Samwise Tech/AI/Robotics Newsletter
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
U.S. Export-Control Order Forces Anthropic to Disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for All Users Globally
The U.S. government issued an export-control directive on June 12 ordering Anthropic to immediately suspend all access to its two most advanced AI models — Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — for any foreign national anywhere in the world, including Anthropic’s own foreign national employees. Because Anthropic cannot verify the nationality of every user in real time, the company was forced to disable both models for all customers globally. The government reported it had become aware of a jailbreak technique that could be used to elicit sensitive outputs. Fable 5 had launched publicly just three days earlier, on June 9.
Sources: Anthropic
Macron and Modi Warn G7 That Washington Can ‘Turn Off the Switch’ on American AI Access
At the G7 Summit on June 17, French President Emmanuel Macron warned leaders and AI executives — including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — that if the U.S. “from one day to the next can turn off the switch,” it risks damaging not only European economies but the AI companies themselves. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised similar concerns. Macron and Modi are reacting to the Trump administration’s June 12 order blocking Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 exports. G7 leaders also discussed a proposed “trusted partners” scheme that would grant allied nations access to advanced American AI models for developing defenses against China.
Sources: TechCrunch
SpaceX Agrees to Acquire Cursor in $60 Billion Stock Deal Days After Blockbuster IPO
SpaceX agreed to acquire AI coding startup Cursor in a $60 billion all-stock deal, days after completing its blockbuster IPO that valued the company at $2.6 trillion, TechCrunch reported June 16. The acquisition closes out an April option SpaceX had secured — either buy Cursor for $60 billion or pay a $10 billion break-up fee. Cursor, which had been on track to close a $2 billion fundraise from Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and Nvidia at a $50 billion valuation, chose the buyout. SpaceX’s AI division is built around xAI, which merged with SpaceX earlier this year. The deal is expected to close in Q3.
Sources: TechCrunch
Genesis AI Unveils Eno, a Wheeled General-Purpose Robot Powered by GENE Foundation Model
Genesis AI unveiled Eno on June 17, a general-purpose robot that avoids bipedal humanoid design in favor of a wheeled base with a tower of articulated panels that adjust its height and reach in real time, then fold flat for compact storage. Its robotic hands match the form and function of human hands, allowing Eno to use existing tools and operate in spaces built for people. Eno is powered by GENE, Genesis AI’s foundation model, which can reason, retain memory, and execute multi-step tasks autonomously. Genesis plans to begin production with industrial and logistics customers by end of 2026. The company has raised $105 million in seed funding.
Sources: Robotics & Automation News
XDOF Emerges With $70M to Fix What It Calls AI’s Next Great Bottleneck: Robot Training Data
XDOF (pronounced “ecks-doff”) emerged from stealth on June 17 with $70 million in funding to tackle what it calls the next great bottleneck in AI: the data feedback loop needed to teach robots how to interact with the physical world. The startup builds data pipelines, collection tools, and annotation systems that frontier AI labs and robotics companies struggle to build themselves. The $70 million round was backed by Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux, and WndrCo. XDOF argues that without better robot training data infrastructure, advances in model quality and chip performance will not translate into reliable real-world robotic systems.
Sources: TechCrunch
NewCore Raises $66M to Authenticate and Govern AI Agents as They Become Enterprise Workers
NewCore emerged from stealth on June 15 with $66 million in seed funding to address what it says is an emerging enterprise challenge: as AI agents take on worker-like roles, companies lack infrastructure to authenticate, govern, and control them at scale. The round was led by Cyberstarts, a cybersecurity-focused venture firm, with participation from Index Ventures and Evolution Equity Partners, valuing NewCore at $300 million post-investment. The company aims to solve what it calls the AI identity gap — giving agents verifiable credentials so enterprises can manage and audit them the same way they do human workers.
Sources: TechCrunch
Weibo’s VibeThinker-3B Matches 671B-Parameter Models on AIME 2026, Sparking Benchmark Debate
Sina Weibo’s research team released VibeThinker-3B on June 16, a 3-billion-parameter reasoning model that scored 94.3 on the AIME 2026 mathematics benchmark — matching DeepSeek V3.2, which has 671 billion parameters and is 224 times larger. With a test-time technique called Claim-Level Reliability Assessment applied, the score climbs to 97.1, surpassing Gemini 3 Pro’s 91.7. VibeThinker-3B also posted an 80.2 Pass@1 on LiveCodeBench v6 and a 96.1 percent acceptance rate on LeetCode weekly contests. The results have sparked debate about whether AIME and competitive coding benchmarks meaningfully reflect real-world AI capability or can be gamed by specialist training.
Sources: VentureBeat
Tech Pulse
Top Frontier Models (SWE-bench Verified): Claude Opus 4.8 (88.6%) | GPT-5.5 (82.6%) | Gemini 3.1 Pro (80.6%)
Top Open Source Models (SWE-bench Verified): DeepSeek-V4-Pro (80.6%) | MiniMax M3 (80.5%) | Qwen3.7 Max (80.4%)
Top Small Models 15–50B (SWE-bench Verified): Qwen 3.6-27B (77.2%) | Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B (73.4%) | Gemma 4-31B (61.4%)
Top Edge Models 0–15B (GSM8K): Gemma 3 4B IT (89.2%) | Phi-4-mini (88.6%) | Qwen3.5-9B (82.5%)
AI Leaders: NVIDIA $5.08T | Alphabet $4.63T | Microsoft $3.11T
Robotics Leaders: ABB $189.58B | Intuitive Surgical $174B | Fanuc $40.97B
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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