Perplexity launches enterprise AI agent and local computer tool

Perplexity has introduced two new AI agent products at its Ask 2026 developer conference in San Francisco. The announcements signal the company’s move beyond consumer search into enterprise software. The first product, Perplexity Computer, is a cloud-based AI agent that the company now also launched for enterprise customers. It coordinates approximately 20 AI models from …

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With a little help from Claude: Microsoft’s Copilot Cowork takes over your to-do list

Microsoft has announced Copilot Cowork, a cloud-based AI agent that can complete complex tasks across Microsoft 365 applications on behalf of users. Carl Franzen reports for VentureBeat that the tool is built using technology from Anthropic, the AI company behind the competing Claude Cowork product. Copilot Cowork forms the centerpiece of Microsoft’s “Wave 3” update …

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Anthropic launches Claude Marketplace for enterprise AI tools

Anthropic has launched Claude Marketplace, a new platform that gives enterprise customers access to third-party tools built on its Claude AI models. Emilia David reports for VentureBeat that the marketplace currently features products from companies including GitLab, Harvey, Lovable, Replit, Rogo and Snowflake. The platform is designed to simplify procurement. Enterprises with an existing Anthropic …

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Think less, do more: Microsoft’s new tiny AI knows when to skip the hard thinking

Microsoft has released Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B, a compact AI model that processes both images and text and can solve complex math and science problems. Michael Nuñez reports for VentureBeat that the 15-billion-parameter model matches or exceeds the performance of much larger systems while using significantly less computing power and training data. The model is available now on …

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Alibaba releases new Qwen3.5 models that run on laptops and phones

Alibaba’s Qwen research team has released two new series of open source AI models that run on consumer hardware, from desktop PCs to smartphones. The releases cover a range of sizes, from 0.8 billion to 122 billion parameters, and are available for free download under the Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face and ModelScope. The …

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MiniMax releases M2.5, a frontier AI model at a fraction of rival costs

Chinese AI startup MiniMax has released M2.5, a new large language model that the company says competes with top-tier models from Anthropic and Google while costing significantly less to run. MiniMax offers two versions through its API. M2.5-Lightning runs at 100 tokens per second and costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.40 per million …

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How Anthropic’s obsession with AI safety became its secret weapon against OpenAI

Anthropic has emerged as a formidable competitor in the artificial intelligence industry by focusing on enterprise customers and positioning itself as the most safety-conscious AI company. The approach appears to be paying off both commercially and in investor confidence, even as critics question whether the company can maintain its principles while racing to capture market …

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OpenAI launches “Frontier” platform to manage enterprise AI agents

OpenAI has introduced Frontier, a platform designed to help businesses build, deploy, and manage AI agents across their organizations. The company positions the platform as a solution to the growing challenge of coordinating multiple AI agents that currently operate in isolated systems. According to OpenAI, Frontier connects siloed data sources and applications to provide AI …

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Mistral releases Voxtral Transcribe 2: transcribe on your phone for pennies

Mistral AI has released Voxtral Transcribe 2, a family of speech-to-text models designed for both batch processing and real-time transcription. The company positions the technology as more accurate and significantly cheaper than competing services while enabling on-device processing for sensitive data. The release includes two models. Voxtral Mini Transcribe V2 handles pre-recorded audio files at …

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