evening AI radar: funding shifts, policy shocks, and platform bets

Together AI — an AI neocloud that rents out Nvidia GPU clusters and other AI-specific infrastructure — has raised an $800 million Series C at an $8.3 billion valuation, the company announced on Wednesday . The company was founded in 2022.

The round was led by Aramco Ventures, with participation from Vista Equity Partners, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, Nvidia, March Capital, Pegatron, SentinelOne’s S Ventures, and others.

Together AI last raised a $305 million Series B at a $3.3 billion valua tion about 16 months ago. It actually came out of the gate well-funded, with a $102.5 million Series A funding round led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Nvidia and Emergence Capital back in 2023.

There were whispers of this round back in March, when The Information reported that the company was seeking $1 billion in funding, but at a $7.5 billion valuation. If the numbers in that report were accurate, it means that Together AI took less money but perhaps got a better deal from VCs than it had been pursuing in the spring.

The hefty infusion of capital comes as Together AI claims annual bookings of over $1.15 billion as of its last quarter, as companies increasingly adopt competent yet far less expensive open source models via neocloud providers like Together AI. They are increasingly turning to this option rather than pay the premiums on tokens for closed frontier models for all their AI usage.

Cloudflare has just issued the AI industry a new deadline to separate the web crawlers used for traditional search purposes, like Google Search, from those used for AI agents and training. Starting on September 15, 2026, Cloudflare’s default settings will block “mixed-use” crawlers from any pages that host ads, the company announced on Wednesday.

That means that the crawlers that blend search, agent use, and training will be blocked from crawling these sites by default, unless the site owner adjusts the settings otherwise. These changes to the defaults will apply to new Cloudflare customers, new sites set up by existing customers, and all existing free customers, the company says.

The move could impact how AI model providers are able to access web content for training purposes and to help power their agentic services.

Cloudflare points out that most website owners want their content to be discoverable via search and often through AI services as well, but they want protections against having their intellectual property given away for free.

Cloudflare specifically calls out the “world’s largest search engine” (clearly a Google reference!) as having access to about “2x more information” than other AI companies because the search giant makes it difficult for customers to remain discoverable without being used for AI.

As of today, Anthropic confirmed in a blog post , Fable 5 will be available globally, and US organizations have had access restored to Mythos 5 since June 26. Anthropic said it is now working with the government to expand Mythos access to a “broader set of domestic and international partners in the Glasswing program.”

In a letter to Anthropic viewed by Reuters and The New York Times , Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Anthropic would “no longer need a license for exports or in-country transfers of its Claude Mythos and Claude Fable AI models.” The letter acknowledged that Anthropic had “taken steps in close coordination with the US government to address the risks” posed by the models.

Facing a longer delay in its models’ releases, Lutnick said that Anthropic agreed to expand its partnership with the government. The company said it also set up a program to work with hackers to red-team its models, and there’s now a dedicated internal team to monitor reports of emerging jailbreak threats 24/7.

In the letter, Lutnick reminded Anthropic that the US “reserves the right to re-evaluate the decisions” and reimpose export curbs at any point. But for now, Lutnick joined White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in celebrating Fable 5’s redeployment on X.

“Over the past two weeks, we have worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the US Government and strengthen America’s leadership in AI,” Lutnick said.

Gemini Spark, Google’s AI agent that can help with aspects of your digital life, is now available on Mac.

The company on Wednesday said Spark is being added to the existing Gemini desktop app, as well as several updates and new features, including the ability to stay up to date on topics in real time, and connect to more apps like Google Tasks and Google Keep.

The macOS launch allows Gemini Spark to better compete with desktop AI agents like Claude Desktop, Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenClaw, and others, as it will be able to work with files on the computer, and later, handle remote tasks.

Though not available at launch, Google says users will “soon” be able to assign multi-step tasks to Spark on their phones, such as calling up the desktop agent to pull information from a file on their Mac.

In the meantime, you can use Spark to sort and organize files, or use files on your computer as the source for a new Google Workspace doc or spreadsheet. For instance, Google suggests Spark can turn invoices on your computer into a budgeting worksheet.

Techmeme reports sources saying SpaceX showed investors a handset-like AI prototype.

The report ties the prototype to AI tech from xAI and a Snapdragon-based stack.

It also describes a proprietary OS in the concept.

The story frames the reveal as an early indicator of potential expansion into wireless AI devices.