Howdy, it’s Barsee.

Happy Tuesday, AI family, and welcome to another AI Valley edition.

Today’s climb through the Valley reveals:

• Anthropic launched Opus 4.5, its strongest frontier model yet

• OpenAI launched a free GPT-5 mini–powered shopping research tool

• Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s AI device prototype finalised

• The White House launched the Genesis Mission

• Plus trending AI tools, posts, and resources

Let’s dive into the Valley of AI…

WORKOS

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THROUGH THE VALLEY

1/ Anthropic releases Opus 4.5, its strongest frontier model yet

Anthropic has released Opus 4.5, the final model in its 4.5 lineup, and it’s now the top performer in coding, agent, and computer-use benchmarks. It scored 80.9% on SWE-Bench Verified, beating GPT-5.1 and Gemini 3 Pro. Opus 4.5 adds an “effort” mode that balances speed and depth, cuts token use by up to 76%, improves jailbreak resistance, and keeps context flowing in endless chats. It also powers new tools like Claude for Chrome, Excel, and a desktop Claude Code app. Frontier-level performance now costs as little as $5 per million tokens.

You can try the new model at Claude.ai or via API under:
claude-opus-4-5-20251101

2/ OpenAI launched a free GPT-5 mini–powered shopping research tool in ChatGPT

OpenAI has added a new shopping research mode to ChatGPT that helps users find products, compare options, and build personalized buyer guides. It runs on a GPT-5 mini model trained specifically for shopping and pulls live data on prices, specs, reviews, and availability. You can describe what you want, refine results with quick feedback, and get organized recommendations with links to trusted retailers. The feature is free for all logged-in users on web and mobile. OpenAI says results aren’t paid for and chat data isn’t shared with retailers.

3/ Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s AI device prototype finalised

Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive are now prototyping OpenAI’s first consumer device, which they say could launch within two years. The product is described as simple, playful, and about the size of a phone, but without a screen. It enters a tough market where earlier AI gadgets like the Humane AI Pin and the Friend necklace failed quickly. Big players like Apple and Google have an advantage because their AI features sit inside devices people already use. OpenAI has strong name recognition, but whether a new screenless device can succeed is still uncertain.

4/ The White House launched the Genesis Mission

President Trump signed an executive order launching the “Genesis Mission,” a federal effort to support AI research while trying to ease rising energy costs. The plan encourages government agencies, universities, and industry to share data and build new AI tools. The Department of Energy will create an AI platform for scientists and set challenges focused on energy and national security, with other agencies pursuing their own projects. Officials compared the scale to the Apollo program and said the goal is to improve the power grid, lower electricity bills, and speed up scientific progress.

TRENDING TOOLS

• Dim Notes > Automatically tags your thoughts so you never lose context

• SynthID by Google DeepMind > A new watermarking system that helps detect AI-generated content

• OpenAI Shopping Research > A shopping experience inside ChatGPT that finds products, compares options, and makes recommendations for you

• GeoSpy AI > It can now pinpoint a location using only a few pixels reflected in an image

• Bookmarkjar > An AI-powered bookmark manager that organizes everything you save

• Browser Cash > A stealthy browser automation platform built for web scraping

• Tencent HunyuanVideo 1.5 > An open-source, lightweight image-to-video model for fast, high-quality generation

THINK PIECES / BRAIN BOOST

• How to write clear, predictable prompts for Gemini 3

• The space of intelligence is large

• Google is likely to win the AI race

• This humanoid robot springs back to its feet in record time

• What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

• Google begins showing ads in AI Mode

• Execs say OpenAI has first hardware prototypes, plan to reveal device in 2 years or less

THE VALLEY GEMS

What’s trending on social today:

THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY

Thank you for reading today’s edition. That’s all for today’s issue.

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