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Today:

• Anthropic Launches Claude Skills for Custom AI Workflows

• Musk’s xAI Plans $20B Deal to Build Colossus 2 with Nvidia Chips

• Spotify Teams with Music Giants to Build Artist-First AI Tools

• Claude Now Connects with Microsoft 365 for Smarter Workflows

• Google’s DeepSomatic AI Pinpoints Cancer-Causing Mutations

Anthropic Launches Claude Skills for Custom AI Workflows

Anthropic has launched Claude Skills, custom tools that boost Claude’s performance for specialized tasks like Excel and branding. These skills are efficient, portable, and developer-friendly. Users can build, share, and manage skills across Claude apps, Claude Code, and API for tailored productivity.

KEY POINTS

• What are Claude Skills:
  Skills are folders containing task-specific instructions and scripts. Claude loads only what's needed, improving performance on specialized tasks.

• Where Skills Work:
  Skills are available across Claude apps, Claude Code, and the API. They’re composable, portable, and include code execution for precise results.

• Developer Integration:
  Developers can create, manage, and version Skills using the Claude Console and API endpoints, enabling secure, customized workflows.

Why it matters

Claude Skills make the AI smarter and more helpful for real work. Instead of giving general answers, it can now follow your exact rules or brand style. You can even teach it how your team works. This saves time and makes Claude better for business.

Musk’s xAI Plans $20B Deal to Build Colossus 2 with Nvidia Chips

Elon Musk’s xAI is arranging a $20 billion lease-to-own deal for Nvidia chips to build its next data center, Colossus 2. Backed by Valor Equity and possibly Nvidia itself, this move signals xAI’s ambition to control its own infrastructure instead of relying on cloud partners.

KEY POINTS

• Direct Data Center Ownership:
  xAI plans to own its infrastructure, unlike rivals OpenAI and Anthropic who depend on cloud providers.

• Massive Financing Plan:
  Valor Equity is assembling $7.5B in equity and $12.5B in debt via a special-purpose vehicle to fund the chip purchase.

• Nvidia’s Stake:
  Nvidia may contribute up to $2B in equity, showing confidence in xAI’s direction and deepening its AI influence.

Why it matters

This deal shows how serious Musk is about controlling xAI’s future. Instead of renting power from others, he wants to own the engine behind his AI. It also highlights how Nvidia is becoming essential to AI progress—and how expensive that progress is getting.

Spotify Teams with Music Giants to Build Artist-First AI Tools

Spotify is teaming up with major music labels to develop AI tools that support, not replace, human artists. These “artist-first” tools aim to protect copyrights, offer fair pay, and deepen fan connections, while giving artists control over how AI interacts with their music.

KEY POINTS

• New AI Collaboration:
  Spotify is partnering with Sony, Universal, Warner, Merlin, and Believe to build responsible AI music products that prioritize artist rights and creativity.

• Artist-First Principles:
  Tools will require upfront licensing, give artists control over participation, ensure fair compensation, and focus on enhancing—not replacing—human creativity.

• Protecting Copyrights:
  Spotify firmly opposes abolishing copyright, stressing its importance in protecting musicians and shaping a fair AI-driven future for the industry.

Why it matters

Music is deeply human. As AI grows, artists worry it might steal their work or fame. Spotify’s move shows a new path—where AI helps artists shine instead of replacing them. This deal sets strong rules to protect music’s soul while still embracing new tech.

🧠RESEARCH

UniMoE-Audio: Unified Speech and Music Generation with Dynamic-Capacity MoE

UniMoE-Audio is a new model that can generate both speech and music using a flexible expert system. It avoids conflicts between tasks and handles uneven data by training in three smart stages. This leads to top performance and smooth blending between music and speech creation—advancing truly unified audio generation.

Scaling Language-Centric Omnimodal Representation Learning

LCO-Emb is a new model that improves how AI understands and links different types of data—like images, text, and documents—using language as the central bridge. By building on a model’s writing ability, it boosts its understanding skills too. Tests show it outperforms others in connecting and retrieving data across formats.

Attention Illuminates LLM Reasoning: The Preplan-and-Anchor Rhythm Enables Fine-Grained Policy Optimization

This paper uncovers how large language models (LLMs) plan and reason using attention patterns. By identifying key “preplan” and “anchor” tokens, the authors develop smarter reinforcement learning strategies that focus on important steps—not all equally. This targeted training improves LLM reasoning and makes optimization more precise and understandable.

🛠️TOP TOOLS

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Cramly AI – AI Writing Assistant (Education) - AI writing and study assistant positioned for high school and college coursework.

📲SOCIAL MEDIA

🗞️MORE NEWS

• Claude now connects with Microsoft 365, allowing users to search across emails, files, and chats. It brings company-wide insights into one place, helping teams make faster, better-informed decisions with less manual effort.

• Google’s DeepSomatic uses AI to accurately detect cancer-causing mutations in tumor DNA. It works across major sequencing platforms, identifies both common and rare variants, and helps tailor treatments by revealing what’s driving tumor growth.

• Microsoft is transforming all Windows 11 PCs into AI-powered machines. With voice-activated Copilot, visual support, and agentic actions, users can interact naturally, automate tasks, and boost productivity—making AI feel like a built-in assistant.

• AI startup Poolside and CoreWeave are building a massive data center in West Texas powered by local natural gas. Named “Horizon,” it promises two gigawatts of compute and aims to ease the AI chip shortage.

• OpenAI's massive AI datacenter in Abu Dhabi is under active construction. New photos reveal building foundations for a site planned to reach 16 gigawatts. The first phase, 200 megawatts, is on track for 2026.

• Meta is pushing for open-source hardware to power the next generation of AI data centers. At the OCP Summit, it unveiled new open designs for racks, networking, and sustainability, aiming to scale AI efficiently and responsibly.

• Microsoft has launched Vuln.AI, an AI-driven system that speeds up vulnerability detection and response across its massive global network. It cuts triage time by over 50%, boosts accuracy, and reduces risk at scale.