Anthropic is reportedly delaying its IPO from October to November 2026 to present strong Q3 results. Investors expect a roughly $2 trillion valuation, but rising infrastructure costs, including $1.25 billion a month for its SpaceX deal alone, and unresolved security risks complicate the listing.

Alibaba's Qwen team has released Qwen-Image-2.1, an open-weight model that generates and edits images on powerful consumer GPUs, with support for transparency and up to ten reference images at once. Its research license bars commercial use, which requires a separate Qwen license.

Microsoft and the University of Illinois built StudentSim to replicate individual students from limited data and give AI tutors fast, low-cost feedback. In tests covering 60 students across chess, English, and math, it outperformed GPT-5.4. A chess tutor trained with StudentSim also earned the highest expert ratings among three versions tested.

Tencent's Gander processes speech, images, and text while handling tasks in the background. A "cerebellum" keeps the conversation going, while a swappable "brain" searches files, writes code, or tackles other complex work. Users can interrupt or change the task mid-conversation. In benchmarks, Gander interrupted users in just 8 percent of cases, less often than its rivals, but trailed on task accuracy.

Trump announces an "AI Force" modeled after the Space Force and plans to appoint an "AI czar" with a "high IQ." He claims AI could reach 25 percent of US economic output, rejects new regulation, and frames criticism of data centers as a left-wing attack.