Startups & Ventures

🤖 OpenAI Cuts GPT-5.6 Prices

API access and model credits are now over 20% cheaper. The new rates will last for the next three months.

The API gets the new rates first.

ChatGPT Work and Codex will follow, while paid subscriptions remain unchanged and standard user limits stay the same.

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🌐 Chinese AI Models Close the Gap

A Bloomberg chart compares Chinese models in orange with US models in blue, using a weighted average across 9 benchmarks. Frontier models are connected by a line.

Over the past couple of years, the capability gap has narrowed sharply. Claims that Chinese models lag by 6-9 months look outdated, especially since GLM-5.3 is not included. Prices are not even part of the chart.

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🤖 RealBOTs Take On Real Work

Chinese company RealMan Robotics plans to place almost 1,000 RealBOT units in workplaces in 2026. At WRC 2026 in Beijing, demos showed robots sorting medicines, inspecting a distribution switchboard, baking with human cooks, and handling remote equipment commissioning at the Changzhou factory.

The Global Link Network lets a human operator control the robot remotely, with claimed millisecond-level latency across thousands of kilometers. A scarce skill can reach the needed site without sending the specialist there.

Each task produces data from unpredictable conditions. More work should make the robots better at working.

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🤖 ChatGPT Can Now Send iMessages

The new Messages plugin can find conversations, catch up on missed chats, draft replies, and send them through ChatGPT.

It can check the calendar, suggest free dinner slots, find birthdays in messages, add them to the calendar, and flag chats that look like spam.

The plugin is available in ChatGPT Work and Codex on desktop. Install it through Plugins, then Public.

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🤖 One Generation From Always-On ChatGPT

Sam Altman says OpenAI is about one model generation away from ChatGPT running in the background throughout your digital life. It would watch the screen, attend meetings, and record calls.

You could connect it to email, documents, Slack, and messages. The system would build a full picture of your work and suggest solutions in real time, while leaving the final choice to you.

Most people now use AI in isolated sessions. The model Altman described would never switch off or lose context, giving one company a continuous record of your screen, conversations, and work.

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☠️ Voyah EV Completes a Tunnel Loop

In a test tunnel in Wuhan, the Passion S entered a turn at 130 km/h, holding about 16° of steering angle. The resulting centripetal force pushed the electric crossover onto the wall, over the ceiling, then back down.

The electric crossover used its speed and the tunnel’s radius to stay pressed against the concrete.

The margin was tiny. A speed drop would reduce the normal force between the tires and concrete, so engineers had to calculate a narrow operating window for the heavy EV.

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📹 Flock’s Cameras Feed an Investigative AI

Flock’s cameras cover 6,000 US communities. Its internal tool, first called Nightshift and now OS Investigate, pulls data from the network to log drivers’ movements.

Wired reports that police can search a mapped area using only a person’s physical description, time, location, and behavior. Results can be linked to police files, 911 call logs, and commercial databases, producing a name, home address, relatives, or friends.

A chatbot accepts plain-text requests, including searches for cars seen most often in an area over the last 14 days. Flock says the product is being tested with selected law-enforcement partners and that its current capabilities may change.

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❤️Hyundai Shows Cyberpunk-Style Tucson

The new model is larger than its predecessor. The cabin gets a large media screen and a slim instrument panel. Several physical buttons remain.

Prices and other specifications are still undisclosed. The Tucson may come only as a hybrid, according to rumors. Sales in Korea start by the end of the year, with the rest of the world following in 2027.

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🔎LandSpace Lands Zhuque-3 Booster

On its second flight, Zhuque-3 sent Hongqing Technology’s Honghu 03 satellite to orbit, then returned its first stage to landing legs on land. The first attempt ended in “anomalous combustion” near the pad.

It was China’s first recovery of an orbital rocket booster to landing legs, and the first landing by a private Chinese company. The 66-metre rocket runs on oxygen and methane, with a reusable booster and disposable upper stage.

China had recorded only 1 earlier landing, by CASC’s Long March 10B, which lowered its stage into a ship-deck net. Falcon 9 first landed in 2015.

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🤖 OpenAI Cuts GPT-5.6 Agent Costs

GPT-5.6 Luna scored 84.04% on BrowseComp, nearly matching GPT-5.5 at 84.36%. Its run cost $1.33 instead of $33.27, making the gap hard to ignore.

For agent work, OpenAI recommends Luna and Terra for data extraction and document search. GPT-5.6 Sol on low reasoning also beat GPT-5.5 on high reasoning in one agent test.

The bigger gain comes from the agent setup. GPT-5.6 can preserve reasoning between steps and compact long histories. On ARC-AGI-3, that lifted Sol from 13.3% to 38.3% while using about 6 times fewer output tokens. The model itself was unchanged.

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🤖 OpenAI separates teens in ChatGPT

Users aged 13-17 will get a separate version with stricter filters for harmful topics.

The bot cannot simulate emotions or provide ready-made homework answers.

Age will be estimated from more than 2,000 behavioral signals, including login time, so documents are not needed. The change follows lawsuits after children received harmful content.

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🤖 Claude Code Adds /design Skill

The /design skill is in research preview and brings artboards from Claude Design into the CLI and Desktop.

Describe an interface to get several editable layouts, choose one, refine it manually, then ask Claude to turn the design into a working interface.

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⚡️Asus Adds Electric Power to Any Bike

The Oxiis E250G1 Intelligent Bike Booster attaches a motor and removable battery to the seatpost. Rollers drive the rear wheel, so the chain and hub stay untouched.

It delivers 250 W nominal power, up to 500 W peak, with a 158.4 Wh battery. Range reaches 50 km in Eco or about 10 km in Sport. Full charging takes about 2 hours via 100 W USB-C Power Delivery.

The 3.7 kg unit fits 16 to 29-inch and 700C wheels, with tires up to 60 mm wide. Adaptive Boost Technology reads the incline ahead and adjusts assistance. Asus has not announced the price or release date.

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👁 PRIMA chip restores central vision in AMD

The PRIMA implant targets geographic atrophy, a late-stage dry form of age-related macular degeneration affecting over 5 million people worldwide. It replaces dead photoreceptors in the central retina with a 2×2 mm chip containing 378 photovoltaic pixels.

The chip converts infrared light projected from special glasses into electrical impulses that stimulate surviving retinal neurons. This bypasses damaged photoreceptors and sends visual signals to the brain, preserving peripheral vision while restoring central sight.

PRIMA does not cure or regenerate cells but acts as an electronic prosthesis. It recently received CE marking, allowing Science Corp to market the system in Europe.

📊@tech