🚀 RELEASES & LAUNCHES
OpenAI publishes first benchmarks for its Jalapeño inference chip
OpenAI published first benchmarks for its custom Jalapeño inference chip.- Built for AI customers and interactive agents requiring fast, reliable inference.
- Jalapeño delivered 1.5–1.9× more work per watt and 1.7–3.6× lower latency than comparison systems on InferenceX.
- The 700W accelerator supports GPT-OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1 670B, and Kimi K2.5 1T; tested sustained power was at or below 550W.
- Each system has 128 accelerators, 27.5TB of HBM4, 1.7 exaFLOPS of 4-bit compute, and nearly 2PB/s of memory bandwidth.
- OpenAI expects small-volume deployment by late 2026 and broader deployment in 2027, targeting more efficient, lower-latency AI serving.
Sources 📄 Source: openai.com · 📎 Coverage: newsletter.semianalysis.com · 👁 via The Verge AI, TechCrunch AIAnthropic unifies Claude memory across chat and Cowork
Anthropic shared Claude’s memory between chat and cloud-based Cowork sessions.- Claude users on Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans can use shared memory, with Team and Enterprise memory off by default.
- Claude now carries chat memories into cloud-based Cowork sessions and brings Cowork context back to chat.
- Users can review, edit, delete, pause, or reset saved memory topics.
- Sensitive topics remain excluded by default but can be enabled; government ID numbers, criminal history, and immigration status are never stored.
- The update reduces repeated briefing when users move from planning in chat to executing tasks in Cowork.
Apple unveils Mac mini with M6 and M5 Pro chips for local AI
Apple unveiled Mac mini models with M6 and M5 Pro chips for local AI workloads.- The new Mac mini targets developers, AI researchers, creative professionals, businesses, and home users running local AI agents.
- M6 and M5 Pro configurations are available to preorder from $899 and $1,699, respectively, with shipments beginning September 22.
- M6 has a 12-core CPU, 12-core GPU, up to 32GB memory, and 170GB/s bandwidth, delivering up to 4× faster AI performance than M4.
- M5 Pro scales to an 18-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 64GB memory, and 307GB/s bandwidth, with Thunderbolt 5 for linking Mac minis into AI clusters.
- The systems add Neural Accelerators, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and 2.5Gb Ethernet for on-device models and always-on agentic computing.
IBM releases 470M-parameter Granite Speech 5.0 Turbo CTC models
IBM released Granite Speech 5.0 Turbo CTC models for high-throughput speech transcription.- The models target edge-device users, real-time transcription apps, and high-volume call-center analysis.
- Granite Speech 5.0 Turbo CTC and Turbo CTC NC each have 470 million parameters and use CTC without an LLM backbone.
- The Turbo CTC model reached about 12,600 RTFx on one H200 GPU and can transcribe three hours of audio in one second.
- The models are available for download through IBM Granite repositories including Hugging Face, Ollama, and GitHub.
🔬 RESEARCH
IBM releases Granite 4.2 reasoning models with up to 512K context
IBM released Granite 4.2, a 3B-, 8B- and 30B-parameter reasoning-model family.- For enterprise and research users building agents, coding assistants, and tool-using applications.
- IBM released 3B, 8B, and 30B dense models under the Apache 2.0 license, with up to 512K-token context.
- All models support thinking, non-thinking, and low-effort modes plus native tool calling; the 8B and 30B models received agentic reinforcement learning in software, terminal, and web-search environments.
- The open weights support OpenAI-compatible serving through vLLM and SGLang, enabling local deployment and agentic workflows without custom adapters.
Google Research unveils AgentHands for gesturing XR AI agents
Google Research introduced AgentHands, an XR prototype that synchronizes AI-agent speech with spatial hand gestures.- Designed for users interacting with conversational AI agents in physical XR tasks.
- AgentHands uses an LLM, eye gaze, scene reconstruction, and 3D object bounding boxes to place gestures in space.
- Its gesture library covers deictic, iconic, and expressive behaviors, with motions encoded as inline GestureEvents.
- The CHI 2026 prototype turns verbal guidance into synchronized physical demonstrations in XR.
Sources 📎 Coverage: research.google · 👁 via Google Research Blog
📊 BENCHMARKS & EVALS
- Ornith 1.5 and Tiel-Coder lead Qwen 35B tool-calling benchmark
Ornith 1.5 and Tiel-Coder tied for the top tool-calling score among tested Qwen variants.- The benchmark targets users running Qwen3.6-35B-A3B fine-tunes on VRAM-limited hardware.
- Using SeraphimSerapis’s tool-eval-bench, Ornith 1.5 and Tiel-Coder tied for first among the tested models.
- Both scored well above Qwen3.6-27B and close to Qwen3.8-27B; KAT-Coder slightly beat the original Qwen3.6-35B-A3B.
- The results identify stronger local options for tool-calling workflows, while Ornith-1.5-Heretic underperformed.
Sources 📎 Coverage: reddit.com · 👁 via r/LocalLLaMA
💰 BUSINESS & FUNDING
Stability AI Raises $76M Series B Backed by Major Music Labels
Stability AI raised $76 million in Series B funding.- The funding targets professional creators in music, gaming and entertainment.
- Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group, Electronic Arts, AMD Ventures and Pacific Alliance Ventures joined the round.
- The Series B brings Stability AI’s total funding to $232 million under CEO Prem Akkaraju.
- The capital will support creative-production products, applied research and professional services, including licensed-data models such as Stable Audio 3.0.
Gamma acquires Accel-backed design startup Lica for AI research lab
Gamma acquired Lica to build an AI design research lab.- Gamma serves users creating presentations and other visual communications, while Lica worked with e-commerce companies on branded marketing videos.
- Gamma acquired Lica and appointed co-founders Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta to lead its new research division.
- Lica raised $4 million in 2024 from Accel, South Park Commons and Village Global.
- The division will research personalized, multimodal presentations and communication formats, including interactive visuals.
Sources 📎 Coverage: techcrunch.com · 👁 via TechCrunch AIPerplexity launches local Portable Computer on NVIDIA DGX Spark
Perplexity launched Portable Computer, a local-first AI agent for NVIDIA DGX Spark.- Available to Perplexity Pro, Max, Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max subscribers on Linux.
- Portable Computer runs its agent harness, orchestrator, models, tools and connectors locally on DGX Spark or RTX systems with at least 24 GB of VRAM.
- Local steps carry no per-token charge; cloud escalation to 15+ models requires user approval after a PII check.
- The system keeps sensitive work on-device while supporting Gmail, Outlook, Slack and GitHub workflows.