Key Takeaways
- Meta released Muse Code, a terminal coding agent powered by Muse Spark 1.2.
- Vercel introduced Agent Plugins, an open standard for extending AI agents.
- Prime Intellect's Prime Agent reportedly scores 95.5% on ARC-AGI-3.
- Block beat Q2 guidance and raised 2026 targets, with Neighborhoods at $1B annualized GPV.
- Nikita Bier stepped down as X product lead after a period of record growth.
1. AI Agents and Developer Tools
- Meta launches Muse Code beta. Mark Zuckerberg released Muse Code, a terminal coding agent that plans changes, writes code, and verifies results in large codebases, powered by the coding-specialized Muse Spark 1.2 model. This marks Meta's entry into terminal-native coding agents. — via 1 2
- Vercel announces Agent Plugins. Guillermo Rauch unveiled an open standard for extending AI agents, supporting Agent Skills and MCP, co-developed with AWS, Code, Cursor, GitHub, OpenAI, and others. The initiative aims to reduce fragmentation across agent ecosystems and create a common plugin layer. — via 1
- Prime Agent claims strong ARC-AGI-3 performance. Yohei Nakajima highlighted Prime Intellect's Prime Agent, a self-improving harness for coding and long-horizon autonomous tasks. The team reports 95.5% on ARC-AGI-3, above the human baseline and not benchmark-specific; this is a self-reported, unverified claim. — via 1
- Vercel raises Sandbox quotas 5–10x. Sandboxes now support 10,000 concurrent instances and 5,000 vCPUs per minute, with further headroom available. The increase targets growing AI/agent workload demands. — via 1
2. Business and Platform Momentum
- Block posts strong Q2 and raises 2026 targets. Jack Dorsey detailed a two-and-a-half-year transformation: Square and Cash App accelerated, margins expanded ~10 points, and the company became an "elite applied AI company" with Goose and Buzz. Q2 beat guidance, and 2026 guidance rose to 21% gross profit growth and 70% adjusted diluted EPS growth. — via 1
- Block's Neighborhoods hits $1B annualized GPV. The local-commerce product grew 220% YoY, maintains 90% retention for auto-joined merchants, and already contributes 10% of total merchant GPV after only three quarters. It is a new product-market-fit story inside Square. — via 1
- Square enables Google Ask Maps agent orders. Sellers can now accept orders from Google's agent-led shopping surface. Jack Dorsey says more integrations are coming, positioning Block as an early payments rail for AI-commerce. — via 1
- Nikita Bier steps down as X product lead. Bier moved to an advisory role, calling X "the most important communication technology" but saying he needs a break. He claims record user growth and engagement, App Store rank up 70 places YoY, and states he rebuilt core aspects and shipped ~30 products in 400 days. Design, core product, and mobile engineering now have distinct leads. — via 1
- Replit opens Japan with first local hire. Amjad Masad welcomed Ryo as Replit's first Japan-based employee; he will host Tokyo events and recruit "Japan ambassadors." The company considers Japan one of its most important markets. — via 1
3. New Ventures and Investment Signals
- Paul Graham and Yohei Nakajima launch Discovery Loop. The two, with three long-time collaborators, co-founded a public benefit corporation to automate machine learning, science, and engineering. Yohei noted the team has worked together for 14–30 years and expects the approach to help solve major engineering challenges. — via 1 2
- Garry Tan calls Valar the "hardest-core" US startup. The founder built a nuclear reactor before 28; the company aims to make energy 10x cheaper and then use that energy to extract carbon from air into oil/gas. Tan's endorsement reflects a surging interest in small-scale nuclear energy. — via 1
- Alexis Ohanian backs space and physical-trust bets. He touted Stoke Space's real hardware (Nova launch expected no earlier than H1 2027) and invested in Veritas, a chip company tackling authenticity verification in luxury and other markets. — via 1 2
- Space data centers draw both optimism and caution. Alexis Ohanian recommended a Starcloud CEO interview about in-orbit LLM training, a $200M raise, and more satellite deployments; Garry Tan countered that the idea is not impossible but carries high transport, cooling, and communication costs. — via 1 2
