Weekly digest
This week's money story is a comparison. OpenAI told investors revenue grew 18% from the first quarter to $6.7 billion, and the Wall Street Journal reports that some shareholders wanted faster progress against Anthropic, whose annualized run rate hit $65 billion at the end of July. SemiAnalysis puts Anthropic's indirect channels above 40% of ARR in 2Q26.
For developers, the practical item is a cut of over 20% on GPT-5.6 Sol API pricing, which OpenAI says holds for the next 3 months. DeepSeek opened API access to V4-Flash-Vision-Exp, its model that reads text and images, through Chat Completions, Messages and Responses.
OpenAI is dropping API and credit pricing for GPT-5.6 Sol by over 20%, and the discount runs on a clock: the company says it holds for the next 3 months. Sol was the model left out when Luna and Terra got cheaper on July 30.
The lower rate is live on the API and rolling out across eligible plans for ChatGPT Work and Codex credits. Pro, Plus, and Business subscription usage stays as it was.
DeepSeek opened API access to DeepSeek-V4-Flash-Vision-Exp, a multimodal model that reads text and images in the same prompt. The company says it delivers performance close to Opus 4.8 and matches DeepSeek-V4-Flash on text.
Calls go through Chat Completions, Messages and Responses, the endpoint set the V4-Flash line picked up during the 0731 beta. The model sits on the DeepSeek API Platform, nine days after the V4-Pro general availability build went live on August 12, 2026.
Developers can pull images out of OpenAI's API with the background already gone, so a cutout step drops off the pipeline. OpenAI lists product cutouts, logos, stickers and presentation graphics as the supported cases for gpt-image-2.
Anthropic put a /design command into Claude Code, labeled a research preview. It brings an artboard workflow over from Claude Design for building editable UIs.
A feature request on the Claude Code tracker asks for support of AGENTS.md, the shared Markdown file Codex, Amp and Cursor are standardizing around, arguing that CLAUDE.md "feels too specific to Claude Code" when you collaborate with developers who don't use it. Issue #6235 was still listed as open with a last update of July 21, 2026, while a related request, #50778, was closed as a duplicate.
An unconfirmed sighting has Google AI Studio's Build section picking up a Plan mode that creates a plan before making changes. Google hasn't documented it there. Per Google's blog, Plan mode currently ships in Gemini CLI as a read-only mode that restricts the agent to safe exploration tools.
The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI's second-quarter results landed badly with some shareholders who wanted faster progress against Anthropic. The company told investors revenue grew 18% from the first quarter, reaching $6.7 billion in the three months ended in June.
Losses deepened over the same stretch. OpenAI's operating margin sank further into the red, people familiar with the matter said, pushing it away from profitability ahead of a much-anticipated IPO. Anthropic's annualized run rate hit $65 billion at the end of July, a number Bloomberg first reported and CNBC confirmed.
Anthropic crossed 40% of ARR from indirect channels in 2Q26, per SemiAnalysis, and the mix shift matters because indirect revenue isn't monetized the same way direct is. The channels named are Bedrock, Foundry and Gemini Agent Enterprise, while API and B2B made up the vast majority of Net New ARR dollars at the labs.
On the partner side, Anthropic has put $100 million into the Claude Partner Network.
Free and Go users in 31 European countries will start seeing ads in ChatGPT next week, OpenAI says, extending the format that reached those same plans this month. The ads run as standalone widgets below the answer, and the paid tiers above Go carry none.
Advertisers in the region are also expected to get access to the Ads platform. Digiday notes the European launch lands at the six month mark for OpenAI's ads business, which started as a U.S. pilot in February.
German publisher Carlsen has taken OpenAI to court over its children's book "NEINhorn", per heise, which describes the claim as rights-infringing copies of the work. The suit was filed on August 19 and went public a day later, with FAZ and BR24 covering it on August 20. Round Hill Music filed its own copyright suits against Anthropic and Suno over training data.
