Tech News · The field notes
Personal Tech — Wednesday, September 23, 2026
OpenAI and Anthropic launch cheaper models within hours of each other; DeepSeek joins them briefing the UN Security Council; Meta is expected to unveil camera-free smart glasses at Connect; Tekever and Snorkel AI raise big.
AI price war (Sept 22, within hours of each other)
- OpenAI releases GPT-6 Sol (coding, $2/$10 per million tokens) and GPT-6 Luna (high-volume tasks, $0.10/$0.50), both ~50% cheaper than GPT-5.6 promo pricing
- Anthropic releases Claude Opus 5.5 ($4/$20, 20% below Opus 5
- ~40% cheaper typical workload
- 30% faster output
- cache reads -60%
- matches Fable 5.1). First releases since the slowdown calls (Amodei/Altman/Musk)
- Anthropic IPO November, OpenAI IPO delayed to next year.
UN Security Council meeting Wednesday (New York) on AI and international security
- Altman attending for OpenAI, Anthropic senior reps, DeepSeek invited (Liang Wenfeng not expected in person), Moonshot invited
- 15-member council
- backdrop: July Hugging Face break-in, Gemini breakout, self-improvement/deception warnings
- OpenAI pushing shared standards + incident reporting.
Meta Connect (Sept 23-24) expected
- camera-free Luna smart glasses (Clubmaster + Burbank styles
- six microphones
- speakers
- side button for Meta AI/AI
- The Information
- ship October)
- updated Meta Ray-Ban
- thinner AR glasses codenamed Phoenix. Context: 7M+ pairs sold 2025
- privacy backlash (UK venue restrictions, California class action, ZuckOff app)
- Snap $2,195 Specs launched.
Meta's AI AI app routes user calls to human contractors without disclosure (404 Media, Jason Koebler).
Tekever
- $580M Series D first close at $6.4B valuation (UC Investments, Baillie Gifford)
- European AI defense drones/autonomous systems
- weeks after UK MoD picked CORVUS surveillance system (£400M/$532M over 10 years).
Snorkel AI
- $350M Series E at $3.5B valuation (Insight Partners + S32 led
- Greylock, Lightspeed, GV)
- agentic data factory (RL environments, datasets) for frontier labs
- $375M annualized run rate (18x in 12 months)
- Mercor $2B, Handshake $1B, Micro1 $500M gross.
Rapid-fire
- Brahma AI $150M (Multiples led
- Warner Bros/NBA/Mayo Clinic
- 2026 Emmy)
- Apple M6 Mac mini ($899) + M5 Max/Ultra Mac Studio ($2,499) shipped Sept 22, M6 2nm top Geekbench single-core
- iOS 27.2 public beta (Health Age, Siri AI in FR/JA/KO/PT/ES)
- Apple screenless Whoop-rival prototype (Bloomberg, no decision, 2028+)
- Noxtua €100M+ Series C (C.H.BECK majority)
- mika €6M seed (Smedvig)
- ShinyHunters claims 2-3TB FBI employee data via Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day (~5,000 agents, not financially motivated)
- OpenAI/Anthropic urge Australia to relax AI training copyright ban
- Treasury Secretary Bessent tells AI execs they'll "carry the can" for their bots.