AI News - July 2, 2026

Hello,

💌 Welcome to Our AI Weekly Roundup! 💌

We're excited to bring you this week's roundup of the most fascinating AI news, updates, and breakthroughs! Grab a cup of your favorite beverage, sit back, and explore the incredible world of AI with us.

🔥 Top AI Stories of the Week

1. Anthropic launches Claude Science, an AI workbench for scientific research that connects Claude to more than 60 scientific databases, supports multi-agent research pipelines, and includes citation and calculation checking for reproducible analysis. [Link]

2. Anthropic releases Claude Sonnet 5 as a cheaper model for agentic work, making it the default for free and Pro users while promising near-Opus performance for coding, tool use, and autonomous workflows. [Link]

3. The US government lifts export controls on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models after Anthropic agrees to detect security risks, collaborate on future releases, and alert officials to malicious activity. [Link]

4. The US government is reportedly negotiating voluntary standards for advanced AI model releases with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other companies, including benchmarks, timelines, and access rules. [Link]

5. OpenAI and Broadcom unveil Jalapeño, OpenAI’s first custom LLM inference chip, designed from scratch for AI serving workloads and reportedly developed from initial design to tape-out in nine months. [Link]

6. Google brings Gemini Spark, its agentic assistant, to macOS, adding local file access, Google Tasks and Keep support, third-party app integrations, real-time tracking, and custom MCP connections. [Link]

7. Meta is reportedly building Meta Compute to sell excess AI infrastructure, turning its huge data-center investment into a cloud business for AI compute and hosted model access. [Link]

8. Google introduces Nano Banana 2 Lite for faster, cheaper image generation, producing images in about four seconds at $0.034 per 1,000 images for high-volume creative workflows. [Link]

9. California and Anthropic strike a deal giving state agencies discounted Claude access, including training and support for drafting documents, analysing information, and improving public services. [Link]

10. New consumer spending data suggests Claude is gaining ground among paying AI users, with US consumer revenue up about 75% since January and Claude course demand rising sharply among self-directed learners. [Link]

11. The EU adopts AI Act amendments delaying high-risk compliance deadlines, broadening SME-style exemptions and adding new prohibitions on AI-generated CSAM and non-consensual intimate imagery. [Link]

12. GitHub adds Kimi K2.7 Code as Copilot’s first open-weight model option, giving developers a lower-cost coding model in the Copilot picker under usage-based billing. [Link]