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Meta’s new personal AI agent, Muse, had more than 500,000 people try it out roughly a week after launch, including more than 250,000 daily active users, according to internal data viewed by The Information. Users have also submitted more than 2 million prompts.

The data indicate there has been strong initial interest since Meta launched Muse on Sept. 8, initially making it available in the U.S. through a standalone app and WhatsApp. The company is positioning Muse around the idea of an AI agent taking “busywork” off users’ plates—such as researching and booking a trip, finding deals, tracking expenses and managing scheduling conflicts.

Muse has climbed to the top spot on Apple’s App Store, with more than 31,000 ratings. The early popularity offers an early indication that Meta’s vision for personalized AI assistants may be starting to resonate with consumers, though it remains to be seen whether that interest will translate into lasting usage and justify the company’s hefty investments in AI.

Muse’s competitors include a startup app called Instinct, which has amassed more than 100,000 users despite limited availability, The Information reported last week. Broader success of such products will ultimately depend on whether large numbers of users are comfortable giving AI agents access to their personal data, accounts and other sensitive information and trusting them to take actions on their behalf.

Other major AI companies also are moving toward more autonomous products. OpenAI has discussed developing a personal AI assistant to compete with Meta’s Muse, The Information previously reported. The ChatGPT maker is also developing features to compete more directly with SpaceX’s recently launched Grok Bot, which helps customers create always-on AI “teammates” to handle routine tasks, manage software, and collaborate in the background.

Anthropic is in early talks to lease up to 1 gigawatt in compute capacity from Stream Data Centers, a developer majority-owned by Apollo Global Management, which could house tensor processing units designed by Broadcom and Google, The Information reported Tuesday. Anthropic could also house other AI chips in the facilities, such as Nvidia’s graphics processing units. Anthropic has also discussed the possibility of Google providing a credit guarantee for the project, the report said.

The agreement with Stream Data Centers, if completed, would represent a significant advance in the AI model maker’s efforts to secure more direct control over the facilities that run and train its AI.

Anthropic depends on cloud providers like Amazon, Google and SpaceX for its compute needs. More data center leases like the one under consideration with Stream could allow it to lower costs. Previously Anthropic has entered such lease arrangements with smaller data center providers such as the former bitcoin miners Hut 8 and TeraWulf.

Hong Kong-listed shares of Z.ai and MiniMax plunged on Wednesday, after The Information reported that China’s internet regulator is probing potential data leaks to Anthropic. Z.ai, also known as Zhipu, dropped 12.4%, MiniMax fell 4% and Alibaba declined 4.4%. The benchmark Hang Seng Index dipped 1%.

The Cyberspace Administration of China is investigating potential breaches of data security regulations, after Anthropic alleged in a detailed report earlier this month that Chinese AI model developers had been rerouting sensitive government and military data to Claude models, in order to extract Claude’s capabilities.

The CAC summoned all seven companies named in the Anthropic report and is zeroing in on DeepSeek and Moonshot, both of which are preparing to go public, The Information reported. The five other companies named by the report were Alibaba, Z.ai, SenseTime, MiniMax and Xiaomi.

Microsoft leaders told sales staff this week that it is authorizing steeper discounts of 30% to 50% on subscriptions of its Copilot AI software for corporate customers who commit to purchase a large number of seats and commit to additional payments based on their usage of certain features, according to a person with direct knowledge of the change.

The discounts will begin as soon as October, the people said, and coincide with Microsoft’s planned launch of its revamped Copilot super app. The new version of Copilot, set to launch as soon as this week, will combine features like AI coding tools and OpenClaw-style AI agent features in a single app, according to a person with knowledge of the plans. Some of the app’s features will cost extra based on how much subscribers use them.

Microsoft is planning the discounts on monthly Copilot subscriptions—which start at $30 per user per month—in hopes of winning more subscribers that will also generate usage-based revenue from the new features, according to the person with knowledge of the plan.

“As the Copilot product rapidly evolves and its business model expands to include both seats and usage, there is strong economic alignment between customer value and our long-term monetization,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. “Our go-to-market strategy reflects both this customer value and our opportunity wherein every seat can also be a driver of usage-based growth.”

The planned discounts build on smaller discounts Microsoft recently began offering. After withholding Copilot discounts from all but its biggest customers, Microsoft in recent months had started giving corporate customers discounts of around 10% cost of Copilot when they committed to purchase at least 2,000 seats, The Information previously reported.

Now Microsoft plans to offer even more generous discounts of roughly 30% per seat for customers with over 1,000 Copilot seats, ramping up to 50% discounts for customers with over 10,000 seats, said the person with knowledge of the change.

OpenAI on Tuesday announced GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, which it describes as cheaper and faster models in the GPT-6 Astra family.

The company said that the new models show significant improvements compared to their predecessors, GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Luna, in areas like professional work, coding, computer use and accuracy.

Additionally, OpenAI said that it had been able to make optimizations in running these models which has allowed them to lower prices for customers; the new models are half of the price of their predecessors. Such price cuts could help to entice customers who are concerned by the costs of AI spending.

OpenAI said that the new models will be rolling out throughout Tuesday in ChatGPT Work and Codex for all Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users, while Free and Go users would be able to access GPT-6 Luna in the ChatGPT desktop app. The company said that the models will not initially be available to users in the “chat” tab in ChatGPT.

CoreWeave said on Tuesday it had completed a $4.2 billion convertible bond offering, an upsized amount versus what the AI cloud provider initially targeted last week.

The company had said last Thursday that it was looking to raise $3 billion in the offering, and said it had priced $3.7 billion of the debt, due in 2033 and carrying a coupon of 2.875%, on Friday. CoreWeave’s total offering also included $500 million from initial purchasers exercising their option to buy additional notes.

CoreWeave had previously closed a $4 billion convertible senior note offering in April due in 2032, carrying a 1.75% coupon. Investors have been approaching AI-related debt with more caution amid high issuance and a wave of AI buildout concerns, while borrowing costs have continued to rise.

Anthropic announced the release of its newest model, Claude Opus 5.5, saying it performs as well or better than Anthropic’s previous most powerful models, Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, in domains including coding, reasoning, business workflows, and safety. At the same time, it will cost 40% less to run, according to the announcement on Tuesday.

The release is the first from Anthropic since its chief executive, Dario Amodei, led an industry-wide call earlier this month to slow the development of frontier AI to prioritize safety. Anthropic says Opus 5.5 performed the best of any of its recent models on an automated suite of evaluations testing for malicious or overeager actions and deceptiveness.

The cheaper option comes as Anthropic faces stiff competition and rising costs weigh increasingly heavily on their enterprise customers. OpenAI, facing similar pressures, released cheaper ChatGPT-6 models on Tuesday at half the price of their ChatGPT-5.6 counterparts.

OpenAI and Grab, a Singapore-based transport and food delivery company, on Wednesday launched a program to train Grab’s drivers, merchants and delivery riders to use ChatGPT for work.

The program covers Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines and aims to train around 30,000 people over the next two years. Participants will get free access to three months of ChatGPT Plus and learn how to use it for practical skills.

In Singapore, the first market where the program will be implemented, training workshops will focus on helping aspiring entrepreneurs to use ChatGPT to create and execute business plans. Existing business operators will learn to use the tool for analyzing sales, financials and market opportunities.

The program comes as OpenAI doubles down on deploying its products to enterprises outside of the U.S. OpenAI in May said it would make Singapore one of its hubs for forward deployed engineers – responsible for integrating AI products within businesses – and plans to hire for over 200 technical roles.

Binance has made a $100 million strategic equity investment in Circle, as the two companies enter a new, five-year agreement to promote Circle’s stablecoins USDC on the Binance platform.

Circle will also pay a monthly fee to Binance, based on a percentage of the amount of USDC held through Circle’s wallet infrastructure service, according to a filing. Binance acquired the shares on Sept.17 at $80.84 per share in a private placement, reflecting a 5% discount to Circle’s market price prior to closing. Circle shares rose 0.1% Tuesday to trade at $94.60 per share.