Pulse Daily — Saturday, August 15, 2026
On Saturday, August 15, 2026, the AI landscape was defined by OpenAI's Astra pause and Daybreak cyber expansion, Anthropic's landmark Q2 profitability, the Manus-Meta unwind ordered by Beijing, Gemini hitting one billion users, xAI's Grok 4.6 launch, a looming OpenAI IPO, DeepSeek's surprise price hike, the embodied-AI boom, AI in 55% of African cybercrime, a DARPA autonomous F-16 flight, and the OpenAI-Apple legal battle—all painting a week in which intelligence scaled, buckled, and redrew borders simultaneously. Stories: OpenAI Halts Astra Work — Model May Cross 'Critical' Cyber Threshold ·…
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