- Ox Alpha has the internet playing detective
- The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases
- Use Gemini Canvas to visualize Google Sheets
- Lady Gaga's startup trains AI on human skin
Ox Alpha has the internet playing detective
Image source: Images 2.0 / The RundownThe Rundown: An anonymous model, Ox Alpha, just launched for free on OpenRouter — with 1M-token context and multimodal input, built for coding, sustained agentic work, and production workloads — and sent the internet scrambling to ID its maker.The details: - Ox Alpha made headlines Friday after hitting 80% on a DeepSWE subset, but full testing put it at 63%, near Fable 5 at far fewer tokens per task.
- Early forensics, including the AI’s answers and Chinese zodiac-based naming, suggest it’s from China’s Zhipu AI, potentially GLM-5.3 Flash or GLM-6.
- Another potential candidate is Microsoft’s MAI family, though all four anonymous drops on OpenRouter in six months have been from Chinese labs.
- The model continues to draw heavy usage thanks to the provider’s "near-unlimited" free offer for the week, with capacity for 100T tokens a day.
15+ enterprise leaders on getting data AI-ready
The Rundown: AWS Marketplace just released a free book featuring 15 chapters from senior data and AI leaders at JPMorgan Chase, Siemens, Mercedes-Benz, Roche, and more — each sharing practical advice on building the data infrastructure needed for agentic analytics and intelligent agents.Chapters cover topics including:- Evolving data strategy for agentic AI and scaling data products
- Building on existing infrastructure with a pragmatic, business-first approach
- Unlocking value with classical ML, semantic layers, and cross-team alignment
- Real-world perspectives from leaders across different industries
The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases
Image source: Ideogram / The RundownThe Rundown: The Rundown Roundtable is a weekly feature where we poll members of The Rundown staff about how we use AI in our work and daily lives.Billy, University Educator: I was tired of opening Spotlight every time I wanted to switch apps. The search results would move around, I would occasionally open the wrong app, and those few wasted seconds kept adding up throughout the day.Instead of memorizing a collection of unrelated hotkeys, I used ChatGPT Work to design and build a personalized shortcut system in Apple Shortcuts.The shortcuts can open individual apps, jump directly into specific Safari or Chrome profiles, or launch an entire work mode with one keystroke. For example, a recording shortcut could open your microphone, camera, recording software, and notes. An analytics shortcut could open all the dashboards you check each week.Shubham, Editor: I applied for Schengen visas for my wife and me, using Claude. It researched the official requirements and Reddit rejection threads, identified which rules applied, and kept both applications consistent. It caught that I was using a generic India-wide checklist and replaced it with the specific requirements for my case, cutting unnecessary work.Claude also drafted and refined our cover letters and itinerary. It cross-checked the final forms and documents, catching typos and other minor errors, while helping with appointment sequencing. Both visas were approved on time.AI TRAINING Use Gemini Canvas to visualize Google Sheets
The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to visualize a Google Sheet as a shareable dashboard. Google’s new tool, Gemini Canvas, might be the easiest and fastest way we’ve found to prototype in Google Workspace.Step-by-step:- Open a spreadsheet (like a project tracker or content calendar) in Google Sheets. Launch Gemini in a new tab, click the + button, and select Canvas
- Prompt Gemini: “Make me an interactive dashboard using the data from tabs one and two”
- When it finishes, copy the Canvas link and paste it into your browser to view the dashboard outside the chat
- To edit the dashboard, talk to Gemini in the chat like you normally would. If you’ve shared the link with a coworker, they will see the updated version as well
AI built it, we tested it
The Rundown: CData's MCP Research Report is an enterprise-grade study of what happens when you ask Claude Code to build a production MCP server. We tested across eight critical dimensions to find exactly where AI-generated connectors break down, and what it takes to close the gap.In the report, you'll find:- Only 1 of 8 dimensions passed with zero human intervention
- Where silent data loss and pagination failures slip through undetected
- Why expert guidance still left 3 dimensions unresolved
Lady Gaga's startup trains AI on human skin
Image source: Images 2.0 / The RundownThe Rundown: Outer Bio, co-founded by Lady Gaga and fiancé Michael Polansky, emerged from stealth with Yuna, a platform that keeps human skin alive for four weeks and feeds its testing data into an AI looking for viable skincare compounds.The details: - Yuna keeps full-thickness ex vivo skin alive for four weeks — versus about a week normally — on a 3D-printed scaffold that feeds it and clears waste.
- Data from experiments on that skin feeds an AI that proposes compounds likely to affect a given skin process, and each result sharpens its next prediction.
- Polansky says the loop cut discovery from two leads in ~18 months to a new candidate every six weeks, with six active leads currently in the pipeline.
- A bioRxiv preprint shows Yuna reproducing known results, including a psoriasis-like state reversed by a JAK inhibitor and UVB damage eased by sunscreen.
Trending AI Tools
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Precision Mode - Databricks’ document extraction tool beating GPT-5.6 Sol
Everything else in AI todaySonar Vortex makes your code conform from the first line, without agents wasting tokens guessing at your architecture. Learn more and drop your token costs by up to 36%.*Hugging Face, which hosts over 2M models and 1.5M datasets, is exploring a sale at $13B or more, up from its $4.5B valuation in 2023, Business Insider reported.Nvidia struck a $6B deal to license Poolside’s model-development technology and bring 100+ engineers onto the Nemotron team to build powerful open-weight models.Dr. Dre told the NYT he’s using AI in producing music, calling it a tool for creativity and noting that the only people who see it as a threat are those who have trouble creating.Anthropic expanded Mythos 5 access to cyber defenders beyond Project Glasswing, while its bankers told investors the startup could raise $100B+ at a $2T IPO valuation.*Sponsored Listing
Highlights: News, Guides & Events- Read our last AI newsletter: Slack turns coding into a group project
- Read our last Tech newsletter: The mRNA cancer vaccine finally delivers
- Read our last Robotics newsletter: Unitree founder gains $13B overnight
- Today’s AI tool guide: Use Gemini Canvas to visualize Google Sheets
- RSVP to next workshop on Aug. 27: Build your first AI Eval
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