OpenAI is practically giving ChatGPT to the government for free ↗
OpenAI has struck a deal with the U.S. General Services Administration to offer ChatGPT Enterprise to federal agencies for just $1 per agency for a year. The package includes two months of unlimited access to advanced models, tailored training, and a government user community. The move undercuts rivals and aligns with a security-first approach amid recent AI policy shifts.
Google’s AI coding agent Jules is now out of beta ↗
Google has promoted Jules, its AI coding agent powered by Gemini 2.5 Pro, out of beta after a two-month preview. Jules runs asynchronously in Google Cloud VMs, integrates with GitHub, and can clone, fix and update code autonomously. It launches with a free tier (15 tasks/day) and paid plans via Google AI Pro ($19.99/month) and Ultra ($124.99/month). Enhanced features include auto pull requests, environment snapshots and clarified privacy policies ensuring private repos aren’t used for training.
Billing platform Lava raises $5.8M to build digital wallets for the ‘agent-native economy’ ↗
Lava Payments snagged a $5.8M seed round led by Lerer Hippeau to launch a universal digital wallet for AI agents. Founder Mitchell Jones aims to simplify agent-driven transactions by letting users load one set of credits that works across merchants and models (like GPT and Claude), avoiding multiple subscriptions and approvals. The new funding will fuel hiring, product build-out and go-to-market push as Lava positions itself as the invisible payments layer powering the “agent-native” web.
Tavily raises $25M to connect AI agents to the web ↗
Tavily, a one-year-old startup born from the viral GPT Researcher project, has secured a $20 million Series A led by Insight Partners, bringing its total funding to $25 million. The platform lets enterprises safely hook AI agents to real-time web data—crawling, searching and extracting insights—while enforcing company-specific policies. Early customers include Groq, Cohere, MongoDB and Writer. Competitors range from Exa and Firecrawl to OpenAI and Perplexity.
From chatbot apocalypse to a bespoke romance about the family cat: Edinburgh gets creative with AI ↗
This year’s Edinburgh Fringe is awash with AI drama, from Alfrun Rose’s Dead Air, where a subscription-based AI “ghost” father prolongs grief, to Elisabeth Gunawan’s glitchy chatbot in Stampin’ in the Graveyard guiding audiences through an apocalyptic tale. New York’s AI: The Waiting Room personalises each attendee’s story via pre-show questionnaires, blending bespoke romance with societal breakdown. These inventive productions probe our uneasy fascination with artificial intelligence and ask: are we forging our own digital undoing?
Cohere’s new AI agent platform, North, promises to keep enterprise data secure ↗
Cohere’s new AI agent platform North offers private deployment on-premise or in air-gapped environments, ensuring enterprise data never leaves the firewall. It runs on minimal GPUs and includes granular access control, continuous red-teaming, ISO 27001, SOC-2 and GDPR compliance. North leverages Cohere’s Command model and Compass search, featuring chat, search, tables, documents, slides and deep market research. It integrates with Gmail, Slack and more, and provides explanation chains for auditability. Early pilots include RBC, Dell, LG and Palantir.
Two arrested for smuggling AI chips to China; Nvidia says no to kill switches ↗
The U.S. DOJ nabbed two Chinese nationals in California for allegedly shipping tens of millions in Nvidia’s top-tier AI GPUs to China via shell routes through Singapore and Malaysia, violating export controls and facing up to 20 years in prison. Nvidia insists its chips have no kill switches or backdoors, warning that such measures would undermine security and innovation. The case highlights U.S. efforts to curb chip exports amid growing AI competition with China.
Microsoft brings OpenAI’s smallest open model to Windows users ↗
Microsoft is integrating OpenAI’s new free and open GPT-OSS-20B model into Windows 11 via Windows AI Foundry. The lightweight, tool-savvy AI, optimized for code execution and agent tasks, runs on PCs with at least 16 GB of VRAM. Text-only but prone to hallucinations, it’s aimed at autonomous assistants and real-world workflows. Microsoft plans macOS support soon and hosts the model on Azure AI Foundry and AWS.
Qwant and Ecosia debut Staan, a European search index that aims to take on Big Tech ↗
Qwant and Ecosia launched Staan, a joint European search index aiming to challenge Google and Bing with cheaper, privacy-focused search. Their venture, European Search Perspective (EUSP), will power half of French and a third of German queries by year-end and offers AI-driven features like search summaries at a tenth of competitors’ costs. EUSP is courting apps and chatbots for search integration, touting EU privacy laws to boost data protection and cut reliance on US Big Tech infrastructure.
OpenAI in talks on share sale that would price it at more than Musk’s SpaceX ↗
OpenAI is in early talks to facilitate employee share sales that could value ChatGPT maker at $500bn, topping SpaceX. Investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank, and Microsoft may buy shares, lifting its worth from $300bn. The move aims to reward staff and fend off poaching by Meta and rivals like Anthropic. Meanwhile, OpenAI eyes a for-profit structure, teases GPT-5, open-sources new AI models and pushes into hardware after buying Jony Ive’s io startup, targeting 100m AI companions.