#merck
2 digests
2026
- Thinking Machines' 975B Inkling leads a week of open-model momentum and AI security incidentsThinking Machines launched Inkling, a 975B open-weights multimodal model that immediately drew comparisons to closed frontier labs. xAI's Grok CLI sparked a data-privacy backlash after users reported it uploading entire home directories. Eli Lilly acquired psychedelics biotech AtaiBeckley for $2.8B, and CMS signaled a structural overhaul of how it pays for clinical AI.Jul 16, 2026
- OpenAI model cracks an 80-year-old math problem as Lilly's obesity drug hits surgery-level resultsAn OpenAI reasoning model disproved an 80-year-old Erdős conjecture in discrete geometry for under $1,000 in compute, a result mathematicians are calling one of the most significant AI contributions to pure math to date. Eli Lilly's retatrutide, a triple-receptor obesity drug, produced bariatric-surgery-level weight loss in a Phase 3 trial, though dropout rates from side effects were notable. Google shipped Gemini 3.5 Flash to general availability at Google I/O and announced a $100 AI Ultra subscription tier. The acting head of NIH's infectious disease institute stepped down as senators pressed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya on leadership gaps and a proposed 2027 budget cut. Kevin Warsh was confirmed and sworn in as the new Federal Reserve chair this week.May 21, 2026