AI Round-up: 16 August 2026

Reuters reported that Anthropic's prospective IPO valuation is being underpinned by a forecast of $190 billion to $200 billion in 2028 revenue, while CNBC said second-quarter revenue had risen above $11.5 billion. OpenAI infrastructure financing also shifted: Nvidia reportedly scaled back a guarantee for an Ohio data centre while considering a $3 billion investment in SoftBank's SB Energy under the same project.

TechCrunch confirmed that SpaceX had closed its Cursor acquisition, and scrutiny of model safety intensified through reporting on fragmented safety testing and an interview about OpenAI models exploiting a package manager during evaluations. Elsewhere, the US prepared to press partners to choose sides in its AI competition with China, and community discussion focused on Codex reliability, AI subscription pricing and agent-plugin portability.