Frontier technology news: AI, crypto and quantum
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Grok 4.7 (xAI): the cheap seat at the frontier
Grok 4.7 is xAI's current flagship, released 21 September 2026 with a 500,000-token context window at $2 and $6 per million tokens. It beats Grok 4.6 on all seven of xAI's own benchmarks and takes the best score on two of them.
What we know about DeepSeek V4.1 Pro
DeepSeek's V4.1 research describes specialist teachers, AI teamwork and training on workplace failures. Together, they suggest how the next Pro could handle bigger projects.
Google's Gemini broke into three real companies during a safety test
Google confirmed on 18 September 2026 that a Gemini model guessed a password and used credentials found in public repositories to reach the systems of three real companies during a cyber evaluation run by Irregular in May.
Model safeguards on security requests: what each lab puts in front of the model
What each frontier lab puts between a security request and its model in 2026: Anthropic's typed refusals with a fallback to Opus 4.8 and published block rates, OpenAI's two Daybreak tiers, Google's access programmes, and the licences binding the open-weight models, read from the labs' own documents.
Google Big Sleep: the agent finder, 26 attributed entries and the SQLite origin
Google Big Sleep is the vulnerability agent built by Google DeepMind and Project Zero, announced 1 November 2024 with a stack buffer underflow in SQLite. Eighteen CVE records name it in their credits and seven more carry its credit in Apple's and Google's advisories, each checked at the record in September 2026.
RelateAnything: the 53M model that says how objects in a photo relate
RelateAnything scores how every pair of objects in an image relates, against a list of relation words you hand it at inference. It reads pixels and box coordinates only, never object class labels, at 20 milliseconds a frame.
North Korean hackers used fake job offers to infect 30,000 computers and steal crypto
Seven agencies across Japan, the United States, Australia and Germany have named WaterPlum, the group running fake developer job interviews, and counted 30,000 infected PCs and ¥1.7bn in stolen crypto.
Jev (TypeSafe): a model that answers typed questions with probabilities
TypeSafe opened early access to Jev on 15 September 2026, the first of what it calls System One models. It takes a block of state plus typed questions and returns a choice, a boolean or a score, each with a calibrated probability, on OpenRouter's decisions route at $0.042 per million input tokens.
Circle sold $222m of ARC to institutions in May, four months before Arc opened
Circle raised $222 million selling ARC at a $3 billion network valuation on 12 May 2026, with a16z crypto leading and BlackRock, Apollo and Intercontinental Exchange among the buyers. Arc opened to the public four months later, on 16 September.
DOE opens a $215m quantum competition with $2.5m appropriated
The Energy Department opened its Quantum Genesis Q Competition on 17 September 2026. It plans up to $215 million for a fault-tolerant machine of at least 100 logical qubits by 2028. DOE's own announcement says $2.5 million of that is Fiscal Year 2026 money.
The SEC and CFTC will write crypto rules now the CLARITY Act has stalled
The Senate rejected cloture on the CLARITY Act 49 to 50 on 15 September 2026. Within a day the SEC chairman said the agency would act with or without legislation, and the CFTC chairman had already said the same thing three weeks earlier.
The FCA's crypto gateway opens on 30 September, and it shuts eight months before the rules bite
The FCA published PS26/18, its final cryptoasset perimeter guidance, on 16 September 2026. Applications open on 30 September and close on 28 February 2027, with the regime commencing 25 October 2027.
Arc opened to the public today, and it has been producing blocks since May
Circle opened its Arc blockchain to the public on 16 September 2026. The network had already been running privately since May, and every transaction fee on it is paid in USDC rather than a separate crypto token.
The CLARITY Act fell eleven votes short, and every yea was Republican
The Senate rejected cloture on H.R. 3633 by 49 to 50 on 15 September 2026. All 49 yeas were Republican, four Republicans voted nay, and Senator Tillis entered a motion to reconsider one minute later.
DOJ seeks $61m over Iranian oil proceeds routed through Binance accounts
A 14 September DOJ complaint targets $61m in USDT and alleges Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale used Binance accounts to move Iranian oil proceeds.
Revolut disclosed customer identity and Bitcoin records after a fraudulent government request
Revolut's customer notice describes a fraudulent request from a mailbox inside a government domain, with identity documents and transaction records potentially disclosed.
Blockstream rejects Liquid ransom as about 598.5 bitcoin remain outstanding
Blockstream has refused a ransom after 3,400 BTC were returned. The transaction trail links the message wallet to an earlier withdrawal and preserves a smaller tracing lead.
IonQ opens Superion 256 orders and estimates a 26-day quantum attack on Bitcoin signatures
Superion 256 deliveries are targeted for 2027. A separate IonQ study models a secp256k1 attack using 19,397 physical qubits with an estimated 63% success probability per attempt.
Diamond chips, faster control and Helix error correction advance three quantum approaches
Fujitsu's diamond-spin prototype, Chalmers' theoretical Floquet method and Quantinuum's Helix experiments address hardware connections, control speed and error correction.
Trezor phishing alert passed email checks as YFarmX examines the takedown
Brevo confirms access to 120 accounts, closed at 09:30 UTC on 10 September. YFarmX’s later checks found the shared public DKIM key still published.
U.S. quantum awards pair funding for D-Wave, Rigetti and Quantinuum with equity stakes
D-Wave, Rigetti and Quantinuum have finalised CHIPS awards totalling up to $300 million under a programme requiring minority government equity stakes.
Liquid gets 3,400 BTC back as the actor retains about $47m
The 3,400 BTC return is confirmed on Bitcoin. About 598.5 BTC remains with the actor, while Liquid's bridge incident is still active.
Quantinuum signed a non-binding MOU with Aramco, which already runs a rival's quantum computer
Quantinuum announced a memorandum of understanding with Aramco signed in Riyadh on 31 August. Read in full, it commits to technical onboarding, knowledge exchange and benchmarking. Aramco already has a rival's quantum computer installed and running.
QC Ware and IonQ report chemical accuracy on eight qubits, with no paper and no named benchmark
QC Ware said on 1 September 2026 that a hybrid workflow on IonQ's Forte computer got within 0.5 kcal/mol of classical benchmarks for an enzyme active site. The quantum part was eight qubits, and the benchmark it was measured against is not named.
Pasqal listed with $360m and 90.57% of the SPAC's public shareholders took their money out
Pasqal began trading as PSQL on 28 August and closed its first session at $19.11. Shareholders redeemed 26,039,602 of 28,750,000 SPAC shares, and $250m of the cash at closing came from convertible bonds sold at a 20% discount.
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YFarmX BriefingsThe desk, out loudFive voices taking the day's reporting further than the page allows.
- Xiaomi opens MiMo Desktop beta for editable work and computer control
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- Hermes joins Omarchy's desktop and terminal workflow
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ExplainedThe models, assets and machines behind the news, across all three desks.
- Large Language ModelsThe models that read, reason and write, from the frontier labs to the open-weight field.62
- Networks & CoinsThe blockchains and the coins that run on them, from Bitcoin to the top 50 by size.50
- Hardware & CompaniesThe labs and companies building the machines, from IBM to the pure plays.13
- Video GenerationText and image to video models, from the safe Western defaults to the leaderboard leaders.21
- DeFi & InfrastructureThe exchanges with no company behind them, and the rails that keep fees down.6
- Policy & InvestingThe national programmes and the listed stocks: where the public money is going.6
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