Weekly Intel - 2026-06-28

The theme this week is a split screen: new models, new chips, and new architectures arriving in quick succession, while the cost of actually using any of it becomes the real constraint. The frontier keeps moving, and access to it keeps getting more expensive and more gated.

AI & Software

Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model OpenAI introduced a three-tier model family, Sol, Terra, and Luna, positioned at different price and performance points, with Terra matching GPT-5.5 at half the cost. The release went out first as a limited preview to government-vetted partners before broad availability.

MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control AWS added microVMs to Lambda: lightweight, isolated virtual machines that spin up near-instantly and hold state, built for running code you didn’t write. The target uses are AI coding assistants, user-facing sandboxes, and plugin systems, anywhere untrusted code has to execute safely in a multi-tenant environment. Powered by Firecracker, it removes the need to build and manage your own sandboxing infrastructure.

AI Industry Moves

OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom OpenAI unveiled its first custom inference chip, Jalapeño, built with Broadcom and reportedly showing strong performance-per-watt gains. It follows the same path Google and Amazon already took, designing custom silicon tailored to their own inference workloads. OpenAI says its own models helped design the chip.

U.S. allows Anthropic to release Mythos AI to ’trusted’ US organizations The US government is now allowing Anthropic’s Claude Mythos 5 to ship to more than 100 “trusted” US institutions, two weeks after imposing export controls over jailbreak concerns flagged by Amazon and others. Access to the model is gated by government vetting rather than price or API tier.

AI’s Affordability Crisis David Cahn at Sequoia put the AI revenue gap at $200 billion in late 2023; nine months later he revised it to $600 billion. The argument here is that AI platforms have run a familiar playbook, subsidizing usage to build dependency, then raising prices once the infrastructure spending needs to pay off.

Tech Industry

IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology IBM crossed the sub-1 nanometer threshold with a 7-angstrom chip holding nearly 100 billion transistors, roughly double the density of its 2 nm chip from 2021, using a 3D “nanostack” architecture. IBM is presenting this as a research milestone, not production silicon.

Financial Markets

Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards The European Parliament’s economic committee approved draft rules for a digital euro, an ECB-backed electronic wallet that would let euro zone residents pay online and in stores without routing through Visa or Mastercard. The project has been in development for six years and gained urgency as Europe confronts its dependence on US-controlled payment rails.

Energy & Transportation

Canada plans ’nuclear renaissance’ with up to 10 reactors built by 2040 Canada’s Energy Minister laid out a national nuclear strategy calling for up to 10 new reactors by 2040, doubled uranium exports, and international sales of Canadian-built reactors, all aimed at doubling the country’s electrical grid by 2050. The plan positions Canada as both a domestic builder and an exporter, on the minister’s stated view that doubling the grid is not credible without nuclear baseload.

Infrastructure

45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero NVIDIA’s Rubin generation is the first AI infrastructure to run fully liquid-cooled with no fans, using coolant at 45°C, hot enough to reject heat straight to outdoor air without chillers or evaporative cooling towers. That cuts water consumption to near zero and removes much of the cooling energy overhead, which typically runs 30 to 40 percent of a data center’s total power draw.

Legal & Regulation

Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place Stephen Diehl’s essay argues that 2026 is the year crypto stopped being a sideshow and became infrastructure for institutional corruption, citing a sitting president running a memecoin, federally licensed exchanges taking bets on real-world events, and stablecoin issuers absorbing savings from the global poor under new legislation. He frames these not as isolated scandals but as a connected shift in how digital-asset rules get written and who they serve.

That’s what I’m watching. What caught your attention this week?

-Eric