ByteDance-spun Anew Labs raises $290M for AI-driven drug discovery
Shanghai-based Anew Labs announced about $290M in inaugural external financing on September 16, 2026, from HSG, IDG Capital, Hillhouse, and 5Y Capital. Spun out of ByteDance, which…
Founders News
Tools & AI news for founders.
55 updates in Tools & AI. Each one is a verified fact with a clear angle on how it helps you.
IndiaAI Mission puts 38,000+ subsidised GPUs within reach of DPIIT startups
MeitY's official update (page last updated 16 September 2026) confirms that more than 38,000 GPUs for the common compute facility have been onboarded through the AI Compute Portal…
OpenAI tests Sponsored Agents in ChatGPT, adds Shopify and HubSpot ad tools
On September 16, 2026, OpenAI began piloting Sponsored Agents, clearly labeled advertiser-run chats, inside ChatGPT with US brands like Angi and Wayfair, and shipped its first ecom…
Anthropic merges Cowork into one Claude, adds Claude Docs and Slides in beta
On September 16, 2026, Anthropic folded its Cowork agent and Claude chat into a single 'one Claude' experience where the model picks the tool automatically, and launched Claude Doc…
Factory raises $200M at $5B valuation for its AI coding agents
AI software-engineering startup Factory raised $200 million at a $5 billion valuation on Sept 16, 2026, roughly tripling the $1.5B valuation from its $150M Series C five months ear…
Arcee AI hits $1B+ valuation with $150M Series B for open-weight models
Arcee AI announced a $150M+ Series B on Sept 16, 2026 valuing it above $1 billion, led by Vista Equity, Cambium and Emergence with Hitachi, Wipro and M12. It built its Trinity mode…
Google opens Home MCP so AI agents can control smart-home devices
On September 16, 2026, Google launched early access to Home MCP, a Model Context Protocol server that lets any MCP-capable agent (Antigravity, Claude, and others) monitor devices,…
Apple opens English public beta of rebuilt, Gemini-powered Siri
On September 15, 2026 Apple opened the English public beta of its rebuilt Siri, powered by custom models built with Google Gemini and split between on-device and Apple's Private Cl…
Profound raises $180M Series D at $1.8B for AI-search visibility (AEO)
On September 15, 2026 Profound announced a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation, co-led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, nearly double its February valuation. The platform tracks and…
Perplexity ships on-device Portable Computer agent in its Windows app
On September 15, 2026 Perplexity launched a local AI agent in its Windows app for Nvidia GeForce RTX and RTX PRO GPUs with at least 24GB of VRAM. The model, agent harness, orchestr…
Salesforce ships 7 named job-ready Agentforce AI agents for sales and service
On September 11, 2026 Salesforce launched seven named Agentforce agents (Casey, Paige, Carter, Hunter, Marshall, Piper and Fin) preconfigured for jobs across service, sales, commer…
Anthropic adds auto permission mode to Claude Managed Agents
On September 10, 2026 Anthropic shipped an 'auto' permission policy for Claude Managed Agents that lets the server evaluate each agent or MCP tool call and run it, deny it, or paus…
DeepSeek ships V4.1 Flash at $0.15 per million input tokens
DeepSeek released V4.1 Flash on September 10, 2026, priced at $0.15 per million uncached input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens off-peak (double during 01:00-04:00 and 06…
Paris-based Arlequin AI raises EUR 28M for LLM-alternative topological neural networks
Arlequin AI closed a EUR 28 million Series A on September 10, 2026, co-led by redalpine and OTB Ventures with Bpifrance's Defence Innovation Fund and Xavier Niel joining. Its topol…
Australia's Metacognition AI raises $10M for an AI operating-system layer
Australian lab Metacognition AI announced a roughly $10 million round on September 10, 2026, led by CSIRO-backed VC Main Sequence. It is building an operating-system layer that sit…
Enigmata raises $6.5M to run AI on encrypted data
Nashville-based Enigmata emerged from stealth on September 10, 2026 with a $6.5 million seed round led by Blockchange Ventures. Its Cipher system lets AI models train, search and a…
Wyre AI raises $5M to automate construction preconstruction analysis
Washington, DC-based Wyre AI raised $5 million on September 10, 2026, led by Ironspring Ventures with DPR Construction's WND Ventures and Virginia's VIPC. Its platform reads drawin…
Clay raises $115M Series D at a $7.1B valuation for its AI go to market engine
Clay announced a $115M Series D on September 9, 2026, led by Wellington with Sequoia and a16z, doubling its valuation to $7.1B from August 2025. It now serves 17,000+ customers, in…
Legal AI startup Harvey raises $550M at a $15.5B valuation
On September 9, 2026 Harvey raised $550 million at a $15.5 billion valuation, led by Diffusion and Lightspeed with Sequoia, a16z, Kleiner Perkins and others. Harvey says 80% of Am…
Lightfield raises $47M Series A from a16z to build a CRM for agent run companies
Lightfield closed a $47M Series A led by a16z on September 9, 2026, with Greylock, Lightspeed and Coatue joining. The AI native CRM, a pivot from presentation startup Tome, reports…
OpenHands 1.0 ships production self-hosted coding agent at 68% SWE-bench Verified
The open-source autonomous coding agent OpenHands reached its 1.0 release on September 8, 2026, adding Docker sandboxing, built-in security policies, resource limits and a plugin s…
Meta launches Muse, a US only personal AI agent that books travel and sends email
Meta debuted Muse on September 8, 2026, a personal AI agent for users 18+ that opens a browser, fills forms and executes multi step tasks like booking travel or drafting a business…
OpenAI launches GPT Image 2.5 with faster Flare and Sunburst APIs
On September 8, 2026 OpenAI released GPT Image 2.5, exposing two developer APIs: Flare, its fastest model generating high-quality images at two to four times the speed of GPT-Image…
GitHub Copilot adds parallel agent sessions and a unified Copilot experience
In its September 4, 2026 changelog, GitHub added parallel agent sessions to the Copilot app, letting multiple AI tasks run independently in separate Git worktrees, and introduced a…
GitHub ships Project HydraFusion, a multi model coding preview in Copilot CLI
GitHub launched Project HydraFusion as a research preview in the Copilot CLI on September 4, 2026, dynamically orchestrating multiple AI models and picking one of three execution p…
Google DeepMind launches WeatherNext 3 with hourly 5km AI forecasts and API
Google DeepMind and Google Research launched WeatherNext 3 on September 3, 2026, generating 15-day probabilistic forecasts initialized hourly at up to 5km resolution across 64 ense…
OpenAI ships GPT-6 Astra with 1M+ context at $10/$50 per million tokens
OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra (API id gpt-6-astra) on Sept 3, 2026, priced at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output, with cached input at $1. It carries an ~1.1M-to…
Google adds Gemini voice 'Live' features to Gmail, Docs and Keep
On September 3, 2026 Google rolled out Gmail Live, Docs Live and Keep Live, letting users query their inbox, draft documents (pulling from Gmail, Drive, Chat and the web) and take…
Resect AI raises $25M to build an accountability layer catching LLM hallucinations
Seattle stealth startup Resect AI announced a $25M seed/Series A round on Sept 3, 2026 from undisclosed investors. The company is building an 'AI accountability layer' that detects…
Anthropic ships Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, cutting agent costs ~45%
On September 2, 2026 Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1 (broadly available) and Mythos 5.1 (restricted to vetted organizations), citing about 45% lower costs for agentic workloads…
Google's Gemini 3.8 Flash launches at $0.75/$3.75 per million, doubling in 2027
Google released Gemini 3.8 Flash on Sept 2, 2026 with a 1,048,576-token context window, priced at $0.75 input and $3.75 output per million tokens through Dec 31, 2026. The rate is…
Perplexity adds hybrid compute to its Computer agent, splitting cloud and local Macs
On September 2, 2026 Perplexity launched a hybrid-compute capability for its Computer agent that divides a single AI task between cloud models and models running locally on Apple s…
Meta ships Muse Spark 1.3, cutting tool calls ~20% and tokens ~25%
Meta released Muse Spark 1.3 on Sept 2, 2026 at $1.25 input and $4.25 output per million tokens with a 1,048,576-token context window, claiming roughly 20% fewer tool calls and 25%…
Google, Anthropic and OpenAI gate top cyber AI models behind vetted-access programs
In early September 2026, the three labs restricted their most cyber-capable models to trusted-defender programs: Google's Fairwind (Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, over 650 partners includ…
Wonderful raises $550M at $5B valuation for its enterprise AI agent OS
Wonderful raised a $550 million Series C led by Insight Partners at a $5 billion valuation, more than doubling its value in under six months. Its AI operating system coordinates ag…
AIR Security launches with $50M to firewall the AI agents enterprises deploy
AIR Security emerged from stealth in early September 2026 with $50 million raised across two rounds in six months (Sequoia led a $10M, Greenoaks led a $40M). Its inline firewall sc…
3D-AI maker Tripo (VAST) raises ~$446M Series B for foundation models
On 1 September 2026 VAST, developer of Tripo AI, announced roughly 3 billion yuan (~$446 million) across Series B and Series B+ rounds led by MPCi, with backers including Perfect W…
Gridsight raises $26M to expose grid capacity for data-center siting
On 1 September 2026 Gridsight announced a $26 million Series B led by Insight Partners for software that reveals available utility grid capacity to help site data centers and other…
SciFin raises $44M seed for an enterprise AI context layer
On 1 September 2026 SciFin announced a $44 million seed round led by Altimeter and Madrona for an enterprise AI context layer that connects customer and forecasting data so AI syst…
DeepSeek ships experimental V4-Flash-Vision multimodal model on Hugging Face
On August 31, 2026 DeepSeek published V4-Flash-Vision-Exp, a roughly 305B-parameter experimental multimodal model, on Hugging Face under the permissive MIT license. It shows substa…
Apate.AI raises A$11.4M seed for adversarial anti-scam AI agents
On Aug 31, 2026, Apate.AI (founded in Sydney, now Delaware-incorporated) closed an A$11.4M (about US$8.15M) seed round led by Lobby Capital. Its AI agents impersonate potential sca…
Huawei Cloud opens CodeArts Agent coding platform to international users
On Aug 28, 2026 Huawei Cloud moved CodeArts Agent from public beta to general availability across Asia Pacific, launching commercially in Singapore. The platform orchestrates 16 sp…
Tencent open-sources Hy4, a 770B model with 1M context under Apache 2.0
On August 28, 2026 Tencent released and open-sourced its Hunyuan Hy4 preview: a 770B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts model activating 49B parameters per token, with a 1-million-token…
NVIDIA ships TensorRT Model Connect: Hugging Face checkpoint to C++ in two commands
On Aug 28, 2026, NVIDIA released TensorRT Model Connect, an open collection of reference implementations that turns a Hugging Face or local checkpoint into native C++ inference wit…
Anthropic opens free Claude for Teachers to US K-12 schools and districts
On Aug 28, 2026, Anthropic made Claude for Teachers available to US K-12 schools and districts as a free Enterprise offering with SSO, role-based controls, and standards-aligned te…
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and 100+ firms urge joint defense against AI cyberattacks
On Aug 27, 2026 more than 100 companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, CrowdStrike, Okta and Fortinet signed an open letter warning that AI-enabled cyberattacks wi…
Z.ai ships GLM-5.3-Flash: 1M-context multimodal coding model at ~1/10 the price
On Aug 26, 2026 China's Z.ai released GLM-5.3-Flash, a 320B-parameter (18B active) mixture-of-experts model with a 1M-token context and native image/video input, under an MIT licen…
Amazon to shut down Mechanical Turk on Sept 30, 2026
Amazon confirmed it will close Mechanical Turk (MTurk) on September 30, 2026, and is also closing SageMaker Ground Truth and Amazon Augmented AI (A2I) to new users. The moves retir…
IBM releases open Granite 4.2 models (3B–30B) under Apache 2.0
On Aug 26, 2026 IBM released Granite 4.2, a family of open models in 3B, 8B, and 30B parameter sizes with a 128,000-token context window under the permissive Apache 2.0 license. Th…
OpenAI unveils Jalapeno, its first custom inference chip, co-built with Broadcom
OpenAI announced first results for Jalapeno, its in-house AI inference ASIC co-developed with Broadcom, claiming 1.5x-1.9x higher throughput per kilowatt and 1.7x-3.6x lower end-to…
Salesforce and Anthropic launch Claudeforce, embedding Claude across the CRM
On Aug 26, 2026 Salesforce and Anthropic announced Claudeforce, making Claude a default reasoning model across Agentforce, Slack and developer tools. It ships with a 'Salesforce in…
Robotics-AI startup Generalist raises $200M, second round in two months
Generalist AI reportedly raised ~$200M led by 8VC on Aug 24, 2026, just two months after a $400M round backed by Nvidia and Bezos Expeditions. Its new Gen-1.5 model teaches robots…
Alibaba launches Wan3.0 AI model that turns documents into 30-second videos
On August 24, 2026 Alibaba unveiled Wan3.0, an AI video model that generates roughly 30-second videos directly from documents and spreadsheets. Alibaba paired the launch with a rep…
Embedd raises $2.7M to cut cross-chip software-integration work
Embedd raised a $2.7M pre-seed led by Seedcamp, announced Aug 24, 2026, to build developer infrastructure that reduces the software-integration work of supporting different chip pl…
Anthropic makes Claude Enterprise Admin API GA, adds agent site limits
Around Aug 19-22, 2026 Anthropic moved its Claude Enterprise Admin API (members, invites, groups and custom roles) out of beta, dropping the required beta headers, and let organiza…