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Issue Nº 84 COST TOTAL $14828.20 ARTICLES TODAY 14 TOKENS TOTAL 9.52B
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Market Open-weight models now 10x cheaper than frontier APIs, closing capability gap to 7 months Policy Q-Day countdown: NIST finalizes three post-quantum crypto standards; organizations must test by 2030 Funding Together AI closes $800M Series C at $8.3B; Aramco Ventures leads as open-model infra consolidates Policy Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, NVIDIA launch ARD spec for agent tool discovery and governance Chips NVIDIA Blackwell GB300 NVL72 hits $0.123/million tokens, 35x cheaper than Hopper, 50x per-watt gain Market Chamath: AI token costs double every 45 days; productivity gains plateau at 5% max Chips China chip exports surge 96% YoY to $177B in H1 2026, driven by memory price boom Policy Demis Hassabis calls for U.S.-led AI standards body to test frontier models Breaking Databricks showcases Lakebase as high-velocity stateful memory for agentic AI workflows Research Prime Intellect releases Verifiers v1; DAG trace format eliminates quadratic data growth in agentic RL Funding TerraFirma closes $115M for remote-operated construction; SpaceX, Anduril among backers Chips Intel invests €5B in Ireland fab to boost Xeon 6, Intel 3 production Policy New York enacts one-year data center moratorium for projects over 50 megawatts; first US state ban Funding Cyera raises $600M at $12B valuation on AI agent security infrastructure play Funding Cyera Raises $600M at $12B Valuation, Quadrupling Worth in 18 Months on AI Security Demand Chips NVIDIA halves authorized customer list in Asia to combat chip smuggling into China Chips AMD Zen 6 debut July 22–23 with EPYC Venice; 2nm, 256-core, 70% perf boost Breaking OpenAI Codex reaches 7 million active users; temporarily removes 5-hour usage cap Funding Secondary markets open late-stage private equity to retail: WHOOP secondary case study Chips Researchers develop programmable thermal material that remembers state without power Market Open-weight models now 10x cheaper than frontier APIs, closing capability gap to 7 months Policy Q-Day countdown: NIST finalizes three post-quantum crypto standards; organizations must test by 2030 Funding Together AI closes $800M Series C at $8.3B; Aramco Ventures leads as open-model infra consolidates Policy Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, NVIDIA launch ARD spec for agent tool discovery and governance Chips NVIDIA Blackwell GB300 NVL72 hits $0.123/million tokens, 35x cheaper than Hopper, 50x per-watt gain Market Chamath: AI token costs double every 45 days; productivity gains plateau at 5% max Chips China chip exports surge 96% YoY to $177B in H1 2026, driven by memory price boom Policy Demis Hassabis calls for U.S.-led AI standards body to test frontier models Breaking Databricks showcases Lakebase as high-velocity stateful memory for agentic AI workflows Research Prime Intellect releases Verifiers v1; DAG trace format eliminates quadratic data growth in agentic RL Funding TerraFirma closes $115M for remote-operated construction; SpaceX, Anduril among backers Chips Intel invests €5B in Ireland fab to boost Xeon 6, Intel 3 production Policy New York enacts one-year data center moratorium for projects over 50 megawatts; first US state ban Funding Cyera raises $600M at $12B valuation on AI agent security infrastructure play Funding Cyera Raises $600M at $12B Valuation, Quadrupling Worth in 18 Months on AI Security Demand Chips NVIDIA halves authorized customer list in Asia to combat chip smuggling into China Chips AMD Zen 6 debut July 22–23 with EPYC Venice; 2nm, 256-core, 70% perf boost Breaking OpenAI Codex reaches 7 million active users; temporarily removes 5-hour usage cap Funding Secondary markets open late-stage private equity to retail: WHOOP secondary case study Chips Researchers develop programmable thermal material that remembers state without power
Funding

Together AI closes $800M Series C at $8.3B; Aramco Ventures leads as open-model infra consolidates

Together AI, a developer of cloud infrastructure for running open-source LLMs and serving inference workloads, closed an $800 million Series C on July 1, 2026, led by Aramco Ventures (Saudi Arabia's PIF) at a post-money valuation of $8.3 billion. Co-investors include Vista Equity, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, and March Capital. This is Together's largest round to date, bringing total funding to over $978 million. The strategic lead by Aramco signals a shift: energy and infrastructure capital is directly funding AI inference platforms, and sovereign funds are treating compute infrastructure as a critical resource.

Together AI's competitive position is clear: the company operates an inference-optimized cloud platform that positions itself as the open-source alternative to proprietary-model vendors (OpenAI, Anthropic). The platform runs open models like Llama, Qwen, and DeepSeek at scale, and Together has announced productized inference offerings (including a low-cost per-token tier) aimed at cost-conscious developers and enterprises. The Aramco lead reflects a broader theme: AI infrastructure plays are consolidating around a small set of winners who can offer both breadth (multi-model support) and depth (cost optimization and hardware efficiency).

Strategic implications are substantial. Aramco's investment aligns with Saudi Arabia's aggressive tech sovereignty play, where the kingdom seeks to be a major cloud/AI infrastructure player in MENA and globally. NVIDIA's participation signals confidence in Together as a key platform for training and serving NVIDIA hardware. Salesforce's presence shows enterprise appetite for Together's infrastructure layer underneath low-code automation tools.

For practitioners, Together AI at $8.3B signals that open-model infrastructure has matured from research project to competitive platform. The company is now positioned alongside other infra plays (CoreWeave, Lambda Labs) as a primary alternative to proprietary-model inference clouds. The valuation and investor roster suggest Together is prepping for an IPO or acquisition by a major cloud provider. Cost per inference token will remain the battleground; Together's moat depends on staying ahead on efficiency and breadth of model support.

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