NerdNews

OpenAI has launched new features, including Space, a shared workspace, and Pages, a word processor, to compete with Microsoft's office software suite. These features allow for human and agent collaboration, and include tools like collaborative slides. This move marks a significant expansion of OpenAI's capabilities into the workplace software market.

Google has launched Gemini 4 Argon, a new AI model that can handle tasks like coding, research, and writing, with a particular focus on cybersecurity. The model has been trained to autonomously find, validate, and patch critical software vulnerabilities and is being rolled out to a select group of cyber partners through Google's Fairwind Program.

Google has announced Gemini 4 Argon, a new AI model that offers industry-leading performance in coding, knowledge work, and cybersecurity. The model is currently in limited testing and will be available to enterprise and consumer customers in the future. Gemini 4 Argon has already been used by Google engineers to save 300 TiB of memory and migrate codebases to Rust.

OpenAI has delayed its IPO plans due to concerns over AI safety, seeking $30 billion in private funding instead. The company's CEO, Sam Altman, stated that safety is the top priority, and the company will not go public until it can make confident safety decisions. This decision comes amid intense scrutiny over OpenAI's safety practices and performance, including high-profile hacking incidents and warnings from AI researchers about the risks of runaway AI.

OpenAI and Meta are developing personal AI hardware devices, focusing on usefulness and cuteness. OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse are AI agents that may be integrated into physical devices, with Meta aiming to launch before the holiday season and OpenAI planning to ship no earlier than February 2027.

DoorDash has launched a text-to-order AI agent that allows users to place orders through Apple Messages. The agent can understand prompts like 'order my usual' and provide local recommendations with food photos. This move aims to give DoorDash an edge over rivals Uber Eats and Grubhub.

Instagram introduced an AI video assistant tool for creators, providing personalized feedback and analytics-driven insights to help them improve their content. The tool is part of Instagram's Edits app and is available with limited usage, with more features unlockable through a Meta One subscription.

Patrick Debois discusses managing context like code, including generating, evaluating, distributing, and observing it, to reliably scale AI coding agents and maintain control over non-deterministic outputs.

Google's DeepMind team has developed a system to watermark AI-designed proteins, allowing for identification of trusted sources and enhancing biosecurity. The system, called SynthIDBio, integrates with popular AI protein design tools like ProteinMPNN, and can detect watermarks in protein sequences without compromising their function.

Maxon's latest update brings AI assistants to its 3D modelling and animation software, allowing artists to use ChatGPT and Claude to speed up tasks and workflows. The update includes a built-in Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that enables artists to direct AI assistants within Cinema 4D workflows, eliminating procedural and repetitive manual processes.

OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse are vying to be users' personal AI agents, offering proactive help with tasks and autonomous decision-making. Dots is currently available for OpenAI's Pro plan subscribers, while Muse is free to use. Both agents aim to simplify users' lives by automating tasks, but raise concerns about data privacy and potential risks.

ElevenLabs, a voice AI startup, has doubled its valuation to $22 billion after a $300 million tender offer, allowing employees to cash out a portion of their vested equity. This move is part of a growing trend among fast-growing AI startups to use employee liquidity as a retention tool.

Restate, a Berlin-based startup, has secured $20 million in Series A funding to provide durable workflow infrastructure, which is crucial for managing AI agent processes. The company's execution engine ensures resilience to crashes and network interruptions, making it a perfect match for the agentic era. With this funding, Restate aims to take on Temporal, a heavyweight in the durable infrastructure space, and expand its office in the San Francisco Bay Area.

BAG Ventures, founded by two Google alumni, has closed an $11.3 million fund to back early-stage AI startups. The firm invests in areas like AI infrastructure, compute, and security, and looks for teams with a clear path to monetization and proprietary data that can't be scraped.

DoorDash is launching its drone delivery program, DoorDash Air, in northern California with partners like Chipotle and Popeyes. The drones have six propellers and can deliver orders in under five minutes on average. The company is also introducing new features like texting orders and expanding its marketplace to include clothing and beauty items from retailers like Macy's and Anthropologie.

DoorDash started its drone delivery business by focusing on ground infrastructure, including loading systems and packaging, before developing the autonomous drone. The company's systems-first strategy aligns with its strengths in user data and logistics. DoorDash Air will use smart routing to narrow down which orders make sense to send by air.

Truffle Security found 543,699 unique credentials exposed in public GitHub repositories, with 36.8% exposed after GitHub's Push Protection was enabled. The median time a credential remained publicly accessible was 784 days.

Cursor's Continuity architecture uses an S3-backed write-ahead log to scale Git storage, achieving over 300 pushes per second and linear read scaling with up to 100 replicas. This approach changes the consistency model from replica coordination to durable object storage, allowing for more efficient scaling and reduced latency.

Cloudflare plans to issue quantum-safe TLS certificates using Merkle Tree Certificates, which can withstand attacks from quantum computers. This move is part of a major overhaul of the web public key infrastructure to make website encryption and authentication safe for the post-quantum age.

Gizmodo reviews the best gadgets of September 2026, including new releases from Apple, Sonos, and Valve. Highlights include the iPhone 18 Pro, M6 Mac mini, Sonos Beam Ultra, and Steam Frame VR headset.