Labs
Why frontier models ship in waves
GPT-5.5 and Mythos Preview were the first mainline models built on a new generation of silicon
// ISSUE-02
April 26, 2026
// The Cover
Dry Powder
The distribution problem
OpenAI is guaranteeing private-equity investors a 17.5 percent annual return to take its models into their portfolio companies — a number higher than most buyout funds actually earn
Read the cover story →
// Labs
01
// State
02
State
Washington preempts states on AI one lawsuit at a time
The administration built a DOJ task force to challenge state AI laws. Friday, it filed its first intervention.
State
Trump administration moves export controls to the API
After a decade of chip controls, Washington has conceded that distillation compensates for the hardware gap
// Dry Powder
03
Dry Powder
The AI trader era begins in finance
The Instacart co-founder's AI-run hedge fund raised $100 million and will never sell the software it runs on
Dry Powder
The AI investor hedges with a ballpark
Thrive Capital, an early backer of OpenAI and Anthropic, now has a permanent-capital vehicle for iconic assets AI cannot replicate
// Atoms
04
// Bits
05
Bits
The design-tool war is about distribution
Three days before Anthropic shipped a Figma competitor, its chief product officer left Figma's board
Bits
Big software wins AI by selling to itself
Salesforce and ServiceNow are booking real AI revenue — but most of it is coming from customers who were never going to leave
// Energy
06
Energy
X-energy trades ratepayers for royalties
The largest nuclear IPO on record went to the one reactor company that refuses to operate one
Energy
The AI boom runs on gas
Hyperscalers have announced over 20 gigawatts of nuclear capacity for AI data centers, and almost none of it arrives before 2030