls for a 30-day vetting period for new models, and are calling Anthropic a «bad actor.»

There are also differing narratives in the Axios report, where on the one hand, Anthropic says they «received explicit approval» to deploy Fable, and another where the administration threatened export controls several weeks ago, fearing the model could be exploited by bad actors.

The exploit uncovered in the Fable and Mythos models are replicable in other frontier and open source models, security researchers say in an open letter, and shutting down Fable at a critical time gives an advantage to attackers over defenders. They say there is only a 90-day window until Chinese models reach the same capabilities.

Read the Axios report here, also see the security researchers’ open letter, reports on euters, CNBC and Politico.

Anthropic disables Mythos 5 and Fable 5 after Commerce intervention

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has enacted export controls on the new models, banning their use in any foreign countries and by foreign nationals — and Anthropic responded quickly by completely blocking access for everyone.

The triggering factor appears to be that a company was able to jailbreak the models, potentially getting them to perform harmful actions, an administration official tells Axios.

According to Anthropic, the claim concerns a limited jailbreak and a «minor vulnerability,» not considered a systemwide issue, and says it is impossible to guarantee against this 100% for any model by any provider.

Continue reading “Anthropic disables Mythos 5 and Fable 5 after Commerce intervention”