Goldman Sachs named CoStar Group (CSGP) the top pick in its “AI Productivity Beneficiaries” basket, estimating 37% of its wage bill is exposed to AI automation and that labor costs equal 31% of sales.
Aug 18, 2026 ·
Yahoo Finance
Agentic memory improved task completion in a model-dependent way: gpt-oss-120b gained +16.1 percentage points (TGC) with curated retrieval versus +5% more tokens, while DeepSeek-V3.2 gained +9.5pp (TGC) from the full guideline set and GLM-5 showed 0.0pp gain (TGC and SGC) from any memory configuration.
Aug 18, 2026 ·Hugging Face
OpenAI said it will tighten safeguards for model development by adding stronger monitoring, alignment and security controls and increasing network isolation so a single workload compromise won’t by itself enable unauthorized internet or internal-network access.
Aug 18, 2026 ·
TechCrunch
Baidu’s Q2 earnings per share fell to RMB7.22 versus an analyst estimate of RMB9.84, while revenue slipped 4% year over year to RMB31.33 billion as advertising weakness outweighed AI growth.
Aug 18, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Etched raised $700 million at a $21 billion valuation, doubling its valuation from $10.3 billion just a month after a July Series C.
Aug 18, 2026 ·TechCrunch
Crusoe is in IPO talks with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan, according to Axios.
Aug 18, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Quantexa’s CEO says the company is exploring a multibillion-dollar IPO that could be listed in the UK, the US, or both, with no decision on timing and the option to remain privately held.
Aug 18, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Amazon says its conversational shopping assistant (Alexa for Shopping, formerly Rufus) was used by more than 300 million customers last year and drove about $12 billion in additional annualized sales, with shoppers about 60% more likely to complete a purchase.
Aug 18, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Omarchy Quattro pre-wires “AI coding agent” command-line tooling as lazy-loaded launchers in ~/.local/bin/ and includes AI features like crash handling via systemd-coredump monitoring and an agent workflow for sandboxes, diagnostics, and Hyprland/desktop customization.
Aug 18, 2026 ·
ZDNet
Parnassus Investments CIO Todd Ahlsten warned that the enterprise “seat license model” for Salesforce (CRM) and ServiceNow (NOW) is under pressure because AI agents can increase output without adding employees, which could weaken the link between customer headcount growth and software revenue.
Aug 18, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Researchers demonstrated that a major US retailer’s in-app AI shopping assistant could be manipulated via indirect prompt injection to run code and reveal internal system details, including directory listings and environment variables, after protections were bypassed through the app’s less-protected search field.
Aug 18, 2026 ·
CNET
Warp introduced Warp Factories, an infrastructure layer meant to let companies deploy and operate “AI software factories” that automate agentic steps across triage, specification, implementation, review, and verification.
Aug 18, 2026 ·TechCrunch
OpenAI launched ChatGPT for Teens with default under-18 safety protections plus a Study Mode that provides guiding questions and step-by-step support, while homework reminders and prompts push users toward Study Mode when they appear to be trying to cheat.
Aug 18, 2026 ·TechCrunch
Legence Corp. (LGN) contributed 1.24% to Baron Small Cap Fund’s Q2 2026 performance after its shares rose on “strong underlying business momentum” and “continued enthusiasm around AI and data center construction.”
Aug 18, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Perplexity gained 5.9 million India app downloads in July 2025 after giving away Perplexity Pro to Airtel customers, then saw monthly active users peak at 22 million in October and remain about 14 million in July—while its India in-app/subscription revenue rose about 60% from the Airtel offer period to February–mid-August.
Aug 18, 2026 ·TechCrunch
Anthropic says Claude text watermarking will work by changing the word-selection process so that specific, key-dependent patterns can be checked to assign a probability the text was generated by Claude.
Aug 18, 2026 ·ZDNet
Zcash (ZEC) was trading near $511 on Aug. 18, about 5% higher on the day, and holding above its major moving averages after bouncing from a June 5 selloff that drove the token from roughly $630 to near $310 (briefly as low as ~$250).
Aug 18, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson says CoreWeave (CRWV) still has room to run as AI data center pricing rises and returns on AI infrastructure investments remain attractive, implying AI capacity demand continues to outstrip supply.
Aug 18, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Pershing Square Holdings said Meta Platforms’ $1.45 trillion market value and its 18-times forward earnings multiple look “highly discounted” versus its view of 20%+ earnings growth over the next few years.
Aug 18, 2026 ·Yahoo Finance
Researchers found an undocumented `autorun=1` URL parameter for Copilot that can auto-execute an injected prompt in a user’s authenticated session without a user gesture, enabling data exfiltration.
Aug 18, 2026 ·Ars Technica
