Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise |
|
|
|
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Anthropic and OpenAI have spent 2026 trading the frontier crown back and forth. Nobody had a third seat at that table reserved for an open-source lab from Beijing. |
Moonshot AI’s latest release is a DeepSeek-type moment for 2026, with its soon-to-be open-weight Kimi K3 pulling within a few benchmark points of Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol — and even beating both on certain tasks, all at a fraction of frontier prices. |
Reminder: Our next live workshop is today at 2 PM EST! Join University Educator Nate Grehek to walk through how to get polished knowledge work done with OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Work and 5.6 models. RSVP here. |
|
|
In today’s AI rundown: |
Open-source Kimi K3 closes the frontier gap Rowan’s Corner: The most important AI skill to learn Use OpenAI's GPT-Live to plan any trip fast Google’s AI upgrade delayed over performance 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MOONSHOT AI |
|
 |
Image source: Moonshot AI |
|
The Rundown: Chinese lab Moonshot AI just released Kimi K3, an open-weights model that sets new highs for both Chinese and open-source models and is competitive with frontier ones like Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol at far lower prices. |
The details: |
K3 features a 1M context window and beats both Fable and Sol on benchmarks for web research, spreadsheet work, frontend design, and long coding. The model also lands at a 57 on AA’s Intelligence Index, sitting behind just Fable (60) and Sol (59) and jumping double-digit spots from the previous K2.6. In one demo, K3 worked solo for 48 hours to design and verify a tiny chip that runs a mini version of itself, hitting 8,700 tokens a second in simulation. K3’s pricing matches Claude 5 Sonnet at $3/$15 per million tokens, with Moonshot saying the model’s weights will be published by July 27.
|
Why it matters: Did Moonshot just score 2026’s DeepSeek moment? Pulling right up on Fable and Sol’s frontier tail is no small feat, especially for a soon-to-be open-weights model and at this price point. Dario Amodei’s “6-12 months behind" estimation for both China and open source suddenly looks more like just a single release cycle. |
|
|
|
TOGETHER WITH UNWRAP |
|
|
|
The Rundown: When WHOOP launched their most ambitious product yet, they didn't just want faster ticket resolution; they wanted to catch issues before they became tickets at all. |
With Unwrap’s AI customer intelligence, that's exactly what happened: |
50% faster root cause investigation on support tickets 4X drop in launch-day ticket spikes vs. their previous launch 24+ hours average saved getting ticket volumes back to baseline
|
As a rundown subscriber, you can try Unwrap for free and join teams like WHOOP, Perplexity, Stripe, and DoorDash using it at scale. |
|
|
|
ROWAN’S CORNER |
|
 |
Photo credit: Jamal Toppin for Forbes |
|
Rowan: I did a keynote at the Forbes Under 30 Summit on the most important skill to learn right now. A decade ago, it was arguably code. Today, I believe it's what I call AI intuition: knowing when to use AI, and when not to. |
Let me explain… |
When we started The Rundown, there were hundreds of AI newsletters, and almost all of them let AI write their content. It made sense: an AI newsletter, written by AI. We did the opposite. We hired expert journalists and used AI for research, fact-checking, and structure, but never for the human part. Readers (like you!) still send me messages saying they can feel the difference. |
That was an AI intuition call. AI can already 10x my output in some areas, so I push it to its absolute limits there. But I still beat it at judgment, jokes, and knowing what matters to this audience, so that's the part I never hand over. |
Nearly every one of those AI-written newsletters is gone. And I think the next wave of successful companies and individuals follows the same pattern: not people brute-forcing everything with AI, but builders who know exactly which parts must stay human. The taste, the judgment, the personality. That's what people crave, not just in media, but in anything you build. |
When everybody is using AI for everything, AI intuition is your moat. |
|
|
|
AI TRAINING |
|
|
|
The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to use GPT-Live to plan a full weekend trip by talking it through. Interrupt and change direction while it researches, then turn the conversation into a plan you can use. |
Step-by-step: |
GPT Voice is usually used in the ChatGPT mobile app. On desktop, open ChatGPT.com in your browser—not the desktop app—then start a Voice chat Let GPT-Live research in the background. Tell it the outcome first: “Plan a full [CITY] itinerary for [DATES]. Decide the hotels, restaurants, and things to do” Interrupt as the plan takes shape. Add a longer work block, reduce the budget, or ask for a weather backup. GPT-Live can keep researching as you direct it Use web research to verify pricing and availability. Then, close Voice and ask ChatGPT to give the final research as a memo that could be saved and shared
|
Pro tip: To use voice AI more often, set your iPhone Action Button to open a new GPT-Live thread. |
Get resources, prompts, and full step-by-step video guide here. |
|
|
|
PRESENTED BY SLACK |
|
|
|
The Rundown: Slack is the agentic work OS — the open platform where developers build AI-native apps, automate workflows, and deploy agents directly where teams work. Whether you're building internal tools or enterprise-grade AI integrations, Slack gives you the APIs, infrastructure, and context to ship faster. |
In this guide, you’ll discover: |
How to build and deploy AI agents inside Slack APIs and tools to connect any system to Slack's context layer Real examples of teams shipping AI-native apps in production
|
Download the free guide. |
|
|
|
GOOGLE |
|
 |
Image source: Images 2.0 / The Rundown |
|
The Rundown: Google’s long-awaited Gemini 3.5 Pro is facing more delays, according to a report from Bloomberg — with the tech giant currently lagging significantly behind frontier rivals and even getting surpassed by Meta, SpaceXAI, and top Chinese models. |
The details: |
At I/O in May, Google told attendees to expect 3.5 Pro in June, then reportedly changed its training data after coding results fell short. Google has yet to launch a competitive new model since May’s 3.5 Flash, with its last ‘Pro’ tier model dating back to February and several generations behind. Current and ex-employees told Bloomberg that internal clashes slow releases, with Android, DeepMind, and Cloud teams each building their own coding tools. Google has also faced a series of employee departures to OAI and Anthropic, including Noam Shazeer, John Jumper, and other key Gemini staff.
|
Why it matters: It’s been a strange year for Google, which, not too long ago, was considered one of the big three in frontier AI alongside Anthropic and OpenAI. Delaying is better than releasing a weak model, but the competition is only speeding up at the same time. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
🌝 Kimi K3 - Moonshot AI’s powerful new open-source model 📬 Copilot - Beehiiv's AI agent for newsletter analytics, segments, campaigns 🎥 Lucy 2.5 - Decart's new live AI model that edits video mid-stream 🚀 Inkling - Thinking Machine’s open-weight multimodal model
|
|
|
|
|
Google rebranded NotebookLM as Gemini Notebook, pairing the name change with a new cloud computer tool to let the platform run code for better data analysis. |
Apple Intelligence has reportedly been registered and approved for use on iPhones in China, though its Siri AI assistant will still require additional regulatory steps. |
Roblox unveiled Build, a new AI tab coming to its mobile app that generates playable games directly from text prompts. |
DoorDash released dd-cli, a new beta tool that lets users find deals, search restaurants, and place orders on the platform via an AI agent. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier. |
Today’s workflow comes from reader Steve C. in Chicago, IL: |
“My use case supports my wife's work as a patient advocate. I've developed a comprehensive patient-health-focused application that is AI-driven in several different aspects: AI interprets conversation transcripts between patients, advocates, and doctors and loads a database based on those conversations, and the advocate or the patient can output a comprehensive health history. |
The impact can be seen in more efficient doctor's appointments and better health outcomes. My wife has seen great success, and her patients and their families feel well informed and confident about how health is being managed.” |
How do you use AI? Tell us here. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
That's it for today!Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. |
|
|
See you soon, |
Rowan, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown |
|
|
|
|
|
|
