- Anthropic's IPO numbers reach the banks - and are withdrawn within hours
- Eight countries and the big AI labs sign a Paris safety pact
- Meta ships Muse Ember, a small model built for the work agents repeat all day
- Google opens Gemini 4 Carbon, its strongest model, to paying users
- Anthropic's new flagship pair: Fable 5.2 for everyone, Mythos 5.2 for vetted researchers
- Nvidia's GR00T 2 lets robots copy skills they were never taught
AI briefing: this week
The current week of AI briefings, Monday to Sunday, in plain English. The weekly summary is on top; each day's full report is linked below. Updated every morning and again mid-afternoon on weekdays; a new week starts each Monday.

This week at a glance
The week opens with Nvidia at the center of two very different stories. Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation after reporting that CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort - and Huang admitted an affair in a memo to employees. The same weekend, Nvidia partnered with Korea's Rebellions and SK Telecom on sovereign AI infrastructure built around Korean-made chips.
In Washington, the small federal office that assesses frontier AI safety - leaderless and no longer publishing its research - has been asked to informally report to the White House, the Associated Press reports. And on Monday afternoon, Google widened its TPU chip lineup with two new systems - one built for massive context windows, its first that keeps data encrypted while in use - in what Bloomberg calls an escalation of its rivalry with Nvidia.
On Tuesday, Anthropic's first concrete IPO price - roughly 867 million shares at $70 to $80, raising up to $69.3 billion - reached investment banks and was withdrawn the same day as inaccurate, days before the planned roadshow. Meanwhile, eight countries and the major AI labs signed a Paris declaration committing to shutdown mechanisms, outside audits and risk disclosure for powerful models, and Meta released Muse Ember, a cheap small model built for the repetitive work agents do. In the afternoon the model race took over: Google opened Gemini 4 Carbon, its strongest model, to paying users, Anthropic shipped the faster, cheaper Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2 pair, and Nvidia's GR00T 2 showed robots copying skills demonstrated only by humans.
Key stories of the week
- Anthropic circulated an IPO filing to banks - roughly 867 million shares at $70 to $80, raising up to $69.3 billion - then withdrew it the same day as inaccurate; the offering is still targeted for next week, in the first hard test of whether public investors will pay up for AI at scale.
- Google made Gemini 4 Carbon - its strongest model, held back for two weeks to cybersecurity defenders - generally available across the Gemini API's paid tier, the Gemini app for AI Ultra subscribers, and enterprise tools, claiming frontier results in agentic coding, scientific reasoning and cyber defense.
- Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2, the same new flagship model in two tiers - public with safeguards, and vetted-researcher-only - faster and cheaper than the 5.1 generation, with claimed feats including a 30-hour formal proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
- Nvidia's board of directors opened an independent investigation after reporting that CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort; Huang admitted an affair in a company-wide memo and pledged to cooperate. The board says it has no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised.
- Google announced two new TPU systems - TPU 8i Max, which doubles compute and memory bandwidth for massive context windows, and TPU 8tx, its first that keeps data encrypted while in use - the first time it has introduced four TPU systems in a single year, escalating its challenge to Nvidia.
This week's briefings
- Nvidia's board investigates, and Jensen Huang admits an affair
- Nvidia teams with Rebellions and SK Telecom on Korean sovereign AI
- America's AI safety office is pulled into the White House's orbit
- Google adds two new TPUs, including its first chip that keeps data encrypted while in use