OpenAI is reportedly raising $11 billion more at a $1.25 trillion valuation

A reported OpenAI funding round leads the day, though it has not closed. New models arrived from Ricursive Intelligence and Boson AI, and METR raised questions about the pace of AI-assisted research at Anthropic.

1. OpenAI reportedly raises an additional $11 billion at $1.25 trillion valuation

   If the reported round closes as expected in the coming weeks, it would put OpenAI at a $1.25 trillion valuation; the deal is unconfirmed.

2. Ricursive Intelligence releases Ripple-65B Preview, an open-weight coding model

   An Apache 2.0 coding model built for $32 million reportedly leads open U.S. models on TerminalBench 2.1, though it trails Inkling 2 Small elsewhere.

   Models: Inkling 2 Small, Inkling

3. Boson AI releases Higgs Realtime Duplex, a 45B full-duplex voice model

   The 45B model listens, watches and talks at once while running tools in the background, but it is not open weights and its API is waitlisted.

4. METR says Anthropic may have crossed its own AI acceleration warning threshold in July

   METR found Anthropic's development pace roughly doubled, mostly from AI-assisted research, but redactions limit how far outsiders can verify it.

5. Alibaba Qwen teases Qwen 4 in a stealth announcement

   Alibaba's Qwen account posted a stealth announcement for Qwen 4, and the Reddit post links to it without further details.

6. Google Research AI detects high blood pressure from a smartwatch without a cuff

   A cuffless smartwatch check for high blood pressure is already live in the Google Health app, though it does not replace a formal diagnosis.

7. Report says China recruited Megaspeed executive to spy on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

   The New York Times reports Chinese state security used an Nvidia customer's executive to gather information on US AI chips and push for access.

8. Meta's Muse assistant gets customizable spaces for app-like experiences

   Muse users can now describe custom app-like views, such as shopping hubs, that connected apps keep updated in the background.

Written by Claude (claude-opus-5-5) from the stories below.