Category: Top News

  • Mistral Releases Its Latest Open-Source Coding Model, Devstral 2

    Mistral Releases Its Latest Open-Source Coding Model, Devstral 2

    IBL News | New York

    French startup Mistral launched its latest open-source coding model, Devstral 2, yesterday.

    This announcement follows the recent launch of the Mistral 3 family of open-weight models and Mistral Vibe, a new command-line interface (CLI) for code automation through natural language.

    This announcement follows the recent launch of the Mistral 3 family of open-weight models and confirms Mistral’s

    Devstral 2 requires at least four H100 GPUs or equivalent for deployment, as it weighs 123 billion parameters. However, the model is also available in a smaller version, Devstral Small, which, at 24 billion parameters, is deployable locally on consumer hardware.

    Devstral 2, shipped under a modified MIT license, is currently free to use via the company’s API. After the free period, the API pricing will cost $0.40/$2.00 per million tokens (input/output) for Devstral 2.

    Mistral has partnered with the agent tools Kilo Code and Cline to release Devstral 2 to users, while the Mistral Vibe CLI is available as an extension in Zed for use within the IDE.

    Valued at $13.8 billion, this European unicorn [part of its team in the picture above] is aiming to close in on its larger American AI rivals and other coding-focused LLMs, such as Cursor and Supabase.

  • Dartmouth Will Implement Anthropic’s Claude for Education and AWS’s Bedrock Programs

    Dartmouth Will Implement Anthropic’s Claude for Education and AWS’s Bedrock Programs

    IBL News | New York

    Dartmouth University announced this month a partnership with Anthropic and AWS to implement AI solutions tailored for the academic environment, intended for students, faculty, and staff.

    Anthropic’s Claude for Education and AWS’s Amazon Bedrock models will be used to equip the institution for teaching and research across the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and creative disciplines, as well as for co-curricular activities such as career design and the use of AI technologies aligned with faculty’s fields of study.

    “This is more than a collaboration. It’s the next chapter in a story that began at Dartmouth 70 years ago,” says President Sian Leah Beilock.

    “This is the kind of partnership that makes me genuinely excited about AI’s role in education,” explained Daniela Amodei, President and Co-Founder of Anthropic.

    The agreement is nonexclusive, and Claude will be a powerful addition to other AI models that Dartmouth provides access to, such as ChatGPT and CoPilot.

    As a research university, Dartmouth and its faculty began using AI in 1956, with the Dartmouth Summer Research Project. The institution also has a rich history of coupling the latest technological innovations with teaching and learning—from the invention of the BASIC programming language and one of the earliest email systems to universal computing access and campuswide wireless networking.

    Currently, a Faculty Leadership Group on Artificial Intelligence is working to define a principled, evidence-based strategy on AI.

    Dartmouth’s staff is already utilizing AI to:

    • Facilitating student access to AI-enhanced personalized career pathways, career coaching using Claude, including using AI services to evaluate job offers; articulating their strengths, interests, goals, and values; and refining resumes and cover letters;
    • connecting students with applied learning events through AWS Skills to Jobs, designed in collaboration with employers to build industry-aligned skills;
    • collaborating on student-led programs to create a culture of innovation and ethical use on campus and provide career readiness; and
    • granting Dartmouth students access to learning and networking opportunities hosted by Anthropic.

    “As the workplace evolves and technology accelerates change, employers are seeking individuals who pair technical fluency with strong communication and problem-solving skills,” said Joe Catrino, executive director of DCCD.

    Across Dartmouth’s schools, findings already include key results in medical education, energy and the environment, computational social science, cybersecurity, and mental health and well-being.

    • Geography professor Justin Mankin’s team uses climate models to connect greenhouse gas emissions to extreme weather
    • The Polarization Research Lab, co-founded by government professor Sean Westwood, analyzes public opinion data to study political polarization and online misinformation.
    • Engineering professor Peter Chin’s lab is developing a learning algorithm and training framework to predict and defend against future cyberattacks.
    • Through the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, Dartmouth is a leading partner in the National Science Foundation-funded AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants, spearheading research on AI-powered devices and wearables to support digital interventions for addiction, behavioral, and mental health disorders.
    • Through its Center for Precision Health and Artificial Intelligence, Dartmouth is also building AI tools to improve diagnostic accuracy and personalize treatments, especially in cancer care.

    Dartmouth will use Amazon Bedrock to build custom AI applications for campus operations and student services, with AWS’s Digital Innovation Team providing direct support using their “working backwards” methodology. Comprehensive training and support are also scheduled.

    “AWS is looking forward to empowering Dartmouth, in partnership with Anthropic, as they continue to approach AI ethically, strategically, and securely to provide transformational student experiences and operational excellence,” added Kim Majerus, vice president of global education and U.S. state and local government at Amazon Web Services.

  • Anthropic Finds that AI is Radically Changing the Nature of Work for Its Software Developers

    Anthropic Finds that AI is Radically Changing the Nature of Work for Its Software Developers

    IBL News | New York

    Anthropic found that the use of AI is radically changing the nature of work for software developers inside the company, while it is handling increasingly complex tasks more autonomously.

    Key findings from a survey of 132 engineers and researchers at Anthropic indicate that Claude Code is most often used to fix code errors and learn about the codebase.

    Productivity gain was a 50% productivity boost, a 2-3x increase from this time last year.

    In addition, 27% of Claude-assisted work consists of tasks that wouldn’t have been done otherwise, such as scaling projects, making nice-to-have tools (e.g., interactive data dashboards), and exploratory work that wouldn’t be cost-effective if done manually.

    Claude fixes a lot of “papercuts”. 8.6% of Claude Code tasks involve fixing minor issues, such as refactoring code for maintainability. These minor fixes could add up to larger productivity and efficiency gains.

    Another conclusion is that most employees use Claude frequently, yet report they can “fully delegate” 0-20% of their work to it. Claude is a constant collaborator, but using it generally involves active supervision and validation, especially in high-stakes work, rather than handing off tasks that require no verification at all.

  • Runway Released a Video Model that Outperformed Veo 3 and Sora 2 Pro on An Benchmark

    Runway Released a Video Model that Outperformed Veo 3 and Sora 2 Pro on An Benchmark

    IBL News | New York

    AI startup Runway released its latest video model, Gen 4.5, to generate high-definition videos from written prompts.

    The company said the model outperformed similar models from Google’s Veo 3 and OpenAI’s Sora 2 Pro on the independent Video Arena leaderboard, noting that it excels at understanding physics, human motion, camera movements, and cause-and-effect.

    “We managed to out-compete trillion-dollar companies with a team of 100 people,” Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela said. “You can get to frontiers just by being extremely focused and diligent.” Gen 4.5 was codenamed “David” in a nod to the biblical story of David and Goliath.

    With a market valuation of $3.55 billion, Runway’s customers include media organizations, studios, brands, designers, creatives, and students.

  • Google Launches “Workspace Studio”, a New AI Productivity Tool for Business

    Google Launches “Workspace Studio”, a New AI Productivity Tool for Business

    IBL News | New York

    This month, Google launched Workspace Studio, a new automation productivity tool for everyday work, designed to build AI agents and powered by Gemini 3’s multimodal understanding.

    Previously known as Workspace Flows, Workspace Studio offers full integration with Gmail, Chat, Drive, and other Google productivity apps, and it also connects to Asana, Jira, Mailchimp, and Salesforce.

    The new platform orchestrates work relying on pre-built connectors and custom extensions.

    Google summarized some business cases of this tool:

  • Harvey, With $100M in ARR, Reaches a Valuation of $8B, Doubling Its Valuation

    Harvey, With $100M in ARR, Reaches a Valuation of $8B, Doubling Its Valuation

    IBL News | New York

    Harvey.ai, an AI platform for law firms, closed a $150 million funding round last month, valuing the company at $8 billion, double its valuation from the previous year. Andreessen Horowitz led the round.

    Harvey is backed by the investment arm of RELX, a $85 billion publishing group with a market cap, which owns the legal database LexisNexis. Harvey signed a deal with LexisNexis in June.

    The San Francisco-based three-year-old startup has raised more than $1 billion, including the new round, outstripping its rivals in valuation and fundraising.

    Annually, it generates more than $100 million in recurring revenue, or ARR.

    Harvey was founded in 2022 by Weinberg, then a junior lawyer with O’Melveny & Myers, and his friend and former DeepMind researcher Gabe Pereyra.

    The legal AI tools market is crowded:

    • Harvey is head-to-head with the Swedish startup Legora, which has a $1.8 billion valuation.
    • Other tech startups are Luminace, Clio, and Ironclad.
    • Chasing legal niches is EvenUp’s tool for personal injury lawyers, and Finch for paralegals.
    • Thomson Reuters, which owns case law database Westlaw, last year snapped up Casetext, another Harvey rival, in a $650 million deal.

  • MIT Says that AI Will Reshape the Labor Market, Replacing 11.7% of the U.S. Workforce

    MIT Says that AI Will Reshape the Labor Market, Replacing 11.7% of the U.S. Workforce

    IBL News | New York

    AI can replace 11.7% of the U.S. labor force, amounting to $1.2 trillion in wages across finance, health care, and professional services.

    This is the main finding of an MIT study conducted using its simulation tool, the Iceberg Index, that simulates how 151 million U.S. workers interact across the country and how they are affected by AI.

    Researchers found that layoffs and role shifts in tech, computing, and information technology account for just 2.2% of total wage exposure, or about $211 billion.

    The Iceberg Index also challenges a common assumption about AI risk — that it will stay confined to tech roles in coastal hubs. It runs population-level experiments, revealing how AI reshapes tasks, skills, and labor flows long before those changes show up in the real economy.

    “Basically, we are creating a digital twin for the U.S. labor market,” said Prasanna Balaprakash, ORNL director and co-leader of the research.

  • Anthropic Introduced Its Latest Model ‘Claude Opus 4.5’

    Anthropic Introduced Its Latest Model ‘Claude Opus 4.5’

    IBL News | New York

    Anthropic announced Claude Opus 4.5, the latest version of its flagship model, following the launch of Sonnet 4.5 in September and Haiku 4.5 in October. It includes improvements to memory for long-context operations.

    “Claude Opus 4.5 is state-of-the-art on tests of real-world software engineering,” and “is the best model in the world for coding, agents, and computer use,” said the company.

    Opus 4.5 is already available in the apps, API, and on all three major cloud platforms. For developers, pricing is $5/$25 per million tokens.

    This model will face competition from other recently released frontier models, most notably OpenAI’s GPT 5.1 (released on November 12) and Google’s Gemini 3 (released on November 18).

    Alongside Opus, Anthropic released updates to the Claude Developer PlatformClaude Code, desktop app, and consumer apps.

  • ChatGPT Rolls Out a Shopping Search Feature that Offers Personalized Buyer Guides

    ChatGPT Rolls Out a Shopping Search Feature that Offers Personalized Buyer Guides

    IBL News | New York

    OpenAI introduced shopping research to all users this month. Released for the holiday season, the feature has been post-trained on GPT-5-Thinking mini with reinforcement learning for shopping tasks.

    Essentially, ChatGPT conducts deep research for users across the Internet, including reviews, comments, and high-quality sources, helping them find the right products without sifting through multiple sites. The model might ask clarifying questions.

    The users just describe what they are looking for, i.e., “Find an affordable electric bike that can be folded and stored in a small apartment.”

    The chatbot considers users’ past conversations and their memory graph to deliver a personalized buyer’s guide in minutes.

    The company ensured that this tool “performs especially well in detail-heavy categories like electronics, beauty, home and garden, kitchen and appliances, and sports and outdoor.”

    For simple shopping questions, such as checking a price or confirming a feature, a regular ChatGPT response is quick.

    When the user wants in-depth shopping research, such as comparisons, constraints, and trade-offs, the model takes a few minutes to provide a more detailed, well-researched answer.

    The company trained the model to read trusted sites, cite reliable sources, and synthesize information to produce high-quality product research. It is also designed to be an interactive experience that can update and refine its research in real time, adjusting to user product preferences.

    To purchase an item, they can click through to the retailer’s site. In the future, OpenAI plans to offer merchants in Instant Checkout the option to purchase directly through ChatGPT for merchants who are part of Instant Checkout⁠.

  • China Prioritizes an Economy Based on AI and Robot-Driven Factories

    China Prioritizes an Economy Based on AI and Robot-Driven Factories

    IBL News | New York

    AI and robots are already remaking the Chinese economy, trying to limit the need for human intervention.

    The goal of the Communist Party leaders continues to be to maintain its dominance as the world’s factory floor to sustain its exports, overcoming today’s challenge of rising costs at home and tariffs abroad.

    AI offers a lifeline to head off those risks by helping China make and ship more stuff faster, cheaper, and with fewer workers, The Wall Street Journal reports.

    And China wants to deploy what is available today quicker than the U.S. can, locking in any advantages. However, U.S. companies, such as Amazon.com and Walmart, are prioritizing automation in similar ways to Chinese firms.

    According to the International Federation of Robotics, China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year, nearly nine times as many as the U.S. and more than the rest of the world combined. The number of operational robots surpassed two million in 2024, the most of any country.

    One risk is that AI could destroy more factory jobs than China expects, leaving it with too many unemployed workers. However, Chinese leaders are betting that the country’s shrinking population, projected to fall by 200 million over the next three decades, will offset job cuts in factories, boosting productivity without raising unemployment.

    Today, China’s average factory wages are far higher than in countries such as India.