Samwise Tech/AI/Robotics Newsletter
Monday, August 25, 2026
Hugging Face Reportedly in Acquisition Talks at $13 Billion Valuation
Hugging Face, the AI platform known for open-source model hosting, is reportedly in acquisition talks valuing the company at over $13 billion — more than double its 2023 valuation of $4.5 billion. Despite previously turning down a $500 million investment from Nvidia at a $7 billion valuation, the company is now working with banks to explore a potential sale. CEO Clem Delangue has publicly committed to keeping the platform open to the community. The discussions come as consolidation accelerates across the AI sector; Stripe recently acquired AI middleware startup OpenRouter for $7 billion. No deal has been finalized.
Sources: TechCrunch
Instinct’s Powerful AI Assistant Is Raising Privacy and Security Concerns
A powerful new AI assistant called Instinct is drawing scrutiny for aggressive terms of service and weak security practices. Built by Noah Shinn, a co-founder of Sierra, the agent can enter binding agreements on users’ behalf and holds a perpetual and irrevocable license to user data, including emails stored in plain text even after account disconnection. Security researchers found the assistant can be manipulated through emailed instructions, raising phishing concerns. The product, which remains in private access only, is backed by Kleiner Perkins and Conviction. Critics argue its considerable capabilities have substantially outpaced its safety protocols.
Sources: TechCrunch
Robotics Startup Generalist Reaches $3 Billion Valuation
Generalist, a robotics startup co-founded by Google DeepMind alumni Pete Florence and Andy Zeng alongside Boston Dynamics veteran Andrew Barry, has raised a $200 million extension to its Series B round at a $3 billion valuation. Led by 8VC, the new capital brings Generalist’s total funding to $600 million. The company’s Gen 1.5 model can learn new manipulation tasks from just 3-to-12-second video demonstrations. Despite its progress, Generalist remains well behind rival startups: Physical Intelligence is valued at $11 billion and Skild AI at $14 billion, both racing toward embodied general intelligence.
Sources: TechCrunch
Apple’s Latest Mac Mini Runs on a New M6 Chip and Starts at $899
Apple has unveiled a new Mac Mini powered by its M6 chip, starting at $899 — the same entry price as the M4 model it replaces. The M6 features a 12-core CPU and GPU, up from 10 cores, and delivers four times better AI performance along with twice the storage and graphics throughput. A higher-end M5 Pro configuration is available at $1,699. New Mac Studio models start at $2,499. All devices ship September 22 with macOS 27. The Mac Mini has gained a following among developers running local AI agents, making the M6 upgrade particularly relevant for that use case.
Sources: TechCrunch
Stability AI Raises $76 Million in Series B Backed by Music and Gaming Giants
Stability AI, the startup behind the Stable Diffusion image generation model, has raised $76 million in Series B funding, bringing its total fundraising to $232 million. The round is backed by an unusual roster of entertainment investors including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, and gaming giant Electronic Arts, alongside AMD Ventures and Pacific Alliance Ventures. CEO Prem Akkaraju called the funding an affirmation of the company’s vision for AI-powered creation. The lineup reflects Stability’s pivot toward content licensing partnerships with major entertainment companies. A Getty Images copyright lawsuit in the United States remains ongoing.
Sources: TechCrunch
Accel-Backed Keenable Exits Stealth to Index the Web for AI Agents
Keenable, a startup co-founded by former Yandex search head Andrey Styskin and German AI scientist Matthias Petri, has exited stealth with a $26 million seed round led by Accel and Conviction Partners. The company is building a web search index of more than 100 billion documents specifically optimized for AI agents rather than human readers. As Google and Microsoft curtail their search APIs, Styskin argues AI companies have few options for affordable web-scale search infrastructure. Keenable’s API is already in production at several unnamed AI labs. An upcoming product, WebQueryLanguage, will help agents synthesize answers by combining information across multiple web sources.
Sources: TechCrunch
Perplexity Partners with Nvidia to Launch a Fully Local AI Agent with Zero Token Costs
Perplexity has launched what it calls the Portable Computer: a fully local AI agent running on Nvidia DGX Spark hardware and RTX GPU-powered Linux machines. Unlike cloud-based assistants, the Portable Computer handles tasks entirely on-device by default, generating zero token costs for local work. When a query requires additional capability, it prompts the user before sending anything to a cloud frontier model. Perplexity partnered with Nvidia to build the system. The launch coincides with Apple’s new M6 Mac Mini, which developers have praised for local AI agent workloads, reflecting a broader shift toward privacy-preserving on-premises inference.
Sources: VentureBeat
Tech Pulse
Top Frontier Models: Claude Opus 5 (97.0%) | Claude Fable 5 (95.0%) | Grok 4.5 (86.6%)
Top Open Source Models: DeepSeek V4 Pro (96.4%) | Kimi K3 (93.4%) | GLM-5.2 (62.1%)
Top Small Models (15–50B): Qwen3.6-27B (68.9%) | Devstral Small 2 24B (46.8%) | Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 3.8B (43.2%)
Top Edge Models (0–15B): Gemma 4 E4B (53.1%) | Qwen3-8B (51.4%) | Llama 3.3 8B (38.7%)
AI Leaders: NVIDIA $5.06T | Alphabet $4.23T | Microsoft $3.62T
Robotics Leaders: Intuitive Surgical $175.2B | Figure AI ~$39B (private est.) | Boston Dynamics ~$25B (private est.)
Every newsletter preserved and searchable
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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