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Data center developer Crusoe has secured a new $3 billion funding round valuing the company at $30 billion, according to Bloomberg. Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners co-led the deal, with Mubadala Capital, part of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, also participating.
OpenAI unveiled GPT-6 Astra, touting gains in cybersecurity, software engineering and agentic workflows, and calling it its most capable model yet. The release is rolling out first to enterprise and security customers before reaching Plus, Pro and Business users. In the same week, Anthropic, Meta and Google each pushed out their own model updates, with Anthropic releasing Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1.
Ultrahuman, a rival to Oura in the smart ring market, secured $70 million from investors including Qualcomm Ventures, Labcorp, Alpha Wave and Blume to fund development of next-generation AI wearables. The company plans to use the funding to advance sensing, materials, electronics and algorithms, and is exploring a future ring that could work with devices like Meta's smart glasses for gesture control, according to chief business officer Bhuvan Srinivasan.
Meta introduced a new pricing tier for its Muse Spark model, built for coding and other agentic tasks, that slashes token costs by roughly 95% for developers who agree to let their prompts and outputs be used to train future versions. Standard pricing runs $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens, compared to just 10 cents and 20 cents respectively under the data-sharing plan. The move follows a scrapped internal program at Meta that tracked employee computer activity for training data, which was shelved in June after backlash.
Meta released Muse Spark 1.3, an upgrade to its AI coding and agent model, touting benchmark scores that mostly come from a 'max' reasoning configuration still undergoing safety testing and unavailable through any API provider. The version actually shipping to developers via Muse Code and the Meta Model API uses the older 'xhigh' reasoning setting, which scores meaningfully lower on tests like GDPval-AA v2, OSWorld 2.0, and JobBench. Meta disclosed both sets of results in its evaluation report, but its marketing emphasized the higher, currently inaccessible numbers.
House Select Committee on China Chair John Moolenaar says TikTok backed out of a planned public roundtable meant to address Chinese government access to US user data and its algorithm. Moolenaar said TikTok withdrew on August 27th, a day after Meta settled with state attorneys general over child safety claims, and cited concerns about facing child safety questions despite that not being the meeting's focus.
HTC has launched its Vive Eagle AI glasses globally at $499, offering a camera and audio experience similar to Meta's Ray-Ban glasses but with a key difference: a $49 magnetic Power Boost battery pack that snaps onto the frame to extend usage without removing the glasses. The built-in battery lasts four to five hours, and the add-on pack allows continuous use, unlike Meta's design, which requires placing the glasses in a case to recharge.
HTC is bringing its Vive Eagle smart glasses to the US market after debuting them last year, offering a screen-free, glasses-first design. The device includes a 12MP ultrawide camera, 32GB of encrypted storage, and support for either OpenAI or Gemini voice assistants, running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1 chip. Pricing starts at $499 for standard or sunglass lenses, rising to $599 for photochromic versions.
HTC is finally launching its Vive Eagle smart glasses outside Taiwan, expanding availability to North America, Europe, the UK and Australia a year after their original release. The hardware remains largely unchanged, featuring a Snapdragon AR Gen 1 chip, 12-megapixel camera, open-ear speakers and support for OpenAI or Gemini assistants, with US sales starting today at $499 and European shipments beginning September 21st.
Meta has settled a child safety lawsuit brought by more than 40 states plus DC and several territories, agreeing to pay up to $17 billion over a decade. As part of the deal it will roll out teen-specific product changes, including a default two-hour daily usage cap, overnight app blocks from midnight to 6 a.m., muted notifications during school hours, hidden likes, disabled cosmetic filters, and an option for a non-algorithmic feed.
Security researcher Jose Rodriguez found that on some Android phones, WhatsApp's video call feature can let anyone view your entire photo gallery without unlocking the device. The flaw is triggered by answering a video call, opening the effects panel, selecting AI-generated backgrounds, and choosing to edit an existing photo, which opens the gallery directly. Rodriguez says the bug affects OPPO and vivo phones but not Samsung, and has reported it to Meta and Google.
Meta told staff this week that performance evaluations will no longer be tied to how much they use AI tools, ending a system that had labeled workers 'AI Native,' 'AI First,' or 'AI Enabled' based on chatbot and agent usage. The change comes even as Meta rolls out a new agentic AI tool called Hatch, and employees report their token consumption keeps climbing anyway. The policy shift follows a lawsuit from about two dozen laid-off employees who alleged the AI-usage grading system unfairly penalized workers on health or family leave.