AI This Week
A new Harvard Business School working paper suggests artificial intelligence can replicate many mutual fund managers’ trading decisions, often without placing a single trade. The research, titled “Mimicking Finance,” reports that 71% of managers’ trade directions can be predicted, based on analysis of data from 1990 to 2023 that factored in fund size, economic indicators, and investor flows. For some managers, predictions rose to nearly all trades in a quarter, especially for veterans and those in less competitive categories. Yet the study found important splits: managers with larger ownership stakes acted less predictably, and less predictable managers outperformed peers while highly predictable managers lagged. Even within portfolios, harder-to-predict positions beat easier ones.
Anthropic is scaling back parts of its flagship AI safety policy as competition among top labs accelerates. The company said it will no longer pause work on a model simply because it could qualify as dangerous if a competitor releases a comparable or stronger system. The shift marks a sharp change from guardrails published about 2 1/2 years ago that helped define Anthropic as one of the sector’s most safety-focused players. Rivals including OpenAI, xAI, and Google continue to ship new tools at a rapid pace. Anthropic also faces a separate fight with the Defense Department over how Claude can be used, with officials pressing the company to relax usage limits by Friday. Anthropic says the safety update reflects fast AI progress and limited federal regulation.
OpenAI appears to be preparing a new subscription tier called ChatGPT Pro Lite priced at $100 per month, based on a checkout-page discovery shared by engineer Tibor Blaho, who has previously spotted ChatGPT features ahead of release. The plan would sit between ChatGPT Plus ($20) and ChatGPT Pro ($200), adding a middle step in OpenAI’s consumer lineup. The move could target users who hit Plus rate limits but do not need Pro’s top-end access, including freelancers, researchers, and developers. The timing aligns with OpenAI’s hiring of Peter Steinberger, creator of the agent framework OpenClaw, as CEO Sam Altman points to “extremely multi-agent” systems. No launch date or final feature list has been confirmed.
Taalas introduced its Hardcore AI architecture, a new approach to AI inference chips that one early user described as “insane” in performance. The company, founded about two and a half years ago, says it can take an AI model and turn it into custom silicon by hardening the model’s parameters and weights into a chip design, aiming to boost speed and efficiency versus running the same model on general-purpose accelerators. The announcement signals renewed pressure in the AI hardware field as startups pitch alternatives to mainstream GPU-centric deployments for production inference. Taalas positions the platform as a way to move from software-defined models to purpose-built inference hardware tailored to specific workloads.
The National Institutes of Health is expanding its artificial intelligence pilots, even as its workforce shrinks and offices reorganize across the Department of Health and Human Services. NIH’s headcount fell to about 17,000 in early 2026, down more than 4,000 from a year earlier, after reductions in force and probationary firings, according to agency figures cited in federal data. At the same time, the number of documented NIH AI use cases climbed to 124 in fiscal 2025 from 82 in 2024. Officials pointed to GSA OneGov agreements that sped up access to approved tools, supporting work across grants analysis, research workflows, lab tasks, and clinical assistance. NIH also is building disease-focused small language models and plans to broaden successful pilots.
Global artificial intelligence leaders and world officials gathered in New Delhi this week for the India AI Impact Summit, where companies announced a wave of big-ticket investments and partnerships. Reliance Industries and its telecom unit Jio said they will invest $109.8 billion over seven years to build AI and data infrastructure. Adani Group announced $100 billion for renewable-powered AI data centres through 2035 and said related spending could reach $250 billion across the decade. Microsoft said it is on pace to invest $50 billion in the “Global South” by 2030. Yotta Data Services committed more than $2 billion for an AI computing hub using Nvidia Blackwell Ultra chips. TCS signed OpenAI as a data centre customer, while L&T and Nvidia announced plans for India’s largest AI factory.
Anthropic on Tuesday released Claude Sonnet 4.6, its second major AI model launch in less than two weeks. The company said the model improves computer use, coding, design, knowledge-work tasks, and the handling of large datasets. Sonnet 4.6 now becomes the default model for free users and Pro subscribers inside the Claude chatbot, and also in the Claude Cowork productivity tool. The rollout follows the debut of Claude Opus 4.6 just 12 days earlier, highlighting the rapid cadence among top AI labs competing with OpenAI and Google. Anthropic said performance once reserved for its Opus-class models now arrives in Sonnet.
Alibaba has released its Qwen3.5 AI model series, adding agent-style features as China’s AI competition accelerates. The launch includes an open-weight model that users can download, fine-tune, and run on their own infrastructure, plus a hosted API version on Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba says Qwen3.5 improves performance and cost versus prior versions and adds native multimodal support for handling text, images, and video in one system. The model also supports coding workflows and works with open-source agent tools such as OpenClaw, reflecting the industry shift toward systems that carry out multi-step tasks with minimal supervision. Alibaba reports 397 billion parameters and support for 201 languages and dialects, up from 82.
Simile has raised $100 million to build AI tools that predict human behavior, including what consumers may buy and the questions analysts may ask on earnings calls. The funding follows the company’s emergence from stealth after months of work on a model trained on hundreds of in-depth interviews about people’s lives, paired with historic transaction data and scientific journal text on behavioral experiments. Simile says it runs simulations filled with AI agents meant to mirror real individuals’ preferences, offering businesses an alternative to focus groups. CVS has tested the service to help decide which products to stock and how to display them.
Shares in trucking and logistics companies slid after Algorhythm Holdings launched its SemiCab AI freight platform, triggering a fast “AI fear trade” across the sector. Algorhythm, a $6m company that once made in-car karaoke systems, said SemiCab helped customers scale freight volumes 300% to 400% without adding headcount, sending its stock up nearly 30%. The Russell 3000 Trucking Index fell 6.6% as CH Robinson dropped 15%, Landstar sank 16%, RXO slid 20.5%, and JB Hunt and XPO each fell about 5%, the sharpest hit since last year’s tariff turmoil. European logistics shares also sank, including DHL, DSV and Kuehne+Nagel.