Top stories today:

1. OpenAI releases first open-weight models since GPT-2 in major shift
2. OpenAI said to be in talks for share sale at $500B valuation
3. Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.1 with broad improvements
4. Google DeepMind unveils Genie 3 “world” model to generate 3D worlds
5. Pfizer Q2 revenue +10% YoY to $14.7B, lifts 2025 outlook on cost cuts

0. Data and calendar

Listen to our AI-generated podcast summarizing today’s newsletter (beware of hallucinations):

1. OpenAI releases first open-weight models since GPT-2 in major shift

gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b are OpenAI’s two open-weight models, scoring 58 and 48, respectively, on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index:

• Both models are Apache 2.0 licensed and available through Hugging Face.

• gpt-oss-20b can even run locally on a consumer laptop with >16GB RAM, and gpt-oss-120b on higher-end machines.

• The models use “chain-of-thought reasoning” approach, which was earlier deployed in the o-series.

• 2019: GPT-2 was launched as OpenAI’s last open-weight model.

OpenAI’s gpt-oss-120b is leading U.S. open-weight models, while Alibaba’s Qwen3 235B is topping globally

• The 120B model is significantly smaller than competing open-weight models, with 116.8B total parameters and 5.1B active parameters.

gpt-oss-120B is also the most intelligence model that can fit on a single H100 GPU in its native precision

At API providers, the median price of the 120B is $0.15/M input and $0.69/M output tokens, ~10× cheaper than o4-mini ($1.1/$4.4)

• $0.08/$0.35 is the 20B model’s median price.

2. OpenAI said to be in talks for share sale at $500B valuation

• Existing investors like Thrive Capital have reportedly sought to buy OpenAI employee shares.

• A secondary sale could help OpenAI retain staff amid talent poaching by Meta and others.

4. Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.1 AI model with broad improvements at same cost

Opus 4.1 has debuted as an upgrade to Opus 4, with better coding performance: