Solana staking protocol Fragmetric completes $7 million seed round

AI image generation platform Midjourney has announced the acquisition of astrology app Co-Star, and appointed Banu Guler, CEO of Co-Star, as Midjourney’s Chief Design Officer. Guler will lead the formation of a cross-functional team spanning design, product and front-end to drive the development of Midjourney’s product initiatives. Midjourney noted that Co-Star will continue operating and be fully managed by Guler. The acquisition marks Midjourney’s further expansion of its product and design capabilities.

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga founder Mark Pincus are backing a new AI lab called Prentis. The firm is seeking $100 million in funding, betting that AI’s key future use cases will shift from code generation to large-scale automation of everyday computer tasks. Prentis argues that AI agents will be used far more for repetitive work such as auto-filling expense reports, scheduling calendar meetings, organizing files, and more, rather than solely serving software development. Its core thesis is that general office workflows generate far more interactions than developer workflows, meaning low-profile yet high-frequency automation tasks could become AI agents’ primary market. Meanwhile, AI coding agent firm Cognition recently acquired Poke to enhance the interactivity and personalization of its AI coding assistant Devin, signaling the industry remains focused on the code generation space. In contrast, Prentis is betting on the broader desktop automation segment. Recently, Anthropic launched Opus 5, emphasizing lower costs and a more open tool usage experience; Nvidia and Mistral are pushing for open-weight model development in the U.S., arguing that open models help advance real-world AI automation applications. Market observers believe that as AI agent competition enters its next phase, low-profile agents capable of reliably completing everyday repetitive tasks could gain a larger user base than code generation tools.

NVIDIA (NVDA.O) announced it will invest $1 billion in South Korean internet and cloud service provider Naver to support its under-construction AI data center project in the country. The tech giant noted the funding will expand Naver’s data center scale by more than twofold. The project is jointly developed by Naver and U.S. private equity firm Brookfield Group, and will be fully equipped with NVIDIA AI computing hardware. Separately, NVIDIA has partnered with SK Group to build an AI data center cluster in South Korea with total computing power exceeding 2 gigawatts—an electricity load roughly sufficient to meet the needs of 1.5 million households. NVIDIA revealed that the first AI computing power facility, to be constructed by SK Telecom, will go into operation next year. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated: “South Korea is entering a golden period of development. Its semiconductor and industrial sectors are booming, and the country has the full capability to build AI infrastructure for the global market.”

Anthropic announced the launch of its Opus 5 AI model, which delivers performance nearly matching that of the cutting-edge Fable 5 while costing only half as much.

Renowned investor Duan Yongping stated yesterday in response to a community user's question that he has started selling put options on SpaceX. This is his typical "potential acquisition" strategy. According to the live trading records of the SpaceX put options Duan shared, his quoted price was around 23.20, with actual execution at 23.26 (1,000 contracts), earning him a premium of approximately $2.32 million. Calculated over a 5-month term, the yield is roughly 25.35%, with an annualized return of about 60%. He noted, "I want to support Elon Musk's dream."

According to AXIOS: European diplomats say the U.S. and the U.K. are discussing holding a high-level meeting in London next week, with the meeting focusing on a potential plan to establish an international coalition to protect maritime shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.